subject: Police Mileage Rises, but Fuel Costs Fall [print this page] Britains Police fleet has managed to cut its fuel costs by 4.6 million despite the fact that they are now travelling an extra 7.6 million miles!
These seem to be impressive figures considering the extreme increase in fuel costs over the past couple of years, with fuel costs rising to over 1.20 per litre. In April 2009 diesel was costing 1.01 but just 12 months later diesel prices soared rising by over 15.5% to 121 pence. Petrol prices had climbed by over 20% that year too which made the police savings even more impressive.
The police strategy has been to invest in newer, more fuel efficient cars, and downsizing where possible and also increasing the ration of diesel vehicles within the fleet to around 85%.
When questioned, it was said that "the key is to challenge the need for high powered vehicles" said Richard Flint who is chairman of the National Association of Police Fleet Managers and he is also transport manager at North Yorkshire Police.
At present, the UK's police operate 35,420 cars vans and motorcycles, plus thousands of specialist vehicles including HGV's, quad bikes, tractors and trailers. All the vehicles together cover around 600m miles a year and they spend over 78.2m on fuel.
Bedfordshire police have taken on many different fuel and money saving tactics. For instance with some of the cars they change them on a yearly basis, selling on older cars and taking on cars with more efficient technology to save money.
Finally they have also looked into the most efficient way to purchase fuel. This new way is by national contract, and police stations can therefore direct their workers to the most efficient garages and sources to fill up their tanks.
It's not just the fuel efficiency that has increased within the police fleet though, these new methods also now mean that each mile is more efficient. Closer scrutiny is being paid to each journey and each vehicle.
The difficulty that they face is that their cars are used for many different purposes, one minute they could be crawling along in a parade or the next minute the vehicle could be needed for a high speed chase.
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