Cambridgeshire Police Agrees Merger

4 October 2011, 12:42 | Updated: 4 October 2011, 13:26

Cambridgeshire Police has agreed to merge some services with forces in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, to save money.

The three Police Authorities involved have approved plans to merge their firearms, major crime, professional standards and scientific service units.

The move will not initially lead to job cuts, but "may well do in future" according to Shona Johnstone, Chair of the Finance and Resources Committee at the Cambridgeshire Police Authority.

The change is expected to save the three forces around £3million per year between them.

It is not yet known when any details about job cuts as a result of the merger will be made available.

Shona Johnstone added: "We are of course working very closely with the Police Federation and other unions to ensure they are kept fully informed about what's happening."

Chair of Cambridgeshire Police Authority, Ruth Rogers, said: "These complex business cases are the result of a great deal of work by the constabularies and scrutiny by the authorities.

We look forward to them helping to ensure effective policing whilst making the best use of resources for the three areas."

Chief Constable Simon Parr [pictured - top right] added: "We are very pleased to be developing this shared response with our partner forces.

We will be monitoring the implementation very closely to ensure we deliver a high quality service to the public as well as making the financial savings."

More functions could merge by 2015, with savings by then expected to total around £20million a year between the three forces.

It's understood the only areas that will not be considered for merging are local policing, which includes incident response, neighbourhood policing and volume crime investigation, and services that protect vulnerable people.