Collaboration is a theme that runs across Richard Flint’s fleet policy: collaboration with other police forces, emergency services’ fleets, staff, management, manufacturers and the media.

The North Yorkshire Police transport manager draws on experience gained from roles with two other police fleets during a 15-year career.

He started as fleet manager for Durham Constabulary in 1995. Five years later he joined Strathclyde, the UK’s second largest police fleet with 1,200 vehicles. He spent nine years there before joining North Yorkshire Police 18 months ago.

At both Durham and Strathclyde, Flint was a Fleet News award winner, praised for his innovative initiatives. He’s considering the hat-trick, but is waiting for the changes he’s implemented at North Yorkshire to take effect before putting together an entry.

“It takes six months to get a good feel for the operation and then to start implementing change,” Flint says. “By the time you’ve done the planning, it’s a year before that makes an impact.”

Many of those changes are based on initiatives he implemented at Strathclyde, including setting up joint ventures with other emergency services fleets in the local region to reduce workshop overheads.

Estimated savings can run into thousands of pounds by pooling resources.
Flint also hopes to agree co-ordinated purchasing with neighbouring police forces within the ACPO region. This will include standardisation on new vehicles to boost purchasing power.

“We need regional collaboration – moving towards standardisation on vehicles, joint procurement and collaboration on vehicle and equipment purchasing,” he says.
Standardisation is part of the long-term strategy and will take at least three years to wash through the fleet.

Flint’s view arguably carries greater weight due to his chairmanship of the National Association of Police Fleet Managers (NAPFM). He’s one year into a three-year term.

“It works very well,” he says. “It’s very forward thinking and is way ahead of the rest of the force on standardisation.”

All public bodies face scrutiny by the national and local media and that has intensified with the economic downturn. Large expenditure is questioned – and there’s not much that eats more into public finances than buying vehicles.

In 2008, North Yorkshire Police spent £2.6 million buying new vehicles; this year it will spend £2.4 million.

Flint has always taken a proactive approach to public relations. The local press spot police cars brandishing 09 and 59 plates and jump to conclusions that the public sector is awash with money when private sector companies are tightening their belts.

“That’s not the case – if we didn’t renew the fleet we would be losing money through higher wholelife costs,” Flint says.

“I said to the force I want the opportunity to respond to press comment and not leave it to the press office or no comment. We have to defend our decisions.”

However, he also accepts that the force has to take action to reduce its overheads – not all the criticism is unfounded.

“We have had some negative publicity with superintendents driving around in large cars, such as Volvo V70s,” he says. “So we took the decision to downgrade them into Focus 1.6 TDCIs for beat vehicles. If they can’t justify why they need the larger vehicle, they go into the Focus.”

In addition to giving him an easier ride with local journalists, there have been other, business-essential benefits.

“Our emissions have fallen and we are getting better fuel consumption. It is saving us thousands of pounds just by doing this one thing,” Flint says.

He has also moved the road policing team from petrol into diesel. Many police forces are lagging behind when it comes to embracing the more fuel efficient option.

“No-one is driving forward these initiatives and there is no incentive to change, so they don’t consider changing,” Flint says.

The figures tell their own story, however. North Yorkshire Police is replacing its three Imprezas with 3.0-litre diesel Audi A4 Avant Quattros, saving £10,000 per vehicle on fuel over the lifecycle.

It is also switching from Volvo V70 T6 to BMW 530d for its standard road car, notching up a further £5,000 fuel saving per vehicle. With 40 vehicles, that’s a media-pleasing £200,000 cut from expenditure over the lifetime.

Flint has embraced wholelife cost wherever he has worked, usually changing the existing strategy. At North Yorkshire Police, it replaces a policy of buying on the P11D price and will bring significant benefits, particularly as the operation outright purchases its 516 vehicles.

“There are now two criteria when we are choosing vehicles – the wholelife cost and whether it is fit for purpose,” he says.

“Using wholelife costs also means you only have to do one calculation – you don’t have to look at CO2 as well. The best wholelife cost figure is often the car with the lowest CO2 because of the impact of fuel on the calculation.”

Outright purchase is his funding method of choice due to the complexities of the blue light fleet.

“It’s hard to manage contract hire within the police, especially on marked vehicles, due to the amount of damage to the vehicle. It takes a lot of time to de-commission so it’s easier to manage that process if we outright purchase – we don’t face any additional de-fleet charges.”

Flint keeps a close eye on overheads by benchmarking against contract hire wholelife costs in the private sector. National buying power makes his model competitive.

Psychology plays a major role in the fleet team’s communication with drivers. It has helped Flint to introduce many changes to the fleet vehicle profile in such a short space of time without unduly upsetting drivers.

For instance, instead of asking them whether the vehicle will do the job, he asks why it won’t do the job.

“It’s a subtle change but they have to accept that the car will do the job even if there are things about it they don’t like,” he says.

He has taken a similar approach with the move from petrol to diesel. “It’s not a question of which car they want, it’s which diesel car they want. They still have a choice but we limit it, which takes the focus off petrol cars.”

He adds: “We have to convince the front line officers that if the force saves money, it can be used elsewhere, such as on overtime or better offices. We have to make them aware of why we are making these changes.

“And we have to make sure that the message gets out there so we get good press.”

North Yorkshire Police is in the process of signing up to the Energy Saving Trust Motorvate initiative after undertaking a green fleet review last year.

It highlighted the need for a new fleet management system – currently out to tender – that would enable Flint to better monitor accident statistics, CO2 emissions and costs. He also wants to take greater control over the force’s 1,100 grey fleet drivers, responsible for one million miles a year at a cost of almost £500,000.

“We do licence and MOT checks, but that’s it. We are looking at training our grey fleet drivers and we have to encourage them to do their own vehicle checks,” he says. “We also need to look at reducing their mileage as part of reducing the overall fleet mileage by introducing travel plans.

“We have to start challenging them about why they are making the journey. Historically we just asked for mileage – now we will be more demanding on them.”

Flint has strong views about the rates some local authorities pay their grey fleet story. His response to the Fleet News article (November 19): “Government should set one rate for everyone and not allow people to pay what they like.”

Multi Fleet News award winner Richard Flint has introduced a number of initiatives to North Yorkshire Police. They include:
• Introduced removable cells so they can be transferred from an old vehicle to a new one to get another life from it
• Working with emergency services on joint purchasing strategies and pooling workshop resources to cut costs
• Working with within the ACPO region – North, South and West Yorkshire, and Humberside – to agree standardisation on vehicle purchases to boost volume discounts
• Introduced wholelife cost model to replace P11D policy
• Stopped drilling holes for lightbars – now strapped to the roof with wiring running through the trim. Improves residuals by £400-500
• Replacing petrol with diesel - £200,000-plus savings on fuel over vehicle lifetime
• Fitted reversing sensors on cars and cameras on vans to reduce high incidence of reversing prangs
• Introduced vehicle user group to discuss topics such as health and safety, driver training, unions and fleet strategy – improves communication and gives the fleet team feedback on vehicle, fleet and workshop performance

North Yorkshire Police

Transport manager: Richard Flint
Time in role: 18 months
No of vehicles: 516 of which around 200 are vans. Also has 12 motorcycles (BMW/Yamaha) and around 200 pedal cycles
Replacement cycles: 3-4 years, up to 120,000 miles
Funding option: outright purchase