Channel Watch. The Cost of Government Surveillance Contracts.

During the channel watch series I'm currently running, You'll have noticed there are two Border force Aircraft flying over the channel most days. 

These aircraft are DHC Dash-8 ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) aircraft.

The Dash-8 aircraft is normally a regional airliner. In the ISR guise 

The ISR Aircraft are mentioned in this by Shepway VOX.

The Aircraft have had an extension on their contract while a dispute is settled. The contract extension runs from the 1st of December, to the 31st of March was 9.9 million pounds.

That's £2,475,000 pounds a month. That's the lease contract, not including the staffing and fuel costs I imagine. And that's nearly 2.5 million pounds a month just to fly two aircraft, that don't collect the dinghies, that don't contribute anything other than monitoring. 

Who are they reporting to and what are they doing about the information provided? At over £2million a month, is that information cost-effective? Or is it just spunking money away for no reason?

Over £2 million a month just to produce a report that lands on Shabanana Mahmood's desk is not cost effective.

Alongside the BorderForce aircraft, most days there is also a second aircraft flying for the UK Coastguard.

These are aircraft operated by 2Excel Aviation on behalf of the UK Coastguard. Another outsourced job.

The aircraft they operate are either Diamond DA62 aircraft, or the larger Beech King Air aircraft.

Now, it's a bit trickier to assign a cost to these aircraft. The 10 -year contract to fly aircraft for the coastguard is around 1.6 billion pounds. The contract was allocated to a consortium consisting of Bristow Helicopters, 2Excel Aviation and Nova Systems. 

But I can imagine flying an aircraft, even a small diesel-powered aircraft like the DA62 for several hours is quite costly. Ramp that up to the bigger turbo-prop King Air aircraft, or the even bigger airliner-sized Dash-8 aircraft and you can see there's a lot of fuel being burned over the channel. A lot of staff salary cost. A lot of maintenance time being created.

That's just in the air. 

Then there are the boats being used in the channel, day in day out. 

I'm looking into those next.