NORTH Yorkshire Police is to merge its dog section with those of neighbouring forces in Cleveland and Durham.

A new single integrated service will operate from next summer in a move that police say will increase coverage in rural areas, reduce overall costs by more than £3 million during the next five years and enable a substantial 24-hour dog unit to be to retained across the three forces.

Police dogs carry out a wide range of duties to support operations, including tracking people, chasing criminals, finding explosives, cash, weapons or drugs, keeping public order and supporting firearms officers.

In North Yorkshire, dogs live with their handlers in different locations across the whole county. Operational bases will be set up in Harrogate, York Fulford Road, Northallerton/Thirsk and East Coast/Ryedale to support them better.

In addition, the county will have improved access to specialist dogs, including passive drugs dogs, which are typically used in town and city centres to identify people carrying drugs. At present, North Yorkshire Police buys in this service from a private company.

The decision to progress the combined dog section was made by Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire, Julia Mulligan, Chief Constable Dave Jones and their counterparts in the other two forces, as part of the Evolve Programme – a three-force initiative to look at how the police can improve services and save money by collaborating across organisational and geographical borders.

Mrs Mulligan said: “Police dogs and their handlers provide a really valuable service, but it is expensive and we need to save money.

"This plan is a good one for North Yorkshire – it will save us £172,000 a year, and at the same time it will increase the number of dogs available to our county.

"Police dogs can make a big impact, both in our urban areas and in rural communities. The fact we will have more dogs available, working across borders out of more operational bases, should make it easier for dogs to be deployed wherever they are needed.”

Mr Jones added: "An integrated dogs section is simply common sense.

"Criminals don’t recognise borders and we need to take that into account in the way we structure our specialist services. This plan will give us more officers and dogs available for deployment.

"Managing specialist services can be difficult if you have limited resources and there are peaks in demand, but this integrated service increases our options, so we can provide the right service at the right time.”

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