POLICE bosses celebrating the success of Lancashire's helicopter are to save an extra £7,000 a year by taking pilots on to the payroll.

The £1.6 million twin-engined Squirrel, which took off for the first time on November 21, 1994, paid for itself in saved manpower in just over 12 months.

Now officials have scrapped their arrangement to "buy in" the services of three pilots and the savings will be used to pay for extra flying hours. Until the end of last month, the pilots were provided through a contract with Operational Support Services Ltd, a sister company of McAlpine Helicopters Ltd, which takes care of the "eye in the sky's" maintenance.

The Police Authority is now employing the pilots directly, after gaining experience in operating the service.

But services such as pilot training and testing as well the provision of relief pilots to cover sickness will still be provided under contract. In the 12 months to February of this year, the helicopter spent 730 hours flying over the county.

Figures for 1995 show the air support unit, which is based at Warton, attended 2,278 incidents, was responsible for 234 arrests and recovered 26 stolen vehicles.

It carried out 160 searches for missing people, 674 searches for suspects and 214 pursuits, as well as attending 64 firearms incidents.

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