{"id":588561,"date":"2026-05-17T06:44:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T06:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/588561\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T06:44:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T06:44:21","slug":"wiltshire-pcc-quits-police-air-support-board-over-helicopters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/588561\/","title":{"rendered":"Wiltshire PCC quits police air support board over helicopters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a statement, Wilkinson said the funds needed for the new helicopters placed a &#8220;disproportionate&#8221; financial burden on smaller forces that rarely made use of them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I cannot be associated with a decision which, in my view, risks representing a serious misuse of public money at a time when policing must be focused on efficiency and modernisation,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wilkinson said across the area he represented, the cost to police for planes, helicopters and their bases was \u00a36.8m for the last financial year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The spending is split between Gloucestershire Police, Avon and Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall and Dorset Police &#8211; with Wiltshire Police contributing \u00a3595,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a statement, Wilkinson said the funds needed for the new helicopters placed a &#8220;disproportionate&#8221; financial burden on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-588561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}