London police to consider outsourcing 500 mln stg of services

LONDON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - London's Metropolitan Police said on Wednesday it will consider outsourcing services from custody healthcare to catering worth 500 million pounds ($796 million) a year to help save money.

Companies like Capita (LSE: CPI.L - news) , Serco and G4S (Copenhagen: G4S.CO - news) , who all work in the British justice sector and have seen new contracts put out at a slower pace than many analysts had anticipated, will welcome the announcement.

Police forces across England and Wales have to find savings of 20 percent from 2011 to 2015 due to cuts in government funding.

Scotland Yard will gather outsourcing proposals from potential bidders next year, the Metropolitan Police said.

Some of the new areas it may ask firms to run are custody healthcare, language services, catering and procurement.

The Metropolitan Police already outsources IT, facilities management and transport services.

The regions have approached their funding problems differently, with Lincolnshire police paying G4S (LSE: GFS.L - news) 200 million pounds to run services from firearms to custody suites, while the West Midlands force has backtracked on outsourcing altogether.

G4S and British firm Interserve (LSE: IRV.L - news) are two of five companies bidding to supply Avon and Somerset police, in the south west of England, with detainee transport and custody services, while other forces are trialling similar schemes.

G4S and Serco, however, are under investigation after the government found they had overcharged it on electronic tagging contracts.