While the detectives are being paid by Operation Grange, they are costing the Met nothing. Some of the team probably will be 'disposed off' when the operation winds down - retirement, natural wastage, whatever.
Quite possibly.
I doubt that all of the current staff assigned to the case work exclusively on the Madeleine case. Depending on their respective skills and time, they may be more in demand during some periods of high activity rather than at other times.
For example, if a priority in the early days was to to get some kind of HOLMES system organised or harmonised, then trained staff may well have worked full-time until the work was mainly done, with just updates to do when necessary. I doubt that those qualified staff would be sitting twiddling their thumbs while LOR negotiations are making excruciatingly slow progress through the wheels of bureaucracy. They may even be involved in training juniors for when they retire or simply be working on other cases while remaining on call when needed for Op Grange.
My impression that the moans about so many staff on Op Grange to the exclusion of other work was a bit of political spin by the police union in the run-up to the elections to point out their general grievances, which is to be expected.
