Police forces are to receive a financial boost over the next two years to support a series of transformation projects with a strong emphasis on digital technology and data sharing.
The Home Office has announced awards totalling £42.7 million to 15 successful bids, on top of £70 million already approved by the home secretary for investment in four national police led programmes.
The latest round of projects to receive backing from the Police Transformation Fund for 2018-20 includes £14.8 million over two years for a project led by the Metropolitan Police to develop a national technical capability and infrastructure for law enforcement agencies.
West Midlands has also been given a sizeable boost of almost £4.5 million for work on a national analytics solution for policing, while the City of London Police has won £3.2 million for a project on data sharing to combat fraud and cyber crime.
Two projects led by the National Crime Agency have received significant backing: the development of the National Data Exploitation Centre (£4 million) and a National Economic Crime Centre (£1.5 million).
Others to receive more than £1 million are: the Derbyshire Police cyber crime initiative (£4.8 million), City of London Police for dealing with economic crime (£2.9 million); Norfolk Police for a proposal to fight child sexual exploitation and abuse; the Home Office Strategic Centre for Organised Crime to support a number of projects with different police forces (£1.45 million); and the Police ICT Company to support its transformation programme (£1 million).
Agile and responsive
Minister for Policing and the Fire Service Nick Hurd said: “Criminals don’t stand still, and neither should our police forces. We’re determined to support police leaders in creating a modern, agile and responsive police service.
“The Police Transformation Fund is delivering real change in policing, and this new funding will continue to help forces improve efficiency and tackle threats like serious and organised crime.”
The fund was launched in May 2016 and is aimed at helping police forces respond to changes in crime. Between 2016-18 it provided £223 million to support 98 projects.
The four programmes covered by the other funding stream are:
- The National Enabling Programme for a unified IT system across policing.
- Specialist Capabilities Programme for force-to-force resource sharing.
- The Digital Policing Portfolio to improve police forces’ use of technology, including the creation of an online hub for the reporting of low level incidents.
- Transforming Forensics to improve biometric services and digital forensics.
Image from GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
