A Centre for Police Productivity is to be opened within the College of Policing, the Home Office has said in its response to the recommendations of the 2023 review of police productivity.
Set to open in the autumn of 2024, it will take the findings of the Police Productivity Review and work towards delivering the review’s 38 million hours of policing that can be gained from greater productivity.
Police and crime commissioners, chief constables, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Fire and Rescue Service will work closely with the centre, the Home Office said.
A Policing Data Hub will also be part of the centre, which will support police forces in the use of AI and data and define models based on case study examples of data and AI usage that have been successful.
The Review of Policing Productivity was published in November 2023, and it found the potential for 38 million hours of police officer time could be saved every year if police forces adopted 26 recommendations in the report.
The Home Office said the report admits: “that a long term shift in the culture of policing would be required to deliver this change. It will need to move to embrace greater collaboration in trialling and rolling out new technologies, identifying and adopting best practices, and sharing and exploiting data between forces.”
Case for investment
Greater use and investment in technology is also recommended by the report. In its response, the Home Office says investment has increased to £65 million for the piloting and then adoption of automated triage of 101 calls, drones, facial recognition, knife detection, robotic process automation (RPA) and video.
“This technology will improve productivity by allowing police officers to spend less time on admin and more time on frontline duties,” the Home Office response said. Areas of policing that could benefit from technology include automating digital evidence case files, vetting checks and greater use of video.
The Home Office said that within the tech investment increase will be a fund for AI experimentation.
