Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Accepted
Provide an update on accelerating new technology adoption to improve police force productivity.
Recommendation
It is taking too long to identify and scale-up innovative practices and roll-out new technologies to improve police productivity. There are many examples of police forces exploiting innovative technologies—including audio-visual multimedia redaction, live facial recognition and enhanced video response—but scaling these across all 43 police forces has been slow. The Home Office is implementing some of the changes from the 2023 Policing Productivity Review but has reduced funding to support the roll-out of new technologies from £105 million in 2024–25 to £50 million in 2025–26. As around 80% of police funding is committed to staff pay costs, police forces have limited flexibility to invest in new technologies and have been forced to increase their borrowing to fund their capital programmes. The College of Policing acknowledged that the large number of bodies involved in the roll-out of innovative practices, including identifying and scaling innovations with the greatest potential, was not the most effective way of operating. There is also scope to improve police productivity by streamlining processes. The College of Policing has developed a diagnostic tool to help police forces identify opportunities, in areas such as burglary, but its launch has been delayed. 4 recommendation The Home Office should provide the Committee with an update in six months on the steps it has taken to speed up the adoption of new technologies and support police forces to improve their productivity. This should include setting out: a. the digital technologies with the greatest potential and how it is supporting their wider adoption; b. how it will support the College of Policing to identify innovations with the greatest potential; c. how it will simplify the arrangements for approving and rolling-out new technologies; and d. the results of using the new diagnostic tool to assess the scope for productivity improvements from streamlining police processes, including the potential benefits identi
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and is accelerating the adoption of new technologies by supporting the College of Policing, prioritising key digital technologies like AI and data analytics, and scaling productivity-enabling systems nationally. It will consider further recommendations as part of implementing force mergers.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. implement a new IT strategy and ahead of the National Police Service being stood up by the Home Office scoping an Enterprise Architecture function for policing. Once established, the National Police Service is expected to set strategic direction to ensure consistent, interoperable IT systems and will consider these recommendations further then. The Home Office is already addressing concerns through work on national data standards, a new National Data Integration and Exploitation Service, and more than 30 national programmes are upgrading or replacing legacy technology, with stronger cyber resilience and alignment to zero‑trust security. The national programmes allow for data to be shared between forces without having to replace local IT. This transformation is centred on the Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS), built to replace the Police National Computer, and increasing the number of national and local services hosted on police assured cloud platforms. Officers will have faster access to information. It has Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), allowing national and force systems to interoperate without bespoke local integrations. LEDS is providing funding to local forces to allow them to onboard. The Home Office is modernising other systems, including the National Strategic ANPR Platform, Police National Database, and Child Abuse Image Database, replacing ageing infrastructure and improving resilience. Productivity‑enabling systems, including Robotic Process Automation, Digital Public Contact, Digital Case File, and automated audio‑visual redaction, are being scaled nationally, freeing up officer time and standardising proven approaches. Any further updates to force level IT systems must align with the implementation of the Police Reform White Paper in particular the commitment to force mergers, planning for which will be underpinned by the forthcoming Independent Review into Police Force Structures. The Home Office will consider the recommendations further as part of implementation of force mergers.