Recommendation 16

Police forces face difficulties recruiting and retaining staff with specialist skills, including IT staff, inhibiting their ability to deploy new technology. The Home Office told us that part of the challenge is that all 43 forces are seeking to recruit individuals with highly specialist skills, putting them in competition with each other as well as the private sector. It said that it wants to create a smaller, central team of IT experts with specialist skills that forces can draw on to work with local IT staff.38