Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 25
25
Deferred
Slow scaling of police innovation hindered by funding cuts and a crowded delivery landscape.
Recommendation
Despite these opportunities, scaling innovation and new technologies across the 43 police forces in England and Wales has been slow. The Home Office and College of Policing acknowledged the lack of speed and told us that scale-up was the biggest barrier.65 We asked about the mechanisms needed to scale innovation.66 In supplementary evidence received after our evidence session, the College of Policing highlighted that its Centre for Police Productivity is dedicated to identifying innovation and supporting forces to implement new initiatives. It has identified and sifted 1,400 innovations, putting 120 of these with the greatest potential into a ‘promising practice’ bank.67 The College of Policing also highlighted that is aware of 90 initiatives using AI in 29 forces, and told us it evaluates between eight and 12 initiatives a year, seeking to fast-track them to policing.68 The College acknowledged that it needed to do more but said that its funding had fallen (from 0.4% of all police funding in 2012–13 to 0.2% in 2025–26) and that it does not 59 Q 120 60 Q 41 61 Qq 84-85 62 C&AG’s Report, Examples 1-3 63 Qq 79, 112 64 City of London Police (IPP0010) 65 Q 119; C&AG’s Report, para 3.9 66 Qq 120, 130 67 Letter from the College of Policing, 8 December 2025 68 Qq 112, 119 15 have sufficient gravity to drive some of these initiatives.69 It also pointed to the number of bodies involved in rolling-out new measures—a “crowded landscape”—which is not the most efficient or effective way of delivering national services.70
Government Response Summary
The government agrees to provide an update in July 2027 on the steps taken to speed up the adoption of new technologies and support police forces to improve their productivity, including the technologies with the greatest potential, support for the College of Policing, simplifying arrangements for rolling out new technologies, and results from the diagnostic tool.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
5a. PAC 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: • the digital technologies with the greatest potential and how it is supporting their wider adoption; • how it will support the College of Policing to identify innovations with the greatest potential; • how it will simplify the arrangements for approving and rolling-out new technologies; and • the results of using the new diagnostic tool to assess the scope for productivity improvements from streamlining police processes, including the potential benefits identified and plans for securing these. 5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: July 2027 5.2 As set out in the Police Reform White Paper, the Home Office is already working to accelerate the adoption of new technologies to improve police productivity by increasing policing’s ability to identify what works, prioritise resource and roll out initiatives. 5.3 To achieve this, the Home Office is providing financial and practical support to the College of Policing and its Centre for Police Productivity to strengthen the identification and development of innovations with the greatest potential to improve productivity. This includes leading the assessment of innovations and best practice. Complementary activity funded through the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser is strengthening the science and innovation pipeline and improving links between policing, academia and industry. 5.4 The Home Office is agreeing a set of productivity priorities focused on technologies with the greatest potential to reduce administrative burden. These include data and analytics, artificial intelligence to support decision‑making and investigations, and automation of routine processes. In its first year, the National Centre for AI in Policing will prioritise high‑impact use cases aligned to these priorities, supporting forces to adopt proven tools at pace while avoiding duplication of effort. 5.5 Working with partners, the Home Office is streamlining arrangements for identifying, assuring clearer routes to national adoption and preparation for transition to the National Police Service and scaling new technologies. These include significant investments made in new secure national infrastructure with the Law Enforcement Capability Network, the Law Enforcement Data Service, the Law Enforcement Cloud Platform and the Law Enforcement National Identity and Access Management service. These core services provide the foundations for future secure and scalable modern IT services. To ensure policing can increase adopting and exploitation of new technology a Business Change Centre of Excellence has been established to provide guidance and blueprints on improved use of capabilities such as facial recognition and advanced analytics, as well as supporting the readiness of forces for new transformational capabilities such as the Emergency Services Network. 5.6 The Home Office is also working with the College of Policing to assess outputs from the new productivity diagnostic tool to identify opportunities to streamline processes and support forces to realize benefits.