Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 26
26
Deferred
Police forces face significant funding constraints for IT system improvements and new technology.
Recommendation
We asked if police forces had sufficient funding to improve their IT systems,71 particularly given the financial pressures they are facing, which has led them to increase borrowing to fund capital programmes.72 Forces also spend around 80% of their funding on officer and staff pay, which means they have limited flexibility to make capital investments, support transformation or invest in new technology.73 The Home Office reduced funding for programmes to improve productivity and roll-out new technologies, from £105 million in 2024–25 to £50 million in 2025–26.74 It told us that funding is constrained, and it does not determine how much money goes into innovation. Within these constraints, the Home Office said it is seeking to focus on initiatives that could deliver the best outcomes, pointing to its funding for facial recognition technology.75
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and sets a target implementation date of December 2029, noting that the National Police Service will consider these recommendations further once established; meanwhile, the Home Office is working closely with policing to modernise IT systems and is addressing concerns through work on national data standards and programmes upgrading legacy technology.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
5b. PAC recommendation: In addition, the Home Office should: • require each police force to develop a business case, quantifying how much resource is required and over what period, to adequately update their IT systems; • work with the National Centre of Policing to develop a roadmap for upgrading the IT infrastructure across and within all police forces to enable interoperability, improve their resilience and ability to collaborate more effectively; • identify and prioritize key legacy systems and provide the resources to enable them to be upgraded and consolidated across police forces; • provide dedicated resources, based on the above work, to enable the upgrade of IT infrastructure and systems across and within all police forces according to the roadmap. 5.7 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: December 2029 5.8 The Home Office is already working closely with policing to modernise IT systems, 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. 5.9 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. 5.10 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 Applica