Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
63rd Report - Increasing police productivity
Public Accounts Committee
HC 1239
Published 28 January 2026
Recommendations
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 …
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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.
HM Treasury
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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 …
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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.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (1)
29
Conclusion
Deferred
In its 2015 report on the financial sustainability of police forces, our predecessor Committee recommended that a new police funding formula be introduced in 2016–17.80 In our evidence session, we asked whether changing demographics meant the out-of-date formula had led to a structural funding gap.81 We were also concerned about …
Government Response Summary
The Home Office will review the police funding formula once the implementation of police reform is underway and will launch an independent review into police force structures to consider the right model for local policing, which will report in the summer.