Home Secretary grants further police transformation funding
30 Nov 2016 04:35 PM
More than £26 million awarded over the next 3 years to support 28 transformational policing projects.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has yesterday awarded more than £26 million over the next 3 years to 28 policing projects designed to help transform the police service for the future. The funding from the police transformation fund is granted through a police-led bidding process.
The Home Secretary yesterday said:
The police transformation fund is a real opportunity for police leaders and police and crime commissioners to transform policing for the future, and to respond to the changing nature of crime. I am delighted that more than £60 million has been awarded to ground-breaking and collaborative projects this year alone.
Already we have seen funds used to expand innovative graduate schemes as well as national initiatives to tackle the scourge of modern slavery. It is my pleasure to award funds to a raft of projects today, from cutting-edge approaches to reducing crime through to digital projects that will help promote diversity in policing.
Funding announced yesterday included:
- £1.9 million worth of funding to the College of Policing to ensure police are comprehensively trained to support vulnerable people
- more than £5.9 million over 2 years to create to a joint forensics and biometrics programme - this national piece of work, led by Dorset Police, will reduce the time taken to provide DNA results to forces for investigations
- over £1 million across 3 years awarded to Nottinghamshire Police to set up a national business crime reduction hub that will address business crime in a more consistent way across the UK (this will be a new shared capability to coordinate activity in order to respond to the evolving crime threat to businesses)
- £2.3 million worth of funding to support a series of bids developed by the Police ICT Company and the Police Technology Council for the Police Reform Transformation Board that will benefit all forces once implemented (this includes cloud services to access local, regional and national information, and delivers a more efficient and effective service)
- £2 million to scope and design the delivery of a national policing data analytics lab that will transform the way forces collate and use data to help tackle complex policing problems, better protect the public and prevent crime
- £450,000 has been awarded to the Metropolitan Police and the College of Policing, working in collaboration with forces across the UK to design a fit-for-purpose recruitment assessment centre in order to help encourage a more diverse and dynamic workforce
You can read the full list of successful bids.
Minister for Policing and the Fire Service Brandon Lewis, added:
We want to finish the job of police reform and through schemes such as the police transformation fund it is clear that forces can collaborate on innovative solutions to complex policing problems.
Overall, the second round of bids from the police transformation fund awarded £40 million to projects including bids commissioned by the police-led Police Reform and Transformation Board. This includes recently announced funding to tackle modern slavery and expand the graduate recruitment scheme, Police Now. Early this summer, the Home Secretary awarded £23million to a range of different projects in the first round of bidding.
Set up as part of the spending review in 2015, the fund is designed to allocate extra investment to continue the job of reform and shape policing for the future. Police and crime commissioners and chief constable representatives sit on the board alongside senior leaders in policing, with the final decisions on bids made by the Home Secretary.