WIREDGOV

This piece examines how technology is shaping a new era of policing reform, highlighting the role of digital tools in modernising capability and delivery. It sets out the opportunities and considerations for using technology to support effective, accountable policing.

Policing in England and Wales is undergoing its most significant reform in almost 200 years. The Government has unveiled its new white paper From Local to National: A New Model for Policing, which sets out a sweeping transformation designed to rebuild trust, modernise police forces, and equip officers for a world where crime is evolving at unprecedented speed.

At its core, the message is simple: local policing should protect communities, and national policing should protect the country. These changes aim to close the gap between what the public needs and what policing currently delivers.

The white paper is intended to address 4 key areas: 

1. Better policing for local communities

The plan aims to strengthen local policing by deploying 13,000 additional neighbourhood officers, cutting bureaucracy, and modernising outdated laws. AI tools will be introduced to automate manual tasks, allowing police officers to focus on local issues.

Governance will change by replacing Police and Crime Commissioners by 2028 with elected mayors or local Policing and Crime Boards, aligning policing more closely with local government for better coordination and service.

2. A stronger policing system and the creation of a National Policing Service

The proposals recommend replacing the 43-force model with fewer, more efficient forces and Local Policing Areas (LPA) to ensure consistent service. This change is intended to allocate more resources to frontline policing, while keeping local operations responsive to community needs and defining performance targets for responding to calls for service. The details of the ‘end state’ of force reorganisation will not be reported until the summer of 2026 and an inevitable amount of bid and counter bid for structure may be anticipated.

A new National Police Service (NPS) would bring together bodies such as the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC), the College of Policing, the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) to provide unified strategic leadership and stronger national standards, particularly in technology, data, training and professional practice. The interdependencies of the forthcoming Fraud Strategy and how the organisation of policing response to economic crime, may be better defined after publication of that strategy.

A significant amount of detail will need to be forthcoming around the actual structure and leadership of the National Policing Service as its headline functionality suggests pulling together already complex organisations which have varying degrees of dependency with existing police forces and ROCU (Regional Organised Crime Unit).

The NPS would centralise procurement of technology and equipment, accelerate the development and rollout of new tech tools, deliver a national forensics service, and enhance intelligence and technology‑sharing to better combat terrorism and organised crime. Intentions to reduce bureaucracy and ‘buy once’ for an entire service as opposed to the current 43-force market represents both an opportunity but a situation where previously acknowledged issues of vendor lock in and SME exclusion will need to be considered.

Previous announcements with references of a National Centre of Policing or NCOP seem to have been dropped and the responsibilities for procurement now lying within the broad powers of the NPS. A review of police structures and funding would support the transition to this more modern, tech‑enabled policing system.

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