When senior police chiefs in England and Wales say it’s possible to free up 41,000 hours of police time every day to focus on neighbourhood policing and crime prevention, people listen.
That’s exactly what happened recently when the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) made the case to the UK government to invest £220 million annually in technology over the next three years. It’s a significant ask, especially when government budgets are under pressure—but the potential return is enormous.
Chief Constable Rob Carden, NPCC Lead for Digital, Data, and Technology, explained: “Over the last decade, digital technology, data, and analytics have become integral to policing’s ability to deliver an effective and efficient service. Policing will spend nearly £2 billion on it in the next financial year.”
He added: “Policing must change the way we approach data, digital, and technology to ensure we invest in solutions that can be used nationally across all forces.”
In making the case for additional funding, the NPCC highlighted a range of technology investment recommendations, including a new national digital forensics platform, the creation of a national Data and Analytics Office, and funding for the Aviation Pathway Programme. Forces also raised some of their key priorities during discussions with the Council. Specifically, they want technology that:
- Lets the public contact the police in ways that suit them, including AI-powered assistance and online case tracking, which can significantly reduce wait times for 101 or 999 calls.
- Uses Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to cut administrative burden. In three regions where RPA was used to automate 150 administrative and crime management processes, it delivered an ROI of £8 in time-savings for every £1 spent.
- Automates evidence management processes, including video and text redaction, translation, summarisation, and deepfake detection. Trials suggest these tools offer massive time efficiencies, with text redaction alone projected to save 1 million hours of workforce time across all UK forces annually, equating to £16 million in cost savings.
Many of these technologies are already available on the market. This means that beyond funding, the only challenge is to convince forces to adopt innovations that have already been tried, tested, and proven in both public and private sectors. And, that won’t be hard or risky.
Take for example, the ability to leverage AI to produce call summaries. This technology has been successfully used in commercial contact centers, healthcare, financial services, and government services. For emergency services, the ability to transcribe and summarise a call within seconds of it ending could be game-changing, resulting in:
- Faster, more accurate dispatch support
- Reduced call-taker workload and stress
- Improved incident handoff
- Clear, concise, easily produced post-incident documentation
- Enhanced training and quality assurance
In fact, AI has the potential to make many areas of policing vastly more efficient, freeing officers from routine administrative tasks so they can spend more time policing communities. This aligns with current government priorities and goals.
When the Labour Party announced its plan for policing and criminal justice in June 2024, it stated: “Labour’s mission in government is to
take back our streets, with ambitious aims to halve serious violence, tackle the scourge of violence against women and girls, and rebuild public confidence in policing by getting police back on the beat.”
Technology has the power to help forces achieve exactly that.
And while securing £220 million for these technology initiatives is no small feat, it’s a fraction of the £18.6 billion in annual funding allocated to forces across England and Wales annually. Even more importantly, the 15 million hours projected to be saved each year would give police more time to do what they’re hired to do in the first place — uphold the law, prevent crime, and keep people safe.
