Keeping the lights on takes up nearly all police IT spending in England and Wales
Summary
A National Audit Office (NAO) report finds that police forces in England and Wales spend about 97% of their roughly £2bn annual technology budget on maintaining legacy systems. Treasury funding intended to accelerate tech upgrades — £234m over four years, including £55.5m in 2024–25 — has been cut from 2025–26, stalling projects for AI, live facial recognition, drones, automated public contact and knife-detection tech.
The NAO highlights fragmented funding, inconsistent prioritisation across forces, poor data quality, recruitment and retention issues for digital staff, and the burden of legacy systems as key barriers to national-scale digital transformation in policing. The Police National Database migration was rated a “Red” risk amid delays moving off an old Oracle platform.
Key Points
- Police forces spend about £2bn a year on technology, with ~97% used for legacy maintenance.
- His Majesty’s Treasury allocated £234m over four years for tech investment but removed the funding from 2025–26 onward.
- Cuts and reprioritisation at the Home Office mean projects such as live facial recognition and knife detection have reduced or no allocated funding.
- Fragmented funding streams and the lack of a single national policing “voice” hinder long-term planning and rollout of new tech.
- Skills shortages, poor data quality and constrained finances prevent forces from adopting AI and other productivity-improving technologies at scale.
- Critical programmes like the Police National Database migration are delayed and rated high risk, signalling operational impact from technological debt.
Why should I read this?
Short version: the cops’ tech cash is tied up in keeping old kit running, so shiny AI and modern systems aren’t happening anytime soon. If you care about public-sector digital transformation, procurement headaches or how funding choices ripple into operational risk, this NAO report explains why policing tech is stuck on the back foot—and which programmes are most at risk.