A replacement for the creaking police national computer has been delayed by five years, with costs soaring to £1.1 billion, amid warnings that there is a “risk” of relying on existing technology.
A report revealed that the new national law enforcement database was not expected to be available until at least 2025-26 and that its cost had increased by 68 per cent. It said this compounded the Home Office’s “miserable record of exorbitantly expensive digital programmes that fail to deliver”.
It meant that police forces must continue to rely on the computer, a 47-year-old system that stores all criminal records information and was used 133 million times in 2019-20.
The report by parliament’s public accounts committee warned that the technology was so old that it was hard to find people who still understood it.
This dire prognosis comes after a data loss this year, in which 400,000 fingerprint, DNA, arrest and offence records were accidentally deleted from the computer and linked systems. The data was later restored. Even before that, senior police had previously warned they had “lost confidence” in the ability of the Home Office to deliver big IT projects.
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Their concerns include the failure to provide a telecommunications network, a project that has an overspend of more than £3.7 billion and is not likely to be operational until 2023, a delay of more than three years.
Dame Meg Hillier, the committee’s chairwoman, said: “The Home Office has a number of large, complex, costly digital and technology projects to deliver. All are critical to security and yet we see perpetual failure and an inability to learn lessons on basic project management. It is hard to see what steps the Home Office is taking to resolve these huge problems.
“Personal and national security are arguably the most fundamental duties of a government to its citizens. And the Home Office is falling down on these major projects. Our frontline police rely on these systems to do their job. The Home Office must be clear about the route ahead or confidence of the UK’s police forces in the Home Office will sink even lower.”
The planned modernisation programme also included plans to upgrade or replace the police national database, which holds millions of pieces of intelligence, but the committee was “unclear when this will happen and at what cost”.
It said that the Home Office created a programme designed to replace two vital systems “without fully understanding the police’s requirements or how these systems worked”.
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Earlier this year Whitehall’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, warned that the delays could be putting the safety of the public at risk.
Today’s report said the Home Office had “wasted both vital time and scarce funding without making any meaningful progress”.
The Home Office said: “The law enforcement data service will replace the police national computer and deliver a modern IT system.
“The new technology has already helped police to successfully identify people pulled over at the roadside more quickly, for example, saving officers over 42,500 hours to date.
“The programme is now on a stronger footing following a fundamental reset and we are working collaboratively with policing partners to deliver it in a phased approach.”
