More delays arrest police intelligence sharing plan

One data sharing project cancelled, another slips even further behind schedule

The firearm certificate register has missed another key deadline

Plans for a national police intelligence scheme are being plagued by further problems, with the scrapping of one key project and yet more delays to another.

The Cross Regional Information Sharing Project (Crisp) – an interim stage of the Impact programme created following the Bichard Inquiry into the Soham murders – is being cancelled, Home Office minister Tony McNulty told Parliament on Tuesday.

And 10 years after it became a legal requirement, the national firearm certificate register has missed another key deadline and will now not be fully operational until the end of August.

The creation of a national database of certificate holders linked to the Police National Computer (PNC) was passed into law in 1997, following the 1996 Dunblane massacre, but its development has been beset with difficulties.

Now the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which runs the project, says problems with data cleansing within individual forces mean the National Firearms Licensing Management System (NFLMS) will not meet its most recently revised deadline of linking with the PNC by June.

‘Forces that have only recently installed the system will not have time to cleanse their data,’ said an NPIA spokeswoman.

But some forces are still struggling to get the system operational. The NPIA says 90 per cent of forces are successfully running NFLMS, but others have local technology problems.

South Wales Police has sent a letter to firearm certificate holders informing them that ‘administrative difficulties’ are causing delays in issuing certificates.

The letter says: ‘Applications received and accepted before the expiry date will deem that you remain the holder of a certificate even though administrative difficulties may delay sending a new certificate to you.’

Labour peer Lord Corbett of Castle Vale is calling for the National Audit Office to hold an inquiry into the project.

‘This is a sad saga of technical incompetence alongside what seems to be an orchestrated attempt to ensure that the NFLMS is never properly operational,’ he said.

The NFLMS is part of the Impact national information sharing programme, along with seven other systems including crime, child abuse and domestic violence.

Crisp is an interim step to the capability described by Sir Michael Bichard as ‘a national priority’ in June 2004.

Its demise will delay forces’ access to intelligence held by colleagues in other areas until Impact’s Police National Database starts in 2010.