Partnership between Home Office and private sector to replace NPIA

Home Secretary says new body will end 'confused, fragmented and expensive' way in which police forces use computers

Home Secretary Theresa May has announced plans for a new police-led, part-privatised company to take over many of the functions of the doomed National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).

Details of her proposal, to be up and running by next spring, emerged in the wake of the publication of the NPIA's annual report complaining of "uncertainty as to the nature and timing of changes that affect the NPIA's future".

May announced the creation of the company to reform the "confused, fragmented and expensive" way in which forces use computer systems, and to reduce their £1.2bn annual IT bill, at a conference of police chiefs at Harrogate.

She came under attack herself from chief constables angered by her own criticism of constabularies for continuing to strive to meet targets she has abolished and require the collection of data she no longer seeks.

May complained the current IT set-up is "broken", with 5,000 staff working on 2,000 different computer systems in 100 separate datacentres, adding: "This would simply never happen in the commercial world."

She said one supplier had 1,500 different contracts with 43 separate forces in England and Wales, with officers complaining about systems that require repetitive keying of the same information, are incompatible with that of neighbouring forces and even with individual forces' own systems.

May said her intention is not to create a substitute for the NPIA but something different that would free chief constables from having to become involved in detailed IT matters, while giving them improved systems and providing better value for money.

She added: "I want you to own the solution. I want you to decide what you need."

The company will be a partnership between the Home Office and the private sector but under the control of chief constables, she said.

NPIA chief constable Nick Gargan wrote in vague terms in the agency's report of the intention to phase the agency out and transfer the majority of its functions "as part of the work towards a new policing landscape" without giving any details.

He hailed as achievements the successful delivery of the national street-level crime map and the next stage of implementing the National Police Database, with better provision for sharing intelligence and information between forces, and a new national arrangement with suppliers to help forces switch from audio cassettes to the digital recording and storage of police interview records.

The report said May had told the agency she expects the bulk of the transfer of functions to be completed in 2012 but added: "The destinations for most functions have yet to be decided."

It indicated legislation may be needed to establish successor bodies and complete the wind-up