Forums Forums National News Police given hand-held computers

Details of a £50m scheme to provide police forces with 10,000 hand-held computers have been unveiled.

Some 27 forces in England and Scotland will benefit from the devices, which Gordon Brown last year said would cut paperwork by 99 minutes per shift.

Police Minister Tony McNulty said the move would make crime fighting more effective and save officers time.

However, the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said there were not enough devices to meet demand.

Mr McNulty said of the initiative: "It is just one of a range of improvements we are delivering to cut unnecessary bureaucracy, exploit new technologies and enable police officers to spend more time on frontline policing."

Ailsa Beaton from Acpo said demand from forces showed the "appetite within the police service for mobile communications in support of frontline officers".

"Demand has far outstripped supply and consequently some forces were disappointed," she said.

Mr McNulty said he understood Acpo's concern, but added: "It's a start and we need to learn and grow about how to use these devices as we roll [them] out."

Database access

Uses for the computers will include confirming identity, on-the-spot forms such as stop and search, and scanning fingerprints.

The forces which made successful bids were:

* Association of Police Forces in Scotland (Strathclyde, Tayside, Northern, Lothian and Borders, Grampian, Fife, Dumfries and Galloway, Central Scotland)
* Bedfordshire
* British Transport Police
* Cambridgeshire
* Cheshire
* East Midlands collaboration (Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire)
* Essex
* Hertfordshire
* Kent
* Lancashire
* Metropolitan Police
* Staffordshire
* Thames Valley
* Yorkshire collaboration (Humberside, North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire)

50 million quid for 10,000 handhelds seems a bit excessive, especially if demand "has far outstripped supply" - you only have to write the software once. Bet you this was "outsourced" to one of HMG's pet providers (EDS, anyone?) who are making a small fortune out of it all.

Don't you think it would have been easy to get a fairly accurate picture of the demand before starting the project - I mean, how many police forces *are* there in the country?


Brian.