What we're seeing in policing

Forty-three forces. Around £590 million spent annually just maintaining legacy systems before a single new capability is funded.² Individual forces are innovating — but as HMICFRS noted in their 2024/25 State of Policing report, impressive innovations have been too slow to spread across the policing system.³ The National Policing Digital Strategy 2025 to 2030, published May 2025, sets out to fix that — mandating shared standards and faster scaling of what works locally.⁴

SMEs are doing some of the most significant work in this space. Chorus Intelligence is helping forces map organised crime networks in hours rather than weeks — and secured an attempted murder conviction for Thames Valley through telematics analysis. GoodSAM is reducing unnecessary officer deployments by 20% in Cambridgeshire by giving control rooms eyes on a scene before anyone is dispatched. Forensic Analytics cut telecoms processing time by 84% in Gloucestershire. Detego is triaging seized devices in under 20 minutes in Staffordshire. West Yorkshire's Post Call Analysis pilot — an SME-built tool delivered through the NPCC Digital Public Contact framework — identified 21% more hidden vulnerability indicators than standard manual recording. Research suggests 50 to 60% of meaningful call detail is currently lost when forces rely on operator notes alone. That is the gap these tools are closing.

The largest outcomes are not always coming from the largest vendors.