From the NPCC summit to the Policing Solutions Book: efficiency, security and outcomes you can prove

Last week, more than 1,000 people from policing, government and industry filled the Exhibition Centre in Liverpool for the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) Innovation and Digital Summit. The NPCC brings together the chief officers who lead the UK's police forces, and this is the biggest digital and technology event in the policing calendar. We were there to listen.

A few months earlier, we'd been asked a different question. Through our techUK membership, we were invited to respond to the 2026 Policing Solutions Book. The book brings together problem statements from policing, shared through techUK, the UK's technology trade association, so its members can propose practical solutions. Members could pick just three. We chose the ones we've spent more than a decade working on: sharing data across forces, building a digitally confident workforce, and making it simpler for the public to contact the police.

Sitting in Liverpool, it was striking how closely the conversation on stage matched what we'd written. Here's what we heard, what we said, and why we think the two point the same way.

What were policing's priorities at the NPCC Innovation and Digital Summit 2026?

At the NPCC Innovation and Digital Summit 2026, policing leaders kept coming back to two objectives: efficiency and productivity, and reducing security risk.

The first is operational efficiency and productivity. Not for its own sake, but to free people up to do actual policing, to save money, and to deliver outcomes the public can see. That's how public trust is earned. The government has made millions of pounds available to fund initiatives here, however this comes with the expectation that value can be measured. Its the proof of value that forces struggle with. Not just here but across all technology initiatives.

The second is a better understanding of security risk, and doing more to reduce it.

Running through both was observability. Policing needs to prove its outcomes. That means collecting data, but also making it usable, so it drives decisions and shows value.

One project came up as an example of what good looks like: Single Online Home. It's one of the most successful projects in policing, and one we know well. CDS has been its delivery partner since the start.

So what's standing in the way? Listening in Liverpool, we kept thinking back to the problem statements we'd answered for the Policing Solutions Book a few months earlier. Each one is a barrier to exactly these objectives.

What's stopping policing from meeting these objectives?

The three Policing Solutions Book problem statements CDS answered map directly onto what policing said it's trying to achieve:

• Sharing data across forces: When data can't move between forces, officers re-key records and duplicate work, and no one can see the full picture. That's an efficiency problem and an observability problem. It's also a risk problem, because every manual workaround is a weak point.
• Building a digitally confident workforce: Technology only frees people up if they're confident using it. Data only drives decisions if people can read it and trust it. Without that, investment doesn't turn into outcomes anyone can prove.
• Improving public contact: This is where public trust is won or lost. It's also where capacity leaks away: around 40% of 101 traffic is people chasing an update on something they've already reported.

They look like three separate challenges, but they share a root cause. Policing has 48 forces, and too often that means 48 ways of holding data, 48 approaches to training and dozens of routes for the public to get in touch. Every one of those duplicates cost, adds risk and makes outcomes harder to prove.

The instinct is to fix this with a national rebuild. We think that's the wrong starting point. A rebuild takes a decade, and policing can't wait that long.

CDS's answer to all three is the same: Although replacing your legacy systems is the end goal, as a first stepping stone and to prove value whilst still progressing, connect your systems first, rather than replacing them straightaway. Build a shared layer once, secure it properly, and let forces plug into it while they keep using the systems they already know. That's how you get national consistency without asking 48 organisations to start again.

It's also the answer to what we heard in Liverpool. A shared layer and set of standards through which technology vendors should operate frees people from duplicated work, cuts the cost of running the same thing 48 times, lowers risk by securing one set of connections properly, and produces data you can actually use to prove outcomes.

What does connect first, replace after, look like in practice?

CDS's responses to the Policing Solutions Book describe what's already working in policing, not a future state. Each piece maps to what policing told us it needs.

Freeing people to police: Single Online Home, delivered by CDS since it launched, started as one online form for Greater London. Today it reaches 94% of the population of England and Wales. AI-enabled triage resolves and redirects demand that doesn't need a person, so control room staff can focus on the calls that do. Reports flow into force systems once, whichever channel they came through, so no one re-keys them. At another police force, CDS is applying the same thinking to digital forensics, connecting a new case management system to other force systems so specialist teams keep working in the tools they know.

Earning public trust: Single Online Home has delivered 100% uptime for three years against a 99.9% target. Every report is captured to a standard that's legally admissible from the moment it's submitted. When someone reports a crime, it works, and it counts.

Reducing security risk: CDS runs two separate national platforms where security can't fail. Since 2013, ResilienceDirect has been the secure platform the UK's emergency services and armed forces use to share sensitive information. It proves that verified, fully logged access across organisational boundaries works under real pressure. On Single Online Home, CDS deployed Zero Trust access with our partner Cloudflare, securing a national public-facing service without forces having to rebuild what they already run.

Proving value: Observability is built in, not bolted on. Every Single Online Home report carries an audit log that can pass directly to the Crown Prosecution Service. CDS's proof of concept for the College of Policing shows structured data and policy guidance can be queried together in plain English, in real time, turning data into something people use to make decisions.

None of this needed a force to tear up what it already had.

How can policing reach national consistency without a rebuild?

Policing knows what it needs: more time for officers, less money spent on duplication, lower security risk, and outcomes it can prove to the public.

The technology to support that already exists, and much of it is already working inside policing today. The challenge now is joining it up.

We've published our full responses to all three problem statements, including how the components fit together and what it would take to put them in place across every force.

Read our responses to the Policing Solutions Book

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