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By Andy McCue, 20 April 2006 16:00

NEWS

The Home Office has finally approved a £367m plan to develop a national police intelligence system following the recommendation made almost two years ago by the Bichard Report into the Soham murder investigation.

The Impact intelligence system will set up a new national police database, standardise a national data format for forces, link information held on local and national systems and replace the existing Police National Computer (PNC) by 2010.

The Bichard Report highlighted police intelligence failings because locally collected information is not shared between forces, particularly details held by a local force for intelligence purposes even though the person may not have been prosecuted.

The new Impact system will provide investigating officers with a single point of access to intelligence data held by forces anywhere in England and Wales.

Delays in developing and approving the business case for Impact have led to interim intelligence sharing measures being set up such as the Impact Nominal Index, which allows police officers to check whether any other forces hold any information on a person they are investigating.

As revealed by silicon.com last month, the Criminal Justice IT (CJIT) organisation will join the Home Office's Impact delivery team with a view to some of the CJIT systems and infrastructure being used as a foundation for the national police intelligence system.

The Police Information Technology Organisation will be responsible for the continuing development of the interim Impact systems and will transfer the PNC onto new hardware to keep it running until the new national police database is in place.

Home Office minister Hazel Blears said in a statement: "The programme will target offenders operating across force boundaries and help police more effectively prevent and detect crime, and bring more offenders to justice, contributing to our aims of building safer communities and greater public confidence."