Beat bobbies need more cash for smartphones

Despite calls for more money to give all frontline police officers access to PDAs and help boost the time bobbies spend on the beat, not all officers that have tested the technology claim are convinced.

In July, the Home Office announced an extra £25m to put thousands more mobile devices in the hands of police, topping up a a £50m spend for police PDAs announced back in May.

However, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee has called for even more cash to be made available to mobilise every front line bobby.

In a report into government plans to update policing practices for the modern era, Policing in the 21st Century, the Committee states: "Personal digital assistants can significantly increase the amount of time that police officers spend on visible patrol and dealing with incidents outside the station, and reduce the time they spend on paperwork."

"We welcome the Home Secretary's recent grant of £50m to fund PDAs in 19 English forces and her promises of a further £25m but recognise that many forces were disappointed not to win funding bids. We recommend that sufficient funding is made available as soon as possible to enable all frontline officers to have access to a PDA," the report adds.

Inspector Jim Hitch, of Bedfordshire Police, told the committee after his force deployed PDAs the amount of time officers spent in the station dropped from almost half (46 per cent) to just over a third (36 per cent) - where it has remained. Hitch added visible patrol time went up from 14 per cent to 19 per cent, while time spent by officers dealing with incidents rose from 19 per cent to 26 per cent.

However some PDA users claimed the technology made them less efficient, not more.

Seventy per cent of the 349 officers surveyed by the Scottish Police Federation said the PDAs they trialled had made them less efficient, while around a quarter said there was 'no change'. Only a small percentage - less than 10 per cent - said handheld devices made them more efficient. The committee also heard software problems with the Scottish trial had meant electronic notes were often corrupted, forcing officers to spend time re-entering evidence back at the station.

Another potential problem associated with PDA use was around police officers' perceptions of their personal security. Seventy-five per cent of the Scottish officers surveyed said they felt less safe using PDAs, rather than paper notebooks, because of the concentration required to operate them during potentially confrontational situations. However the report noted Staffordshire Police recommend officers resort to communicating by radio rather than through the PDA if they suspect an offender may become violent.

According to the committee, 19 police forces in England and eight in Scotland have won bids for 10,000 mobile data devices to be delivered between September 2008 and February 2009. The total cost to a force of equipping a police officer with mobile IT is estimated to be between £3,000 and £6,500 per officer over five years.

Figures from Thames Valley, West Yorkshire and Bedfordshire forces put the average cost - for training, infrastructure and the device itself - at 80p to £1 per officer per day.

The committee took evidence from BlackBerry maker RIM, which estimates it would cost £50m to purchase and provide BlackBerry devices for all forces.

RIM has currently deployed 14,000 devices across 28 UK forces - or around three-quarter of all devices deployed in the country - according to the committee.

In a previous report - on police funding - the committee notes it criticised "insufficient progress" on introducing police PDAs and recommended Chief Constables ensure they are introduced in all forces "as a matter of urgency". However, the report notes, this has not yet been achieved.