Cambridgeshire Constabulary

CAMBRIDGESHIRE Police has teamed up with six other constabulary to create a ‘one-stop’ £32 million IT system so that resources and information can be shared across the forces.

It is hoped the effective sharing of information on suspects and offenders will prevent future atrocities such as Cambridgeshire’s Soham murders in 2002 where intelligence on Ian Huntley, the killer of friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, could have been more readily available to individual forces.

A national framework agreement has been signed for the initiative with the seven ‘early adopters’ of the IT project - Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Norfolk and Suffolk - paying a combined total of £32 million towards IT system.

Named Project Athena, it is the largest-ever collaborative police IT project to be delivered by Northgate Public Services.

It is hoped that the cost to the seven constabularies will drop as more forces come on board.

Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police Simon Parr said until now police forces have largely managed data on offenders suspects, victims and incidents on different systems at a local level.

He said: “The Athena Project is an opportunity for the force to streamline processes and provide greater support to fighting crime.

“By collaborating on the system we can reduce costs and increases each forces capability and capacity to quickly generate information about offenders.

“IT solutions like this ultimately save officers time which means we can direct more resources to operational policing.”

Project Athena will be implemented towards the end of 2012 with Essex Police being the first to go online.

David Craig, branch secretary for Cambridgeshire Constabulary police staffing branch for Unison, said: “There are lots of different forces and lots of IT systems stopping individual forces doing their jobs properly.

“This money was put towards the development of Project Athena some years ago now and it is the best use of money I have seen.”