Centre for Police Productivity

The Centre for Police Productivity is a national hub for supporting forces to implement new approaches and technologies to improve productivity. 

The centre supports forces to use data, innovation and technology to accelerate and automate policing activity. This frees up police officer and staff hours for policing activity that keeps our neighbourhoods safe.

How the centre works

The Centre for Police Productivity uses tools to spot emerging crime trends and tactics to drive efficiency. 

It assists police forces with:

• practical advice
• adopting new technologies and approaches
• implementing innovations into policing practices

Key areas of work

The Centre for Police Productivity focuses on four key areas of work.

1. Insight

Understanding where to focus improvement efforts is crucial. We've developed a prototype analytical and insights tool to help forces identify the most effective approaches for boosting productivity and performance.

This tool models how different factors like officer numbers, response methods, or specialist teams affect real outcomes such as response times and crime detection rates.

2. Innovate 

Identifying and prioritising high-potential policing innovations can deliver rapid productivity gains. We've mapped over 900 productivity innovations from across UK policing, including our practice bank, and are working with policing stakeholders to assess which ones are ready for wider rollout.

Our ‘Productivity and What Works board’ (a panel of sector leaders) selects the most promising innovations for implementation support.

3. Implement  

Implementation is designed to support the innovations selected by the Board. We provide support to help promising innovations overcome the barriers that might slow or prevent wider adoption. 

Innovations that we are implementing include:

• Enhanced video response
• Artifical intelligence
• Automated redaction
• Right Care Right Person

Enhanced video response

We've partnered with Dorset Police to help other forces trial their successful enhanced video response (EVR) model for non-urgent calls. This means officers can respond to some incidents via video call rather than attending in person. We're also exploring aligning EVR with rapid video response (RVR) to domestic abuse.

• Go to enhanced video response smarter practice
• Go to enhanced video response going equipped article

Artificial intelligence

We're helping forces build AI capability, while identifying applications that could deliver real operational benefits. This includes: 

• working closely with the NPCC AI Board and Home Office to evaluate the most promising operational applications
• providing technical guidance through an AI evaluation advice and review panel
• adding guidance on building AI-enabled tools and systems
• a national AI peer network for collaborative learning

Automated redaction

Removing sensitive material for disclosure is one of policing's most time-consuming tasks. Automated redaction technology can transform this process, freeing up thousands of officer and staff hours with greater speed and accuracy.

We support forces adopting automated redaction as standard practice through: 

• a national redaction peer network
• providing one-to-one implementation support
• working with the Home Office to roll out audio-visual and multimedia redaction to early adopter forces 

Right Care Right Person

The Centre has also taken over the national coordinaton of Right Care Right Person, which is an initiative involving the police working with partner agencies to identify the most appropriate agency to provide vulnerable people with the care and support they need.

4. Impact

Having the tools and guidance to measure, track and communicate the benefits of innovation is essential for securing investment and funding for policing. We've developed step-by-step guidance to help forces measure and communicate innovation benefits, making it easier to evidence their value.

Contact us

To find out more about the Centre for Police Productivity or to get involved, email productivity@college.police.uk