Partnership Intelligence Portal (PIP)

The aim for the Partnership Intelligence Portal (PIP) is to attain more community intelligence.

The intended outcome is to create an increase in intelligence reports generated from community safety partners.

In Nottinghamshire police, officers can submit innovative ideas which chief officers will review for consideration of implementation. Previously, an officer had put forward the idea of a partnership intelligence portal which focused on looking at high-risk cases, for example knife crime and homicide. The concept was to have one portal which external partners could submit to, and this would feed into the internal force crime intelligence system.

The force IT team put out a request to other forces to see if anything similar had been implemented. West Yorkshire Police responded with their intelligence portal, which had been implemented for partners to share intelligence directly with the force. West Yorkshire Police expanded the requirements of their portal beyond high-risk crime related intelligence. After speaking with local neighbourhood officers, they acknowledged there is bountiful knowledge and intelligence amongst neighbourhood related crime which can be missed.

After liaising with West Yorkshire Police to understand what was required to make the portal viable, Nottinghamshire Police decided to pursue this concept within their own force, and it was accepted by chief officers as a project. The partnership portal was created in house at a minimal cost. 

The portal used by West Yorkshire allows all external partners to register and submit intelligence (approximately 5,000). In Nottinghamshire, the portal was built to focus on critical areas to engage pockets of partners where historically there has been less engagement.

The portal was set up and an interactive video was created explaining how to use the portal, how to submit intelligence and what is expected from the force. Having a video training tool allows partners to refer back to the guidance whenever required.

Partners can access the portal through a link, where they will register themselves as a partner agency and the force will approve them as a member. Neighbourhood officers are asked to actively encourage partners in the hard-to-reach sectors and areas to register to the portal and submit intelligence.

Now, all probation related intelligence comes through the partnership intelligence portal system, as well as child criminal exploitation intelligence which is submitted by the Children’s Society. Once uploaded, the intelligence is automatically added to the force internal intelligence system.

The portal has resulted in increased community intelligence which can be acted upon by the police. Since implementation, 235 intelligence reports have been submitted to the portal by partners.  

To date (August 2025), there are 37 different organisations with 208 people registered.

The PIP has been seen as a great initiative internally and externally. External partners have reported that they were often unaware of how to report intelligence to the police prior to the implementation of the PIP.

Nottinghamshire Police use Niche as their record management system. Forces who also use Niche should be able to auto-populate intelligence submissions straight onto the system which saves a lot of time. This may also work for alternative police record management systems. 

A training video was created by the force which was received well by partners. This also allows partners to access guidance of how to input the intelligence reports whenever they may need a refresh. 

The only barrier faced was that some partners wished to submit intelligence and then get results back. However, this is not the purpose of the portal.

The profile of the PIP needs to be continually promoted to external partners to ensure it is utilised fully. Champions were attained early in the process whose role it is to increase the profile of the portal.