National Police Service: Capability, consequence and reality of delivery

The National Police Service (NPS) is being created to deal with threats that are national in scale, cross-border in nature and increasingly digital by default. It will take responsibility for serious and organised crime, terrorism and other high-harm activity that cannot be tackled effectively within individual force boundaries.

This is not a routine reorganisation. It is an attempt to build a national operational capability able to collect intelligence, run complex investigations, coordinate tasking and deliver disruption against threats that move quickly, operate online and connect directly into international networks. Whether it succeeds will depend less on structure, and far more on how effectively intelligence, operations and technology are brought together in practice.

The White Paper is clear on intent. The NPS is designed to bring together existing national policing capabilities and apply them at scale. It will own intelligence development, investigation and disruption where national reach, specialist skill and coordination matter most.

In operational terms, this means taking responsibility for activity that requires specialist intelligence collection, sensitive capabilities, and coordinated tasking across force, regional and international boundaries. It is also intended to act as the UK’s principal policing interface with international partners, where continuity, trust and operational credibility are critical.

The stated aim is to lift responsibility for inherently national activity away from local forces, allowing them to focus on local delivery while the NPS concentrates on threats that demand scale, consistency and international reach. The measure of success is not better coordination. It is sustained national operational effect.

A threat landscape that demands intelligence-led capability

The mission profile matters. This is not simply “policing, but bigger”. The threats in scope range from transnational organised crime and illicit finance, through terrorism and hostile state activity, to fraud and cyber-enabled harm. It includes organised immigration crime, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and countering high-harm organised crime groups.

Much of this activity is intelligence-intensive. It requires patient collection, careful development at scale, and the ability to join fragments of information across time, platforms and jurisdictions. Increasingly, it also requires operating upstream and online.

Why consolidation could create real operational advantage

There is a strong case for optimism. Consolidating national capability can create real operational advantage if it concentrates specialist skills, improves tasking and coordination, and reduces duplication of effort across the system.

At its best, a national capability allows intelligence to be collected once, developed properly, and exploited across multiple operational lines. It allows sensitive capabilities to be held centrally, governed tightly, and deployed where they will have most impact. It also allows relationships with international partners to be sustained in a joined-up way across both Serious Organised Crime and National Security, in a way that mirrors the national policing agencies of our closest partners.

The risks that sit below the waterline

Experience suggests the hardest part of reform is rarely capability design. It is culture, interfaces and method.

Cultural integration of proud precursor organisations takes time. In my experience, it can be generational. Different parts of the system, such as counter terrorism and serious organised crime, have different risk tolerances. You cannot mandate trust through structure alone, particularly where sensitive intelligence relationships and high-risk operations are involved.

Method matters just as much. Assimilating existing organisations into a larger whole can easily introduce extra reporting layers, top-heavy governance and blurred accountability. In intelligence-led operational environments, that friction can undermine outcomes and wear down staff.

The interface with local policing is mission critical. The lessons of earlier national law enforcement reorganisations show that trust and effective two-way communication are hard won and easily lost. But so too is the interface with the UK intelligence community and, crucially, with international partners. The NPS will need to operate seamlessly across all three. Any barrier to intelligence flow, tasking or shared risk ownership at those boundaries will quietly erode effectiveness.

Technology debt and its operational consequences

This reform also inherits a complex patchwork of technology estates, some blighted by real technology debt, from its precursor structures. Some of that is unavoidable. But despite best efforts, and exacerbated by financial pressures, some has been normalised, much to the dissatisfaction of operational staff.

Technology debt is not just a technical issue. It shapes operational behaviour. It drives parallel systems, manual workarounds and informal information sharing that carry real risk but persist because people still need to deliver outcomes. In the domains the NPS will operate, that risk is acute.

The danger in large reform programmes is that the cost of successfully transitioning technology is underestimated, or that new platforms are layered on top of crumbling foundations rather than replacing them. When that happens, complexity increases and operational tempo is degraded in the long run.

This is a rare opportunity to reset, but only if legacy constraints are confronted early and honestly.

What the White Paper says about technology, and why it matters

Helpfully, the White Paper places national data and technology capability at the centre of the new model. It commits to shared platforms, common standards and the use of advanced analytics, including AI-enabled tools, to support policing in a threat environment that is now predominantly digital.

It also sets out the creation of Police.AI as a national centre for artificial intelligence in policing, intended to support investigations, productivity and consistency, before transitioning into the NPS.

The intent is sound. Technology is being treated as a core enabler of national capability, not an afterthought. The question now is how it is applied.

Technology as high-consequence operational capability

From an operational perspective, technology only adds value if it supports how intelligence and evidence are collected, developed, shared and exploited, and how it enables complex and high-risk operations. This is not about automation for its own sake, or the introduction of commoditised generative AI tools designed for mass-market use into intelligence and investigative workflows. It is about whether systems support operational judgement in high-consequence environments.

In intelligence and serious crime work, AI and advanced analytics must be responsible, provable and accurate. Outputs need provenance. Decisions need to be explainable. Human judgement must remain in the loop. Without those safeguards, technology introduces risk rather than reducing it.

If technology in the NPS is treated as a specialist operational capability, designed around intelligence workflows, sensitive handling, tasking, investigation and operations, it can become a genuine force multiplier. That requires clear ownership, early decisions and delivery run with real grip. It also requires discipline. I have seen how turning old systems off is often harder than buying new ones.

Leadership, tasking and the long game

Leading the NPS will be uniquely demanding. It requires credibility across policing, intelligence, technology and international partnership. It also requires a deep understanding of how tasking, coordination, operations and risk ownership work in practice across the breadth of the new remit. That combination is rare.

More broadly, this is a long-term programme. Consolidating national capability, unwinding legacy constraints and building trust across organisations will take years. The real test will be whether the system stays focused on operational effect rather than process.

A moment worth getting right

This is a moment of genuine possibility. The ambition is credible, but challenging. The threat landscape demands national capability.

Whether the NPS succeeds will depend on whether intelligence, operations and technology are brought together in a way that accelerates action rather than simply manages it at a bigger scale. That work is not glamorous, but it is decisive.

Matt Horne is Director of Intelligence and Investigations at Clue Software. He is a former senior UK law enforcement officer with nearly three decades of experience across policing and intelligence-led national operations. His career spans local policing, the National Crime Squad, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the National Crime Agency (NCA), giving him first-hand experience of two major national reorganisations and how large-scale reform works in practice. At the NCA, he held senior operational leadership roles focused on serious and organised crime, cyber-enabled offending and internationally networked threats. He was Gold Commander for Operation Venetic, the UK’s response to the EncroChat takedown and one of the most significant operations ever conducted against organised crime, later featured in Channel 4’s Operation Dark Phone. He has also operated as a Strategic Firearms Commander, leading high-risk operations where intelligence quality, judgment under pressure and operational coordination were critical. He also chairs techUK’s National Security Committee, bringing together senior leaders from industry, government and the security community.