Automatic Number Plate Recognition

(asked on 2nd November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much additional funding will be allocated in the next Spending Review to the National Automatic Number Plate Recognition Service (NAS); how much overspend has occurred in the programme to date; how many missed deadlines have occurred in the programme to date; what plans she has to ensure public confidence in the delivery of the NAS; and what recent assessment she has made of the effect of that performance on the operation of the police services.


Answered by
Kit Malthouse Portrait
Kit Malthouse
This question was answered on 2nd December 2020

The National Automatic Number Plate Recognition Service (NAS) is a national system replacing the current National ANPR Data Centre (NADC), used by Police Forces to interrogate ANPR data.

The department has submitted a bid to HMT as part of the spending review process and we are in active discussions about the amount of money that we should be investing in the National ANPR Service (NAS), both centrally and out to individual forces. We have shared with the Treasury the full cost of NAS and its potential replacement for the forthcoming year and for subsequent years, including what will flow centrally and what will flow through individual forces. We expect a decision on the funding settlement from HMT this month.

Programme costs are separated into 3 categories; first the cost of building and rolling out the NAS infrastructure, software and any related changes to the force systems; second costs for the programme team and; third the cost to maintain NAS system and its legacy system, National ANPR data centre (NADC). The costs for delivering the new NAS system is by far the most significant and, subject to commercial negotiation, the annual cost of NAS service following the commercial negotiations is likely to amount to c. £15 million per year and takes into account the costs of keeping legacy systems in place until the Minimal viable product (MVP) is delivered in Spring 2021 and programme costs. The negotiation has achieved future years reduction on service costs which benefit policing long term.

The current programme overspend is approximately £6.9m for this financial year and considers the costs of delivering the MVP and any programme costs. The additional in year costs are to focus on delivering the critical MVP, but an overall reduction in service costs has been achieved over the lifetime of the new contract presently being negotiated.

The programme set itself an original target of transitioning all users from the current NADC system and legacy local systems by Autumn 2020. We are now targeting a MVP in Spring 2021 with the legacy NADC system being retired in Spring 2022 once all forces have been transitioned across to NAS. Since the award of the G-Cloud contact in 2018 to the current delivery partner there have been 3 key releases to date. The current release is forecast to be 7 months later than originally planned.

Both during and since the programme reset in May 2016, where a review of the critical objectives of the programme that were set April 2015, it has undergone extensive assurance both internally within the department and externally through Cabinet Office, GDS and HMT.

The programme continues to build confidence in the delivery of the NAS through regular engagement with our Programme User Group and it’s subgroups, as well as, weekly update meetings with the NPCC ANPR Portfolio Change Lead. Programme teams also manage regular contact with forces and LEAS to provide updates in addition to weekly briefing notes to provide updates and progress. The SRO is in discussion with the ANPR Portfolio Lead about establishing a group of senior police representatives to manage the NAS roadmap into the future.

The Department remains committed to completing the delivery of NAS, realising the benefits of NAS and delivering police effectiveness and operational efficiency savings. These include cashable reduction in running costs through the decommissioning of legacy systems and a wide range of broader benefits such as reducing the time to identify a vehicles of interest, public time savings, improved searches and better intelligence sharing.

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