Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that the police and other emergency services will use the Emergency Services Network once it has been delivered.

We have worked collaboratively with the police and other emergency services to establish a set of service acceptance criteria that once demonstrated will show that ESN meets their needs.

We have a plan of tests and trials involving organisations from across all emergency services that will build confidence that ESN is fit for them to use. We have agreed a high-level deployment plan with the police and other emergency services that sets out how they will deploy ESN across the UK once the point of service acceptance has been reached.

The police have a team of officers seconded onto the ESN programme, led by a serving Deputy Chief Constable (DCC) seconded from their home police force. This team provides a conduit between the programme team and the policing community. The programme attends monthly police governance meetings to provide updates on progress and the DCC policing team lead is a member of the key programme governance fora.

The programme provides written monthly updates on programme progress which are distributed across the policing community. A similar model is in place for the other emergency services.