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In bid to reform "fragmented and expensive" police IT, Home Secretary Theresa May announces that a police-led IT company will be set up next year

A police-owned company will be set up to reform the forces' IT systems, the Home Secretary Theresa May has said.

In a speech to police officers in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, May described the way the police currently manages IT as "confused, fragmented and expensive".

"Good ICT systems and services are vital for modern policing," May said. "ICT supports the police on the front line, through items like portable radios and PDAs."

She went on to say that the police currently spend "some £1.2 billion per year on ICT".

"That is a very large sum. I wouldn’t be concerned about the size of that sum if I were convinced that it represented good value for money.  But it does not," May said.

She went on to describe the failings of the current approach, calling it "broken", with 5,000 staff working on more than 2,000 different systems across 100 data centres. "One supplier now has over 1,500 contracts across all the forces. This would simply never happen in the commercial world," May said.

The Home Secretary said that the new ICT system would be police led, as they know better than government and civil servants what ICT systems are required to fight crime.

May said that the new company would be set up in the first half of 2012. "The new company must exploit the purchasing power of the police service as a whole. It can do this by aggregating the requirements of as many forces as possible, preferably all 43 forces," she said.