The IMPACT programme (Information, management, analysis, coordination, and tasking) was initiated following the inquiry by the former Whitehall Permanent Secretary Sir Michael Bichard, after the murders of Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 and the failures it highlighted in police information sharing and intelligence. The Bichard report called for a central police intelligence system as a ‘national priority’. The IMPACT programme, sponsored by both the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers, will deliver this capability through improved operational capability for the police service and other UK law enforcement agencies with better informed operational decision making. The aim of the Programme is ‘to deny criminals the sanctuary of organisational and system boundaries’.


IMPACT is not a programme designed to deliver a single IT solution to all police forces, its focus is a range of operational capabilities that utilise new technology. The Programme also encompasses a number of other work streams, including the modernisation of the Police National Computer and providing, in collaboration with the Criminal Records Bureau, the police local exchange system to support CRB vetting procedures.

Designing the eventual solution has required a sophisticated blend of information system strategy and business and cultural change. The technical and business changes have all been underpinned by the need to develop a combination of primary legislation and codes of practice for the management of police information. In addition to leading the work on Programme development and design, Mott

Mott MacDonald’s consultants have applied their signature methodology of information strategy created from clearly defined business aims and objectives coupled with practical user requirements. This has resulted in a strategy and a programme that will revolutionise policing in the UK and create a safer society for all.