Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps are being taken to improve the effectiveness of crime reporting apps and online reporting systems.

Since 2016, the Home Office has invested over £170m in improving and modernising contact channels between the public and local police forces. Online crime reporting is available for all forces across England and Wales either via local force websites or the Police.UK mobile phone application. The department works closely with policing to continuously monitor and update these systems, recent examples include specific reporting routes for sexual assaults, spiking and knife crime.

The department is committed to building on these foundations by investing in new, innovative capabilities to improve the public’s experience when reporting crimes or incidents and to support forces in managing contact demand with greater efficiency. These capabilities are currently being piloted in selected local forces and include a secure, two way Portal where victims can communicate with the officer in command of their investigation; video call response for victims of non-emergency domestic abuse; and integrating artificial intelligence into force control rooms to support call handlers in administrative tasks and to quickly route callers and those contacting the police online to the support that they require. Subject to the successful pilots and funding, we plan to rollout these capabilities to all forces over the coming years.