Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding her Department plans to allocate to the College of Policing for (a) digital media investigators and (b) the mainstreaming cyber-crime training in each of the next three years.

The Home Office provides the College of Policing with annual funding through grant in aid, with some specific funding uplifts to develop certain programmes.

Development of the Digital Media Investigator (DMI) training, run by the College of Policing, will be funded by the Home Office for 2016/17 at a cost of £635,448. After this financial year the College will be expected to meet the costs of continuing the training though their grant in aid or a re-charge to forces.

The National Cyber Security Programme (NCSP) provides investment to increase the cyber security of the UK. The NCSP funded the development of the second phase of the Mainstream Cyber Crime Training course which was launched on 30 September 2015 by the College of Policing. This is a modular course consisting of a series of self-teach and interactive modules accessible to all police officers and staff, which gives an introduction to how to recognise and investigate cyber crimes. The course was developed so that once it was rolled out, there would be no ongoing cost to the College into 2016/17 and future years. It has now been licensed to forces to deliver themselves.

Since the introduction of the College of Policing’s Cyber Crime Training course for all police forces, which was rolled out nationally in February 2014 4,394 officers successfully completed it. The College of Policing reported on 30 March 2016, that 1,014 police officers had received DMI training up to that point.