'Transformative' Hampshire police IT system CMP gives officers 'richer picture' to tackle crime

The £39m Contact Management Platform now records all contact with the police – meaning that it can draw connections to previous calls – and callers – and can flag up trouble hotspots. It can also map reports of Covid regulation breaches – meaning a clear picture can be drawn up.

The cost of the system ballooned from a £27m estimate – the figure from 2017 when it was due to be ready – to £39m. This increase was due, according to the police and crime commissioner Michael Lane, because its scope changed while it was being developed.

This year it helped staff handle 3,200 daily calls and online enquiries from the public during the force’s busiest summer since 2007.

At its peak in August, control room and enquiries staff were taking on average 876 calls on 999 a day, and 1,114 calls on 101. Around 1,282 enquiries were being made online each day too, adding to the pressure.

Around 65 per cent of 101 calls were answered in 60 seconds, and 86 per cent of 999 calls in 10.

Bosses at the force gave The News an exclusive briefing on how the system works, and said the delayed joint venture with Microsoft and Thames Valley Police is now better protecting society’s most vulnerable.

And Hampshire police and crime commissioner Michael Lane has admitted for the first time that ‘control mechanisms’ in developing CMP did not keep up with the project’s development.

As reported, The News last year revealed the system had not yet taken a 999 call. Earlier this year, the 30 or so staff on shift between the control room and enquiries centre had to rely on emergency back-up procedures when it went down earlier this year. Some calls were also delayed.

Questions have been repeatedly raised about CMP as it was originally hoped to be in place in 2017 and cost £27m. Call handling went live in Hampshire in July last year, and it was fully rolled out between January 17 and February 4 this year.

Inside the system police say is better protecting the public

Technical and largely invisible to the public, the system at its most basic is the software used by police to record crimes, incidents and enquiries - and dispatch officers.

But senior officers say behind this platform lies the key to better protecting the public.

Prior to its development, some 40 per cent of contacts from the public were as good as lost, filed away in the ‘warehouse’ and largely inaccessible.

Now all contact is logged, meaning staff can instantly link people with mobile phone numbers, addresses, previous calls - all building up a ‘richer picture’ to tackle crime and identify people in trouble.

Controllers sending response units being sent to a domestic violence incident will instantly know if legal firearms are registered at the address, something that previously took time to check.

Superintendent Mick Buckle, the CMP lead who has 30 years’ experience in policing, said: ‘We’ve achieved something here in policing that’s never been achieved before. It’s transformative, is the only way to describe it.

‘I’m coming towards the end of my policing career - to have the ability with one application to have access to all those (systems) and particularly the vulnerable, and reduce harm, is an incredible step forward.’

Future plans justify the cost, say police

The platform has combined a series of systems used by the force, and goes beyond being a simple application recording crime and being used to dispatch units to incidents.

This includes mapping Covid regulations breach reports - giving district commanders access to information they can act on to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Insiders involved with the development hope to take its capabilities further. An app will be rolled out to police so it can be used on the front line.

Possible changes in the future could allow calls to be automatically screened for words including ‘gun’ or ‘bomb’ - alerting the call handlers supervisor and kickstarting necessary procedures.

CMP has been developed so if an officer hits their emergency button the system can locate them via GPS instantly.

Data from the Police National Computer, Highways England and a host of other sources have been plugged into it too.

This development into a platform so it can be changed and adapted further is responsible for the increased costs, with Hampshire paying around £19m of the £39m shared cost.

Crime commissioner Michael Lane told The News: ‘The requirement was changing and our control mechanisms were not recognising appropriately and taking a deep breath to identify that we changed the scope massively.’

Mr Lane refused to say if other forces were interested in adopting the system, but said he has spoken about it at government level.

Other forces use different systems, but a police spokesman said CMP was chosen ‘in the absence of other available products’ that could integrate with existing kit.

Mr Lane said CMP was ‘adding huge value’.

‘Public receive better service’

It’s a view shared by chief superintendent Paul Bartolomeo, head of contact management.

During The News’ visit to the control room at Netley – where banks of desks are set up representing the force’s major areas including Portsmouth - he said ‘the public receive a better service’ through the often-criticised new IT.

Force control room chief inspector Steve Swift added: ‘CMP offers us significantly more to the force and to the public in our ability to analyse and understand risk.

‘We operate the model looking at our high risk, high harm and CMP enables us to do that.’

He added sometimes people are ‘frustrated’ in the force with the system but he added: ‘I’m really confident now that what we have in CMP is the ability to do all those things better.’

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Part of the reason for this is because the more comprehensive the data available to officers, the better decisions are made in very many live fast-moving incidents.

Between January and September the platform has handled 232,404 incidents, 282,993 enquiries and been used for more than 85,000 deployments - showing the huge demands on police resources.

Investigators get live data

As a senior investigating officer, detective superintendent Fiona Bitters is used to being called at 3am and asked to make decisions in fast-moving operations.

Previously she was sent a screenshot of the latest information about an incident on police systems and asked to make decisions based on this.

Now, with CMP, she can log in remotely at home and see the live log - making faster and more up to date decisions as she does so.

The News’ report comes as emergency services marked International Control Room Week last week, raising awareness about staff mental health.

Laura Parsonage, contact management operations manager, said she was made a supervisor in 2006 and it has been a while since she took 999 calls

But she said she ‘still remembers’ some difficult calls and added: ‘Some of those calls stay with you for life.’

Online faster than 101

REPORTS made online to police can take just one minute to be handled by the force.

People report crimes and enquire about other matters to police. Some of those are fly-tipping - and police can quickly redirect the public to councils to deal with this.

Around 37 per cent of 372 reports made via the public-facing online system - in the 24-hour period immediately before The News visited the enquiries centre in Southampton - were Covid-related.

The online system - called Single Online Home - pumps straight into the new Contact Management Platform. Prior to this, all these reports would have been made on 101.

Delays in answering 101 calls has long been a source of frustration for the public - but in some cases reports made online are being dealt with faster.

This is because online reporting is taking the hundreds of Covid reports, instead of those clogging up 101 lines.

In the pandemic, there are police personnel isolating and shielding at home, plugged into the inbox and rapidly picking up incoming reports. They can triage and send on for investigation, or file them, within minutes.

In some cases this is done in 60 seconds. While a person making the report might not know it has been handled, it's faster than calling 101.

‘It’s a vital way forward,’ says deputy operations manager Mike Smith. ‘It’s great that members of the public can report that in that way. It gives them that ease.’

In doing so, this frees up people in the contact management centre to more quickly answer 101 calls.

Mr Smith, a former bank manager, said: ‘There’s sometimes the perception that it’s going to be dealt with in slow time but that’s not the case.’

He added: ‘If they’d done this online they could have finished their report by the time they’re on hold.’

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