Collaboration

Cambridgeshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner is committed to collaborating with others to provide effective and efficient services at reduced cost.

Cambridgeshire therefore works closely with the Police and Crime Commissioners and Chief Constables of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire in three service areas (i.e. protective services, organisational support and operational support) and has signed up to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Collaboration with Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire was initially considered by the Cambridgeshire Police Authority in 2010.

The MoU agrees that creating a collaborative shared service solution will be the ‘norm’ unless there is complete agreement that there are compelling reasons for this to not be the case. The MoU can be read here.

All collaboration agreements requiring Decision Notices can be found here.

The potential scope of the 7 Force Collaboration Programme which includes Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent police forces, is very broad covering almost all areas of policing (front line, ‘middle office’ and support services) with the notable exception of local policing.

At the highest level the scope falls into the following categories:

• Operations
• Specialist Operations
• Criminal Justice
• Custody
• Athena-related functions (Athena is an integrated operational policing system that provides real-time intelligence and other key information across participating police forces)
• Support Services