PCD 1240 Changes to the National Policing Programme Grant Agreement for NPP02-2021 Digital Public Contact

PCD 1240 Changes to the National Policing Programme Grant Agreement for NPP02-2021 Digital Public Contact 

This decision seeks approval to accept additional funding from the Home Office of £1.183m for the Digital Public Contact (DPC) Programme for Financial Year 2021/22 for agreed areas of additional investment. As part of this grant variation, milestones previously agreed to be achieved in Q4 2021/22 will now be carried forward to 2022/23. 

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:   

1. Approve receipt of additional Home Office grant funding of £1,183,000 for 2021/22 for the Digital Public Contact (DPC) Programme, and to note the revised milestones advised in the Home Office grant variation letter. 

PART I - NON-CONFIDENTIAL FACTS AND ADVICE TO THE DMPC 

1. Introduction and background  

1. Digital Public Contact (DPC) is a Tier 1 NPCC National Policing Programme hosted within the MPS with MOPAC as the contracting authority. 

2. The decision to accept the Grant of £13m from the Home Office for the running of the Digital Public Contact (DPC) programme for 2021/22 was approved in June 2021 (PCD 988).  

3. MOPAC continues as the contracting authority for the DPC Programme as it has done for 2020/21 with the programme hosted within the MPS. 

4. The total Grant Agreement of £13m included the following deliverables: 

• Strategic Integration Hub pilots for Online Crime Reporting for Essex and a Media Upload service for MPS 

• Further rollout of the integration service to additional forces and back office systems (this includes the Year 1 running costs of this new service) 

• New and enhanced SOH services based on the priorities agreed with the SOH National Steering Group comprising force leads and the SOH Product Owner 

• Final implementation of a PDS procurement framework for a Social Media management platform plus the continued development of best practice guidelines for forces’ use of Social Media 

• Up to 10 additional forces onboarded to the SOH platform based on either the core services only model or the full onboarding model  

• Up to 8 additional auxiliary bodies onboarded onto the SOH/PUK Platform 

• Development of a new Police.UK service strategy 

• Development of the 2-way engagement proof of concept. 

2. Issues for consideration  

1. The nature of a grant agreement is that payments are made by Home Office in arears. 

2. During the year it was identified that additional funding of £1.183m was required in 2021/22 for agreed areas of additional investment.  

3. Financial Comments  

1. The Home Office has agreed additional funding for the DPC Programme in 2021/22 totalling £1.183m for additional investments. Some of the additional investments can be offset against areas of underspend in the programme and both additional investment and underspend areas are detailed below: 

2. The Grant Agreement is administered through the MPS Finance team. Financial, delivery and commercial reporting will continue on a monthly basis to the HO SCIB.  

3. There is no impact on the MPS Capital Plan. All costs related to DPC are recovered through Home Office grant funding. There is no change to the MPS annual revenue contribution to SOH which is currently capped at £1.4m per annum.  

4. The following Q4 2021/22 milestones will be carried over to 2022/23: 

1. Strategic Integration Hub – Northgate Forces (Kent/Beds/Herts/Cambs) OCR integration go live 

2. Strategic Integration Hub – Standard API development and pilot for OCR 

4. Legal Comments  

1. MOPAC is a contracting authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations"). 

2. Paragraph 4.8 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve business cases for revenue or capital expenditure of £500,000 or above and to approve bids for grant funding made and all offers made of grant funding. 

3. MOPAC has an obligation to publish a grant agreement pursuant to Schedule 1, Paragraph 3(g) of the Elected Local Policing Bodies (Specified Information) (Amendment) Order 2012. 

4. The legal powers applicable to the acceptance of the Grant will be under Schedule 3, Paragraph 7 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 which provides that:  
   7(1) The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime may do anything which is calculated to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to, the exercise of the functions of the Office. 
   (2)That includes— 
        (a) entering into contracts and other agreements (whether legally binding or not). 

5. The Grant is subject to number of reasonable requirements by the Home Office including the management of the Grant, maintaining records, provision of information, and adequate data protection controls in place.   The requirements in regard to the Grant are not onerous and have not been materially changed by the Grant Variation Letter dated 5 April 2022,  therefore the additional Grant funding can be accepted by MOPAC. 

5. GDPR and Data Privacy  

1. All privacy issue considerations were considered when the MPS took on responsibility and became the Host Organisation for SOH and the National Digital Team. Nothing has changed since this original commitment but appropriate assessments will be undertaken as part of the design of new services.  

2. Under Article 35 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Section 57 of the DPA 2018, Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) become mandatory for organisations with technologies and processes that are likely to result in a high risk to the rights of the data subjects. 

3. The Information Assurance and Information Rights units within MPS will be consulted at all stages to ensure the programme continues to meet its compliance requirements. 

4. A DPIA has been completed for the Single Online Home (SOH). The SOH DPIA will be updated to reflect changes driven by DPC deliveries. As with the SOH, the DPC Programme will ensure a privacy by design approach, which will allow the MPS to find and fix problems at an early stage, ensuring compliance with GDPR. DPIAs support the accountability principle, as they will ensure the MPS complies with the requirements of GDPR and they demonstrate that appropriate measures have been taken to ensure compliance. 

6. Equality Comments  

1. Equalities assessments were carried out when the MPS took on responsibility and became the Host Organisation for SOH and the National Digital Team. Nothing has changed since this assessment was conducted but appropriate assessments will be undertaken as part of the design of new services. 

7. Background/supporting papers 

1. The decision to accept the Grant of £13m from the Home Office for the running of the Digital Public Contact (DPC) programme for 2021/22 was approved in June 2021 (PCD 988).