Home affairsLetter from Keith Bristow, Director General, National Crime Agency, to the Chair of the Committee, 18 September 2013

National Crime Agency

I am writing in response to your letter requesting information about the National Crime Agency (NCA); including precursor functions transferring into the NCA and the staffing of the NCA Commands. In this response I will focus only on the functions that are transferring into the NCA and not on issues beyond the NCA relating to the wider policing landscape.

NCA Commands

As set out in the NCA Plan, published in June 2011, the NCA will include the following four Commands:

Organised Crime Command.

Border Policing Command.

Economic Crime Command.

Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command.

All four Commands will have the following core functions:

Identifying and coordinating delivery against key threats.

Overseeing delivery of NCA-Ied and NCA-supported work with partners.

Managing specialist relationships.

Developing new capabilities to address gaps.

Each will be led by a Director. In addition there are also Directors for Intelligence/Operations (which includes the National Cyber Crime Unit) and Corporate Services.

NCA officers will have the skills and necessary powers to conduct flexible investigations across all NCA activity, in support of all the NCA Commands, National Cyber Crime Unit and partners. For example, dealing with child sexual exploitation is an integral part of the NCA, and the CEOP Command will have greater capacity for operational delivery by being able to draw upon the resources and specialisms of the whole Agency rather than operating in isolation. In addition the NCA as a whole has a statutory duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in England and Wales and all NCA officers are being trained on this.

The details you requested on the commands, along with similar information for other parts of the NCA, is attached at Annex A with further details set out in this letter.

NCA Core Functions

The NCA’s statutory functions are set out in the Crime and Courts Act 2013, being: i) a “crime-reduction function” of securing that efficient and effective activities to combat organised crime and serious crime are carried out (whether by the NCA, other Law enforcement agencies, or other persons); and ii) a “criminal-intelligence function”.

The NCA will be’ established from its precursor agencies, namely:

Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and some elements of NPlA as detailed below: 4090 officers.

Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU): 78 officers to be located in NCA Operations.

Some elements of the National Policing Improvement Agency—the Proceeds of Crime Centre, Central Witness Bureau, Crime Operational Support Unit, Serious Crime Analysis Section, Specialist Operations Centre and National Missing Persons Bureau—have already transferred into SOCA as part of the work to transfer these functions into the NCA. With the exception of the Proceeds of Crime Centre, which will transfer to the Economic Crime Command, these will transfer to NCA Operations. In total 188 officers have transferred into SOCA from the NPIA in advance of the NCA and have been counted in SOCA’s overall total as above.

The Criminal and Financial Investigation (CFI) (Borders) teams, formerly part of UKBA, will also transfer· into the Border Policing command, consisting of 269 officers.

The NCA will also shortly begin a recruitment campaign for several hundred trainee officers.

NCA Budget

As I explained in my letter to you dated 12 July 2013, the NCA will be delivered within the budget of its precursor organisations. SOCA’s budget (which includes CEOP) will form the bulk ofthe budget for the NCA.

From “go-live” in October, the NCA will organise its budgets to provide focus on the NCA operational priorities, which will be set out in the NCA Annual Plan, and will invest in future capability for tackling serious and organised crime.

Parliamentary approval will be sought for the NCA’s budget for the full year of 201314, Which will include the expenditure incurred by its precursors (principally SOCA) prior to “go live” for £422.1m Resource; £12.9m budgeted income; and £23.9m supplementary funding from other government departments. The NCA’s total spending power will be £458.9m Resource, and £16m Capital. In addition to this the Home Office has now identified further capital funding of £15m in year, which will be reflected in the NCA’s Supplementary Estimate.

Keith Bristow QPM
Director General
National Crime Agency

Annex A

Post	Head	Salary	Previous role	Number of Posts1	Number of officers appointed from organisations which have not been subsumed within the NCA and of those a) from which organisation they come and b) how many come from each of those organisations
Director General	Keith Bristow	£214,722	Chief Constable, Warwickshire Police	As below
Deputy Director General	Philip Gormley	£181,455	Chief Constable, Norfolk Constabulary	252
Director, Border Policing	David Armond	£139,119	Deputy Director International, SOCA	621
Director, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command	Peter Davies	£129, 744	Chief Executive, CEOP (seconded from Lincolnshire Police)	992
Director, Organised Crime Command	Gordon Meldrum	£132, 256	Director General, Scottish Crime and Drugs Enforcement Agency	120
Director of Intelligence	Tim Symington	£105,456	Head of Transport Security Strategy, DfT	844
Director of Operations	Trevor Pearce (Gary Chatfield Temp)	£133,782	Director General, SOCA	2,274
Director, Corporate Services	Stephen Webb (Interim)	£86,710	Interim Programme Director and SRO, Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme, Home Office	4803
Economic Crime	Trevor Pearce (Interim)			200
Total				4,890	754