2023 Digital Policing Summit

Andy Cooke joined Merseyside Police in 1985 having obtained an Honours Degree in Politics from Nottingham University. He served as a Detective at every rank. Throughout his career, Andy has had numerous roles including being in charge of the Robbery Squad and Target Operations at the Major Crime Unit. He became the first Commander of the nationally recognised ‘Matrix’ team, responsible for tackling gun and gang enabled crime. During his time as Area Commander for South Liverpool, Andy was instrumental in significantly reducing crime, antisocial behaviour and disorder and South Liverpool became one of the highest performing Basic Command Units in the country. In 2008, Andy was appointed Assistant Chief Constable of Lancashire Constabulary where he held the roles of ACC Specialist Operations and ACC Territorial Operations. He returned to Merseyside in 2012, was promoted to Deputy Chief Constable in 2013 and in 2016 he was appointed Chief Constable. During this time, Andy led the biggest reorganisation in Merseyside Police’s 40 year history. Whilst he was Chief, the Force was graded as the highest performing metropolitan Force by HMICFRS. Nationally, Andy held some of the highest risk portfolios in Policing. In addition to leading the creation of the United Kingdom Protected Persons Service, he was the national policing lead for serious organised crime and national lead for crime. Andy has also been commended on 10 occasions and in 2014 was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal. He is a Deputy Lieutenant of the Merseyside Lieutenancy and an Adjunct Professor within the School of Justice Studies at Liverpool John Moores University. He is married with twin daughters. He has a passion for football and rugby league and is chair of the British Police Rugby League Association. You can follow Andy on Twitter (Twitter link). Andy was appointed as HM Inspector of Constabulary and HM Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services in April 2021 where he was the HMI for Northern England and the SRO for PEEL Inspection. On 1 April 2022 Andy was appointed as HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary and HM Chief Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services.

National role :Andy Cooke is the senior responsible owner of:
• PEEL inspections

Regional role for police forces: In addition to his role as HMCI, Andy Cooke is His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary for the following police forces:
• Cleveland Police
• Greater Manchester Police

Amanda has had a career that spans both the public and the private sectors. She started work in the NHS as a laboratory technician, primarily in blood pathology. In 1987 she moved to ICI’s new commercial DNA testing laboratory providing analytical testing for paternity, immigration, forensic cases and genetic diagnostics globally. In 2002 Amanda joined Thames Valley Police as their Head of Forensic Services, becoming the first police staff member in this role. Drawing on her business and process management skills, she implemented organisational change and significant performance improvement in all areas of the forensic services. She was a prominent and active participant in the ACPO National Forensic Portfolio leading a number of pieces of work across the Criminal Justice system. In 2007 she passed PNAC and subsequently completed the Police Service Senior Command Course inn 2007/08. In 2008 she became an Assistant Chief Officer, Director of Information, Science and Technology with a portfolio comprising Information, IT, Corporate Communications and Strategic Development. In 2012 this role took on additional service responsibility for IT and Information Management in Hampshire Constabulary and she led on the merger of these functions. She undertook several national roles, chairing the Police Information Assurance, as a member of the ACPO Information Management Board and chairing the National DNA Database Strategy Board. In June 2014 Amanda was awarded the OBE for her services to National Policing. In April 2015 was seconded to the Home Office Crime and Policing Directorate as SRO for Digital Policing and Science. She led the design of the NPCC Digital Policing Portfolio, the transition of the new Police IT Company, the development of the Home Office Forensic Strategy and the policing input to the 2015 Comprehensive Spending Review. She returned to Force in December 2015 as Assistant Chief Officer for both Hampshire Constabulary and Thames Valley Police and continued her national work through National Police Technology Council roles, and developing the SE Region strategy, and regional IT solutions delivering to Sussex Constabulary, Surrey Police, Hampshire Constabulary and Thames Valley Police. In October 2021 Amanda left her formal policing role. She is now a consultant in strategy, policy and change, focussing on Criminal Justice, Public Safety and Policing sectors. She is owner and Director of ASCO Consulting Ltd.

Lianne Deeming has been instrumental in setting up and developing BlueLight Commercial, a commercial services company who are owned by policing and operate in policing and emergency services providing national commercial and contracting activities, commercial, market and consultancy advise, commercial best practice and competency development. She is also the NPCC portfolio Lead for sustainability. Lianne has over 30 years’ experience in the private and public sector, with an engineering and business background and has held senior executive roles such as Chief Procurement Officer, Managing Director and Director Business Excellence in Tata Steel Europe. Lianne’s board and advisory experience includes technology, commercial, universities and research bodies. Lianne is an honorary visiting professor at Cardiff University, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.

I am currently Director for Strategy, Capabilities and Resources Directorate. The Directorate leads on police funding, efficiency, capabilities and serious organised crime. Prior to this I have worked in a wide range of public services for over 20 years including previous roles in the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Treasury, Revenue and Customs and in the NHS. My roles have included: developing the payments for the re-offending outcomes programme, student loan products and process owner, police funding, and ambulance and community health efficiency. I was Director for Fire and Resilience within the Home Office before taking up this role in May 2021.

Chief Constable Jo Farrell became a police officer because she wanted to make a difference and has gone on to spend her career doing exactly that. Born on The Wirral, Jo Farrell moved to Cambridgeshire at the age of 15 when her father relocated with his job. After a degree in Business at Sheffield Polytechnic, in 1991 she achieved her childhood ambition by joining the police as a constable in Cambridge, spending five years in the city centre before promotion. “I was 22 when I joined the police and I absolutely loved it,” she said. “Although I don’t have any family connection with the police, I had always wanted to join and I was so proud when I first became an officer. “As I tell all our new recruits, when we get it right, we can have such a positive impact on people’s lives – the difference that we can make is phenomenal”. In 2002, she joined Northumbria Police, initially as a Chief Inspector, and was promoted to Assistant Chief Constable, with responsibility for response and neighbourhood policing as well as the communications department. Jo joined Durham Constabulary in November 2016 as Deputy Chief Constable and has contributed to the force’s continued outstanding performance. She was appointed Chief Constable of Durham in June 2019, becoming the first woman to hold the post in the force’s 180-year history. On a national level, she works on behalf of the National Police Chiefs Council as the Chair of the Digital, Data & Technology Coordination Committee (DDaTCC). She is married to a retired police officer and has two stepsons and a daughter. Away from work, Jo enjoys family life, cooking and keeping fit.

Martin Hewitt is Chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC). He was appointed in April 2019. He began his policing career with Kent Police in 1993 and transferred to the Metropolitan Police Service in 2005. As an Assistant Commissioner for five years, Martin led frontline and local policing, specialist crime and professional standards. He led the national police response to adult sexual offences and kidnap between 2014 and 2019 and served as a Vice-Chair for the NPCC from 2015 before taking on the chairmanship.

Roger Hirst was elected as the Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex in May 2016, before joint police and fire governance had been established. In 2017 Mr Hirst became the joint lead for police funding on behalf of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners nationally. Mr Hirst became the first Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner in October 2017 and continues to work nationally and locally to build stronger links between emergency services and help create more secure communities. Prior to his election as Commissioner, Mr. Hirst was Cabinet Member at Essex County Council with responsibility for Community Safety; Deputy Leader of Brentwood Borough Council; and has 33 years’ experience as a senior investment banker.

Sir Steve is currently leading a review of Police Productivity for the Home Secretary. It will report in September 2023. Sir Steve has held a number of senior posts in policing in recent years. Most recently he was Acting Commissioner for the Metropolis from April 2022 until he retired as a police officer in September 2022. For nearly 5 years before that he was first Assistant Commissioner and then Deputy Commissioner with the Metropolitan Police.
In 2007 Sir Steve was appointed Chief Constable Strathclyde Police, a role he held until 2012. From there went on to be appointed as the first Chief Constable of Police Scotland and led the work to merge 8 existing police forces into a single national service for Scotland. In 2015 he retired from policing and took on a number of consultancy roles both in the UK and internationally. He re-joined the Metropolitan Police in 2018. He entered policing in 1981 as a Constable with Sussex Police and has worked in 7 different police forces over 5 decades.

Paul Ibrahim is the Insight Director at HMICFRS (and Head of the Operational Research profession for the Home Office). His responsibilities include, data and analytics, monitoring, and research. Paul joined HMICFRS in April 2017. Paul has led the work to digitalise HMICFRS’ data, evidence, and analytical offerings. These include analytical insights into both police and fire performance, an interactive monitoring portal and tools for evidence gathering and interpretation. Most recently Paul has been instrumental in establishing the Policing Insight Collaboration that has worked with the principal police stakeholders to develop and launch the Digital Crime and Police Performance Packs. Previously, Paul was Chief Analyst for the National Offender Management Service for 12 years.

I am the Senior Projects Manager for the Emergency Services Collaboration Programme in Essex, being jointly funded by Essex Fire and Essex Police services. My aim is to build collaborative advantage across all of the Essex partnerships, not just the Blue Lights, by tackling issues more effectively together. Most recently I have been the SRO for a project working with Nottingham Trent University to match, aggregate and spatially map relevant data to inform the built and social environment around Essex and incidents of VAWG. We now have a spatial mapping tool of the combined datasets to explore and understand this phenomena more with the Community Safety Partnerships.

Toby Jones leads the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism’s transformation of mission-led innovation for public safety and security with digital technology and data. He co-founded ACE, the UK’s Accelerated Capability Environment, a Home Office-sponsored partnership between industry, academia and government, to push smart technologies and skills to the front line of law enforcement with operational tempo. He brings industry experience from the national security and resilience sector, combined with public policy development including legislation for investigatory powers and telecommunications regulation and compliance. His professional background is in systems engineering and computer science.

Mike Lattanzio took over as Temporary Chief Information Officer for Thames Valley Police and Hampshire Constabulary in 2021, previously he was Interim IT Director across both forces for 5 Years. The CIO portfolio includes Information and Communication Technology, Information Management as well as Digital Adoption & innovation. Mike is also the Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) for both Forces. Mike has over 30 years’ experience working in private sector IT across finance, insurance, retail and tourism before coming to Thames Valley Police to transform and shape the portfolio for the future.

Andy Marsh is the CEO of the College of Policing, the professional body for policing in England and Wales. Andy joined the College in September 2021 after an extensive career in operational policing. His police career started in 1987 as a Police Constable in Avon and Somerset Police. After numerous operational and detective roles at various ranks, Andy went on to lead two forces, Hampshire and, latterly, Avon and Somerset, as Chief Constable. He implemented a large-scale transformation programme at Hampshire, leading the force to be recognised as one of the best value for money nationally. In Avon and Somerset, he led the development of an internationally acclaimed approach to data using advanced predictive analytics and visual graphics to prioritise and manage demand. This approach, in tandem with a digital mobilisation programme equipping officers and staff with the latest technology they need to do their job helped enable the Force to be recognised as one of the most efficient and effective in England and Wales. Andy has played a significant part in supporting improvement in policing national and internationally for many years, most notably in his role as the UK's National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) lead for body worn video where he pioneered and supported the increased use of this vital technology. Andy was responsible for the NPCC International Coordination portfolio for six years leading and advising on police modernisation programmes globally during this time. In 2018 he was awarded a Queen's Police Medal, and in the same year he was recognised by Women of the Future in its list of '50 Kind Leaders'. He is married with two daughters and enjoys fly fishing, hill walking, and rowing.

Once described as “human caffeine” on Twitter, Dr Nicola Millard injects a positive, people-centred expresso shot to innovation and future strategy. Half social scientist, half technologist, all academic, she uses techniques from disciplines such as design thinking, psychology, anthropology, computing, and business consulting to generate data, provocations and stories which can engage and create conversations from the board room to the front line. No frothy coffee; just solid research. In her long and varied career at BT – mostly based at Adastral Park in Ipswich – Nicola has done many jobs, including futurology, research, usability, customer service, marketing, and business consulting. She was involved with some BT firsts, including the first application of artificial intelligence into BT’s call centres, BT’s initial experiments with home working, and helping to develop BT’s “net easy” score, a new way of measuring customer experience. She currently looks at innovation in both employee and customer experience for BT’s large corporate and public sector customers. Nicola got her PhD from Lancaster University in 2005 and has authored over 50 publications – including 1 book and numerous book chapters. She is an award-winning presenter, with 2 TEDx talks and hundreds of conference panel, chair and keynote sessions under her belt. She occasionally pops up on radio and TV around the world, including appearances on ‘Woman’s Hour’, ‘Tech Tent’, ‘The Media Show’, ‘The Genius of Invention’ and ‘Back in Time for the Weekend’ for the BBC.

Pippa Mills began her policing career in the Metropolitan Police Service in 1996, working in Central and East London as she progressed her career. Having transferred to Essex Police as a Chief Officer in 2017, Pippa led the force and partnership response to Operation Melrose when the bodies of 39 Vietnamese migrants were found dead in a lorry trailer in October 2019. Pippa commenced as Chief Constable in West Mercia Police in September 2021. She is committed to providing a quality policing service that is visible and open to all. Outside work Pippa enjoys spending time with her two sons, her two dogs and pursuing hobbies that include travel and cycling.

Peter Neyroud is Director of the Police Executive Programme at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. The programme has both a Senior Leader Apprenticeship and a master’s in Applied Criminology and Police Management. Peter is an Associate Professor in Evidence-based policing in the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology. His research focuses on police diversion of offenders, crime harm, police ethics, community policing, the impact of COVID 19 on policing and police leadership and management. Peter was a police officer for more than 30 years, serving in Hampshire, West Mercia and Thames Valley (as Chief Constable). He set up and ran the National Policing Improvement Agency (as Chief Constable and Chief Executive). In the latter role he was responsible for national implementation of all the major programmes in UK policing, including Neighbourhood Policing, Workforce reform and new technology. In 2010, he was commissioned by the UK Home Secretary to carry out a fundamental “Review of Police Leadership and Training” which led to the establishment of the new National “College of Policing” in 2012 and radical reform of the qualifications and training of police officers, creating the new “Police Education Qualification Framework”. He is the Co-Chair of the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Coordinating Group and has been leading an international programme of systematic reviews on the prevention of terrorism and radicalization. He is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Bethan joined the civil service over 20 years ago. During this time she has had a varied career and has worked in the education department and the Home Office. Roles in these departments have included private office, a couple of spending reviews, an EU job, a bill manager and a number of strategy and policy jobs. She has been working in policing in a number of guises for the majority of her career; heading the cost effectiveness Unit in the National Policing Improvement Agency which supported forces during austerity and leading several major inspection programmes in HMICFRS (domestic abuse, police efficiency and police effectiveness). Since April 2019 she has headed the National Police Capabilities Unit in the Home Office, which delivered the final round of the Police Transformation Fund and now is responsible for developing policy and helping to deliver programmes that build capabilities once on behalf of all police forces.

Aimee Reed joined the MPS in 2001 as an Intelligence Analyst; amazed to discover her first class degree in Criminology would prove relevant to a job. By 2014 she was leading the largest Confidential Intelligence Unit in UK policing; accountable for the collection, development and dissemination of covert intelligence into high-end investigations and operations. After passing the Police Strategic Command Course (2015), Aimee had a data “epiphany”; operational decision-making was only as good as the effort put into managing the data that feeds it. An unrelenting mission to get policing to do the “data basics” resulted in her successfully leading the MPS data transformation programme and is now the inaugural Director of Data for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). She built the first Data Office in law enforcement. She is the Chair of the NPCC National Police Data Board; leading forces on building data capabilities for the sector. Her focus is on simplifying to simplify how we make effective use of data through data visualisation, analytics and data science. More importantly, she is committed to shifting attitudes to be more publically open and transparent about what we hold, what we do with it and what can be accessed. A professed data geek and mother of two, Aimee is passionate that data be treated as a valuable asset; we need high-quality data & proper investment in Data Professionals to maintain transparency with the public, improve trust in how policing is doing, prevent crime and drive criminal justice outcomes.

David Shaw served as a police officer for 36 years culminating in his role as Chief Constable of West Mercia Police from 2011-16. He also served at chief officer level in West Midlands Police leading on Counter Terrorism, Crime, Local Policing, Criminal Justice and ICT. He has held national portfolios in Fingerprints, Biometric Databases and Conflict Management. In late 2016 David became Interim Programme Director for the Transforming Forensics Programme before joining the Home Office Biometrics Programme as Strategic Stakeholder Lead. In September 2019 he began a new role with responsibility for Stakeholder Engagement within the Innovation Team of the Law Enforcement Portfolio of the Home Office, supporting a range of major technology programmes. In July 2020, he commenced a programme of learning which will enable him to become a supervisor on the Police Executive programme at the University of Cambridge.

Nerys Thomas is Research, Analysis and Knowledge Sharing Lead at the College of Policing, helping the service to identify, share and use evidence about what works. She has been working in policing and criminal justice research for 24 years and prior to joining the College, held various roles in the Home Office, the Office for Criminal Justice Reform and the National Policing Improvement Agency. She has carried out and published research on a wide range of issues including police demand, vehicle crime, police investigations, use of forensics and intelligence. She has been seconded to a government-led criminal justice reform project focusing on the Human Rights Act and was a member of the first Home Office task force sent to Macedonia in 1999 to co-ordinate the evacuation of refugees from Kosovo. Before joining the Home Office, Nerys completed a Master of Science degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

Damon’s career in IT started over 20 years ago, providing IT solutions to both the private and public sector. In 2011, he went to work for BT, providing telecoms and IT network services to forces across the North of England. He has continued to serve the IT needs of Policing for the last 11 years. In January 2021, he was approached by C.A.C.I. Ltd. (the UK arm of US tech giant C.A.C.I. International). Taking on the role of Consultant – Police Lead, where today he continues to look at how C.A.C.I. can use technology to help address the needs of UK Police Forces. He has recently been involved in the creation of C.A.C.I.’s Digital Forensics Laboratory capability to support Policing and is currently working on Visual Data analytics capability to provide Police intelligence.

Ben Zaranko is a Senior Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK’s leading independent economics research institute. Much of his work focuses on the impact of UK government fiscal policy and spending decisions. Since 2021, he has also been an editor of the IFS Green Budget, which examines the major economic challenges and policy trade-offs facing the Chancellor ahead of the Budget each year.