A £700 million body to streamline police communications and underpin improvements has been launched and the budget is already extremely tight, its head admitted.
The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) is set to be a one-stop shop with a hand in critical services supporting everything from frontline policing to major investigations in England and Wales.
It takes over the work of the Police Information Technology Organisation and Centrex, the police training and leadership body, which are now defunct.
NPIA is also responsible for police information sharing under the Impact programme and neighbourhood policing.
Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, NPIA's chief executive, is looking to make £30 million of savings.
Some jobs have been shed in bringing the staff transferred to NPIA down from 2,500 to around 2,000.
Mr Neyroud says he is preparing to make "clearly focused choices" and creating a "proper process of commissioning and decommissioning" of the programmes they use.
"The demands are greater and the challenges are pushing the budget," he said.
"I have got to make some tough choices of some of the things I have inherited which probably are not working well enough for the service."
The £700 million budget for the first year includes £400 million for resources and £200 million to cover capital.
