Nearly £15m pounds of public money has been wasted on developing a criminal intelligence IT system which is now being scrapped.

Surrey Police is pulling the plug on the Surrey Integrated Reporting Enterprise Network (Siren) which has never been used, after years of development.

The amount of money equates to the salary of almost 500 police officers for a year, or £310,000 a month, since the contract to develop it was awarded in May 2009.

A councillor on the county's police and crime panel today described the decision to start the project as "very foolish" and the waste of money as "a disaster".
 

It comes at a time when the force is struggling to identify £7m of savings over the next four years.

The borough's new Police and Crime Commissioner Kevin Hurley has announced that the system is being ditched after police decided it was no longer the ‘best long-term option’.

The idea of Siren was first mooted in 2005 to replace the existing ageing system.

It came at a time when there were no off-the-shelf alternatives and the idea was to create "a new, fully integrated system, linking together all recorded information and intelligence within the force".

But eight years later a number of other forces are now introducing their own systems and Surrey is hoping to team up with them - although this will of course the force further millions.  

Mr Hurley said: "My decision to withdraw from the Siren project has not been taken lightly, but I believe that this course of action will ultimately be in the best interests of both Surrey Police and the Surrey public."

He said the county's police and crime panel, mainly made up of councillors, and the Audit Commission’s external auditors Grant Thornton will fully review the decision.

He added: "I hope you can appreciate that a full inquiry into a project of this scale is likely to take some time and that it would not be proper for me to comment further at this stage."

When asked to explain what went wrong, a spokesman for his office said: "That is what the audit is for. We are not going to comment further until the audit is completed."

Police and crime panel member and Mole Valley Councillor Margaret Cooksey said she believed the Police Authority initially made the wrong decision to have a purpose built system.

Coun Cooksey said: "I think the initial decision was very foolish. It just goes to show that we have to be extremely careful with such decisions when what we want to see is more police on the streets.

"It’s a phenomenal amount of money and a disaster this has happened."

She said the major problem with Siren was the fact it could not communicate or share information across boundaries.

She said: "I think it’s been clear from very early on that it’s not going to function in the way it is needed to."

Before making his decision, Mr Hurley commissioned an independent report and sought advice from Chief Constable Lynne Owens, who raised her concerns about Siren when he was elected in November 2012.

Surrey Police worked with the software firm Memex SAS to develop Siren after it won the contract in 2009 following a procurement process.
 

The company refused to make any comment on what had gone wrong today because of the planned audit review.

In total staff, training, software, ICT equipment, consultancy and other costs have added up to £14.8m.

Mike Dodds, chairman of Surrey Police Federation, said: "We are relieved that the force is no longer investing money in a failing program.

"We are incredibly disappointed for the taxpayers of Surrey that that amount of money has been spent on a program that never reached fruition."

Mr Dodds said they were eagerly anticipating the audit to see what lessons could be learnt to prevent such a waste of time and money again. 

He said: "Considering this against a backdrop of the sale of police buildings and forced retirement of experienced police officers, this is very distasteful."

Deputy Chief Constable Craig Denholm welcomed Mr Hurley's decision after Surrey Police raised its concern that the program no longer represented the ‘best long-term option’ with the police authority in September 2012.

He said: "The management of information is critical in delivering effective policing.

"Given operational collaboration with other forces in the region, and as the national policing environment has now changed, we must also adapt our plans or risk losing out on the wider benefits.

"The current crime management system remains operational and the decision to withdraw from the Siren project will not impact on day-to-day policing which continues as normal."