Home Office working to restore Police National Computer data

Home Secretary Priti Patel and Policing Minister Kit Malthouse have today thanked Home Office engineers working throughout the weekend to restore data lost from the Police National Computer as a result of human error during a routine housekeeping data update earlier this week.

Working with the NPCC and other policing partners, data engineers within the Home Office Digital, Data and Technology function continue to develop and test new code with the ultimate aim of restoring the data. Both the Home Secretary and Policing Minister are being kept regularly updated on this process.

A fast time review identified the problem and corrected it so it cannot happen again.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said:

Home Office engineers continue to work to restore data lost as a result of human error during a routine housekeeping process earlier this week.

Public safety is the number one priority of everyone within the Home Office, and I would like to thank the data engineers working to restore these records.

I continue to be in regular contact with the team, and working with our policing partners, we will provide an update as soon as we can.

Policing Minister Kit Malthouse said:

We continue to work closely with the police to rectify this issue and I want to thank both Home Office staff and policing partners for their ongoing efforts.

As I’ve said, the affected records apply to cases where individuals were arrested and then released with no further action, and we are working to recover the affected records as a priority.

While we do so, the Police National Computer is functioning and the police are taking steps to mitigate any impact.