260216 Home Office re NaVCIS Funding

16/02/2025 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request – ‘NaVCIS Funding Model‘

Contents

11/2025 Relevant Excerpt from Vehicle Theft Oversight Document

The National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS)

NaVCIS is a national police unit, hosted by Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary and operates independently, under the direction of the vehicle crime lead for the National Police Chief Council.
NaVCIS is entirely funded by the Finance Leasing Association under the provisions of the Police Act 1996 and spends funds specifically on the designated areas and therefore makes no profit.

Their mission is to co-ordinate the strategic and frontline response to vehicle finance crime across the UK by:
Investigating reports of vehicle finance crime and providing specialist operational analysis, advice and support to UK police forces;
Developing strategic intelligence and analysis that supports UK police forces in tackling vehicle finance crime and associated criminality;
Developing and promoting crime prevention tactics and advice for the finance industry and wider communities.

The NaVCIS Intelligence team includes and supports diverse subject matter experts and uses a wealth of national and international contacts in industry and law enforcement to support longer term and strategic objectives, such as:

identifying and frustrating the routes used for disposing of stolen vehicles assisting proactive operations;
disseminating intelligence;
building partnerships with industry;
work involves proactive operations at UK ports; supporting national initiatives and police operations, as well as monitoring the movement of stolen vehicles with an ability to intercept and recover;
The Intelligence team supports the Investigations team by creating and disseminating actionable intelligence packages to police forces to prompt prosecutions and enforcement.

24/10/2025 – Urgent Questions

From: @navcis.police.uk>
Sent: 24 October 2025 12:15
To: @homeoffice.gov.uk>
Subject: RE: Urgent questions

NaVCIS is the ONLY national police unit to be 100% industry funded- all other national units are fully financed by police/central government or a blended funding formula with industry

Anything else you need please let me know.

Br,
College of Policing
1, Leamington Road, Hopkins Building, CV8 3EN
https://navcis.police.uk/

25/06/2025 Meeting with Road Freight Crime

From: <Redacted>
Sent: 25 June 2025 09:59
To: <Redacted>
Cc: <Redacted>

Subject: RE: Meeting with Road Freight Crime – 1st July

I have been led to believe that it is still going ahead but may be in parliament now due to the Welfare Bill.

In that case can I check a couple of things –

Are you able to confirm attendees and the formal agenda for the meeting (just so I can add to the notes im adding)

Also are you able to confirm the following lines are correct for a Q & A? –

Will you provide more funding to NaVCIS?
• The National Vehicle Intelligence Service (NaVCIS) is a national policing unit funded by industry, including finance and leasing companies, insurers and hauliers, to provide dedicated specialist intelligence and enforcement.  There are currently no plans for DfT to fund NAVCIS activities, however.
• Home Office are providing £250,000 funding to policing, including NaVCIS, this financial year to help support enforcement

Many Thanks

Stakeholder Engagement Manager, , Department for Transport

07/05/2025 – Extract from chain pertaining to Vehicle Theft Meeting Summary

From:
Sent: 07 May 2025 22:51
To:
Cc:

Subject: Re: Vehicle Theft meeting summary

The insurers already pay for NaVCIS. That is a big operation but what they do is provide intelligence that helps to recover vehicles, not deal with the criminals behind the operations.

undated – Extract from chain pertaining to Industry-Funded Police Units

Hi <Redacted>
<Redacted>
<Redacted>
<Redacted>

Relatedly, I recently met with <Redacted> from NaVCIS. They’ve an interesting history where the unit was originally HO funded before austerity cuts in 2015 led to industry stepping forward to keep the unit operational – quite a clear rationale for the change of funding model but I don’t know what the HO view of industry funding was at the time.

<Redacted>

Many thanks,

<Redacted>

06/05/2025 Industry-funded police units

From: <Redacted>
Sent: 06 May 2025 10:39
To: <Redacted>
Cc: <Redacted>

Subject: Industry-funded police units

Hi <Redacted>

I’ve been passed your contact details by <Redacted>

at City of London Police. For a while, I’ve been looking for a contact at Home Office who might be able to advise on government policy around police funding but with little luck so far – I’m hoping you can change that!

<Redacted>

There are other industry-funded police units both within the CoLP and other forces (e.g. Op Opal, NaVCIS) so the concept is not unprecedented. We are also exploring opportunities to diversify the government’s share to make the funding more sustainable and resilient in the years ahead.

<Redacted>

Many thanks,

<Redacted>

18/09/2024 ASB/Shoplifting/Neighbourhood Crime Policy-Comms Weekly Check

From: <Redacted>
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2024 3:13 PM
To: <Redacted>
Cc: <Redacted>

Subject: RE: ASB/Shoplifting/Neighbourhood Crime Policy-Comms Weekly Check in

Hi <Redacted>

Thank you, so ports policing is not done by local forces (because that would be far too easy), it’s done by NaVCIS. Some background below:

NaVCIS is a national policing unit funded by industry, including finance and leasing companies, insurers and hauliers, to provide dedicated specialist intelligence and enforcement.
The Home Office does not provide funding for NaVCIS directly.
NaVCIS operates independently, under the direction of the National Police Chief Councils’ vehicle crime lead ACC Jenny Sims
NAVCIS undertakes intelligence-led enforcement action at ports to tackle vehicle crime.
NaVCIS ports officers are trained vehicle examiners and are on-the-ground intelligence gatherers by <Redacted>

<Redacted>

Many thanks,

<Redacted>

Neighbourhood Crime Unit
Home Office, 5^th Floor Fry Building
2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF
Telephone: <Redacted>

24/05/2024 – Funding for vehicle crime FY 24/25

From: <Redacted>
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2024 2:16 PM
To: Sims Jennifer
Cc: <Redacted>

Subject: Funding for vehicle crime FY 24/25

Hi <Redacted>

This is to put in writing our conversation this afternoon about the funding for vehicle crime.

The Policing Minister agreed to £250k for work on vehicle crime at the border, for FY 24/25 only. This commitment will be honoured despite the general election being called.

Any future funding is subject to a Spending Review, and set against potentially new Government priorities.

I’ll liaise with <Redacted> about the details of what the funding will be spent on, and getting the grant agreement set up.

It may take us a little while to get the grant agreement in place, so in the meantime please take this email as confirmation of the funding.

Many thanks,

<Redacted>

Neighbourhood Crime Unit
Crime Reduction Directorate
Home Office
5th Floor Fry Building, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF
<Redacted>

undated – Car Crime – Jaguar Land Rover / Home Office catch up

Hi [redacted]

The meeting took place yesterday – attended by ACC Sims, Opal, Border Force, [redacted], British Ports Association, PCC Roger Hirst (Essex) and representatives from: Essex, Met police, WMP, GMP, West Yorks and South Yorks.

Home Office is providing £250k additional new funding [redacted]
NPCC will be restructuring and refocusing NaVCIS and Opal to ensure more effective national co-ordination and intelligence-led operations.
The agencies listed above will be collaborating in regular intensification exercises.
The Minister will maintain oversight of this, and ACC Sims will report progress to him.

[redacted]

I hope that’s helpful,

[redacted]
Neighbourhood Crime Unit
Crime Reduction Directorate
Home Office
5th Floor Fry Building, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF

undated – Funding for vehicle crime FY 24/25

Hi <Redacted>

Many thanks for the confirmation and for all your help and support to get to this place.

Thanks for linking in with <Redacted>

, as discussed the funding will come into Opal and <Redacted> will work out how to get the funding for the NaVCIS IDO over to <Redacted>

Kind regards,

Jenny
Jennifer Sims (She/Her) ACC People Services
NPCC Lead for Vehicle Crime

Merseyside Police Headquarters | 15 Cazneau Street | Liverpool L3 3AN Direct Line Tel: <Redacted>
Mobile Tel: <Redacted>
Email: <Redacted>
Website: www.merseyside.police.uk

For more information about the use and disclosure of personal data, see our privacy notice

01/03/2024 extract of email re Ports Meeting

To:
Cc:
Subject: Ports meeting

[redacted]

NaVCIS

[redacted] has various reports he will pull together which will outline options for future staffing and the funding model for [redacted] This is based on the insurance and finance companies contributing to the initiative based on recovered vehicles and is more of a sustainable model than a one off payment from uplift. –

There will also be some data around cost v benefit, showing that a police presence at the ports is worthwhile. This would probably help springboard any further academic work if you wanted to do that. –
Regards

undated – Extract of email re Port Visit

Good morning all,

Wanted to share with you a readout of my visit. I attended the Police’s intensification exercise on stolen vehicles at the Ports this week. This is being done via multi-agency so NPCC ,Opal and NaVCIS – but NaVCIS were leading on the ground.

Apologies, as was hard to make notes while looking but happy to chat

Attendees:

Overall, it was a truly fascinating day. I learnt so much. A few things that came up that I think for us to think about are:

Lack of funding for NaVCIS – can we help encourage industry to pay? NaVCIS raised working month to month

<Redacted>

Many thanks,

Neighbourhood Crime Unit
Home Office, 5^th Floor Fry Building
2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF
Telephone: <Redacted>