ARCHIVE - A police car in front of the British Ministry of Justice. Photo: Benedikt von Imhoff/dpa/Archive image
Keystone
The UK is planning to set up a new police force to combat serious crime. The National Police Service (NPS) - a kind of British FBI - is to combat crimes such as terrorism, fraud and organized crime using state-of-the-art technology, as reported by the PA news agency and other British media, citing Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
Keystone-SDA
25.01.2026, 07:01
SDA
A start date has not been announced. The agency would only be responsible for England and Wales, as policing in Scotland and Northern Ireland is decentralized. The range of tasks is reminiscent of the FBI, the central federal police force in the USA, which combats terrorism, espionage and organized crime, among other things.
Among other things, the new authority is to bring together the anti-terror police, the traffic police and the National Crime Agency in a single organization. A commissioner - the highest ranking police officer in the country - will head the NPS. According to the PA, centralization into a single national police force instead of 43 individual agencies is expected to save around 350 million pounds (just over 400 million euros) in the procurement of uniforms and other equipment alone.
"We will create a new national police service - to be known as the 'British FBI' - that will use world-class professionals and cutting-edge technology to track down and catch dangerous criminals," the broadcaster Sky quoted the Home Secretary as saying. This would give local police forces more time to fight crime in their communities.