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The National Police Chiefs’ Council has teamed up with UK Research and Innovation to fund nine new Policing Academic Centres of Excellence (P-ACEs) that are due to start work in October 2025.
The £4.5m funding boost from the National Police Chiefs’ Council will drive collaboration between academia and policing, with the P-ACEs supporting policing to adopt new technologies, develop new tools and techniques, improve training and skills, and increase public safety.
Each P-ACE will be promoted across the policing sector as an accessible source of leading academic experts aligned with Policing’s Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) and evidence needs. Their work will mobilise, showcase and make accessible to policing key insights, findings and outputs from their work and respond to the evidence needs, questions and problems raised by policing and work with policing to co-develop new research and knowledge exchange activities.
“Academia and policing have a long history of collaborative working on issues as diverse as forensic science, crime prevention, and analytical technologies. The P-ACEs will fortify this connection, providing a focal point for research and knowledge exchange.
I’m particularly excited about what the P-ACEs can bring to early career scientists who are interested in tackling the complex challenge of keeping the UK public safe. The P-ACE community will, I hope, provide them more opportunities and greater support as we look to forge deep and lasting partnerships over the next decade.”
Professor Paul Taylor, Police Chief Scientific Adviser.
Commenting on the announcement, Stian Westlake, Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) added: “By bringing experts in policing practice together with social scientists and data scientists across the country, the centres will provide knowledge and insights to drive service improvement. These centres of excellence demonstrate our commitment to reducing crime and making Britain a safer place.”
The following universities have been selected to be P-ACEs:
- Edinburgh Napier University, with Glasgow Caledonian University, University of St Andrews and University of Edinburgh
- Lancaster University
- Manchester Metropolitan University, with University of Manchester
- Nottingham Trent University
- University College London
- University of Bath
- University of Birmingham, with Aston University and University of Leicester
- University of Leeds, with University of York
- University of Portsmouth
For updates about the P-ACEs visit: Policing Academic Centres of Excellence
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