The Commissioner is committed to, where appropriate, working in collaboration with other Commissioners, police forces and partner organisations either nationally, regionally or within the county for the benefit of Merseyside.
North West Joint Oversight Committee
The Commissioner is a member of the North West Joint Committee which includes all the commissioners from the North West. These are - Cumbria, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire and North Wales.
Regional Collaborations
The North West Regional Organised Crime Unit serves the areas of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cumbria and North Wales.
It was established in 2009 as a collaboration between the six police forces to increase operational capacity and capability to tackle the organised crime threat in the North West.
The mission of the unit is simple - to tackle organised crime groups causing the greatest levels of harm to communities in the North West.
The unit is comprised of five teams working closely together and includes representatives from His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, UK Border Agency and the National Crime Agency. Those teams are: the Regional Intelligence Unit (RIU), the Regional Crime Unit (RCU), the Regional Asset Recovery Team (RART), Regional Cyber Crime Unit (RCCU) and the Protected Persons Service Unit (PPS).
The North West Motorway Police Group
The North West Motorway Police Group works together to police the roads of the North West. Merseyside, Cheshire and Greater Manchester Police work together to form the group.
The regional control centre is based in Newton-le-Willows and is responsible for deploying and maintaining contact with all police and Highways Agency patrol motorways totalling 810 miles. The group was set up in June 2008 in partnership with the Highways agency. The collaboration was instigated to ensure a co-ordinated approach to tackle the key priorities identified.
National Police Air Service (NPAS)
NPAS was launched in January 2013 following a review of National Air Operations throughout England and Wales. Merseyside is incorporated in the North West region. West Yorkshire police are the lead force.
The North West Regional Underwater Search & Marine Unit
This unit serves the areas of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cumbria and North Wales and is staffed by police officers from the six constituent forces. The unit can be called out to search anywhere between the North Wales and Scottish border. The divers can dive up to 50 metres deep and can search for missing persons and property, weapons and stolen goods. The unit can help to search areas that other team's can't reach like lakes, rivers, marshlands, ponds and even sewer drains.
The West Cost Collaboration (WCC)
The West Cost Collaboration (WCC) comprises of a Team tasked with managing a single shared version of Niche for Merseyside Police, North Wales Police, Cheshire Constabulary, and Dyfed-Powys Police. This allows for 'real-time' sharing of operational information by officers and staff from all four forces to instantly see, search and access each other's data. Forces are better placed through the use of the richer information and data to deal with the significant shared cross-border criminality, issues of threat, risk, and harm.
The WCC Team also helps forces to coordinate business change across all forces, share best practice, and to design and configure Niche in a way that best meets operational needs. This includes providing a link with the other forces (28+) in the UK using Niche, Minerva, and Niche the company that provides the system.
The WCC is currently supporting and helping to coordinate all four forces with a considerable number of projects at varying levels of maturity. Some of the largest being Automation, Digital Case File (DCF) to move away from the current MG Files used for prosecutions, Suspect Management (Named Offenders), and WebNiche to share data with forces outside of the WCC.