A public-private Online Crime Centre (OCC), to share data and collaborate on interventions that eliminate online fraud at scale, is promised as part of the Government’s three-year fraud strategy.
The OCC, says the strategy, is set to begin operations in April 2026; and ‘will unite UK policing, the UK Intelligence Community (including GCHQ, the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Cyber Force) alongside private sector partners from the financial, telecommunications, technology, and cyber industries’. It will ‘initially’ focus on fraud and high-volume cyber crime.
The document admits ‘increasing number of fraud incidents, high value of fraud losses and harm from fraud’, and touches particularly on the telecommunications, online and financial services sectors. A ‘new, system-wide approach’ is promised, and as for all-important spending, the document says that the Government ‘will invest over ยฃ250m between 2026 and 2029 to deliver this Strategy’.
The document goes over three ‘pillars’: disrupt, safeguard and respond. A ministerial admits that fraud is ‘consistently the largest reported crime type in England and Wales’ (the Westminster Government document doesn’t cover Scotland which has its own arrangements) and states that ‘this Government is determined to turn the tide’. Home Office Fraud Minister Lord Hanson said: “Fraudsters are exploiting new technology, industrialising their operations and targeting the British public at scale. Thatโs why weโre bringing together the key players in the system โ police, intelligence agencies, banks, mobile networks, regulators and tech companies โ to shut down the channels scammers rely on, wherever they operate from.
“Our new fraud strategy sets out how we will use every tool at our disposal to disrupt and dismantle criminal operations, bring fraudsters to justice and strengthen protection and support for victims.”
As for educating people about the crime, the strategy speaks of expanding the Stop! Think Fraud campaign ‘to a broader range of fraud types’. As for responding to crime, the document points to Report Fraud, described as ‘the new, streamlined reporting service, to provide a robust and improved reporting mechanism for victims of fraud’, which while still under the City of London Police as lead force on economic crime replaces the unloved Action Fraud, which so under-performed that Scotland pulled out of it. Also promised is a Fraud Victims Charter; and – by 2029, the end of the strategy period – improved court process and ‘exploring additional civil law penalties, to ensure criminals face justice’.
The strategy points also to the Labour Governmentโs broader plans for Police Reform, as featured in the March edition of Professional Security Magazine; ‘whereby overall responsibility for Fraud, Economic Crime and Cyber Crime will transfer to the National Police Service (NPS) with the National Crime Agency (NCA)’.
For the 90-page document, sub-titled ‘Disrupting crime, supporting economic resilience and delivering justice’, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fraud-strategy-2026-to-2029.
