The NPIA's new Service Director, ACC David Peacock, looks at the past, present and future of our street level crime map website

I’ve just joined the NPIA as the Service Director for the Policing, Policy and Practice (PPP) Directorate. Before joining the agency, I was at Hampshire constabulary for six years and before that, at the Metropolitan Police for 23 years.

It’s certainly a busy and challenging time to join the NPIA. We’ve moved into the final stages of the agency but continue to deliver essential services to policing. I’m now responsible for the delivery of Criminal Justice and Local Policing, Police Science and Forensics, Practice Improvement Unit and Protective Services. Furthermore I am the agency's Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for both the Airborne Data Link Project and Crime Mapping on police.uk. We are now celebrating the latter's one year anniversary and what a year it's been!

Street-level crime mapping via police.uk is part of the Government’s transparency agenda, giving the public the ability to see what crime and anti-social behaviour (ASB) take place in their neighbourhoods. It also provides contact details for Local Policing teams, meeting dates and other relevant information and advice. Providing this information is really essential to building trust and confidence in policing. The NPIA worked with the Home Office to deliver crime mapping and are involved in ongoing improvements.

Police.uk is still the most popular government website to date, receiving almost 453 million hits and approximately 48 million visits since its launch in January 2011. It continues to receive over 150,000 hits per day, with this figure doubling during the peaks of the August disorders. We've received over 4,100 individual pieces of feedback sent to the website, and the API has been opened up to over 1,000 developers - some of which are featured on the apps page.

In October 2011, we introduced new categories to police.uk, so you can now see crime & ASB data categorised under; burglary, robbery, vehicle crime, violent crime, public disorder and possession of weapons, shoplifting, criminal damage and arson, other theft, drugs and other.

And now, following overwhelming public feedback, we’ve doubled the number of geographic points (snap points) on police.uk, to give the public even more information.

We’ve also started to include snap points at 'points of interest' on the map. This means that you'll be able to see crimes mapped to other key locations, such as shopping areas, airports, railway stations, parking areas and night clubs.

In another key development, we’ve been working with the British Transport Police (BTP) to add their crime and ASB data to the website, allowing the public to see all incidents recorded at railway stations (which includes trains, trams and subways.) You can find out more by visiting BTP’s crime mapping page.

Through listening to public feedback and engaging with our key stakeholders, we are always keen to address any issues and concerns surrounding police.uk. We also have a POLKA community – so please do register if you haven’t already.

Find out more about my career history and joining the agency.