Universities and Forces have committed to support the work of the partnership until September 2024

In September 2021 the N8 Policing Research Partnership moves to a new phase of research co-production and knowledge exchange after it secured funding to continue its work for another three years. The original partners of the N8PRP, which was established in 2013, committed to the new phase when the N8 Board approved funding to match that already agreed by the 11 partner police forces.

The new framework will act as a network and launchpad for the N8 universities and the partner forces and Police and Crime Commissioners to collaborate on new projects, bid for external funding, and look to achieve greater impact in improving policing policy, governance, and practice across the north of England and beyond.

Chief Superintendent Ngaire Waine, Head of Criminal Justice at Merseyside Police, and Dr Geoff Pearson, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law at the University of Manchester, will remain in post as co-directors of the partnership.

Chief Superintendent Ngaire Waine commented:

“Since assuming our roles last year, Dr Geoff Pearson and I have seen at first-hand how crucial the work facilitated by the N8 PRP is, both for police forces and for the communities they serve.

“Thanks to this funding, the N8 PRP will continue to interrogate how evidence-based policing can improve policing responses across all areas of policing whether that be call centres, technology, community confidence or the many different requirements of policing vulnerability.”

“We are currently living at a time of great upheaval for the police,”

noted Dr Geoff Pearson. “It is therefore more important than ever that rigorous research and collaboration is undertaken by academics and policing colleagues in order to help the police respond to the new and developing challenges. The renewed funding for the N8 PRP will enable us to do just that.”

The new model retains N8PRP’s highly successful small grants programme, with £200,000 set aside for collaborative research projects, and provides support for bids for external funding from partners through facilitation of data access and use of the network for increased impact and knowledge exchange. The partnership will continue to deliver events such as the Innovation Forum, along with CPD provision and work on Data Analytics. It will also launch the New Academics in Policing Research Network, which will provide support for PhD candidates and Early Career Researchers from across the partner universities and forces.

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