The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) is the body which represents UK policing on a national basis. It is the successor organisation to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).
It is a core participant in the Undercover Policing Inquiry on the grounds that it has:
- an interest in the issue of undercover policing, particularly through its subcommittee, the National Undercover Working Group; and
- oversight of Operation Elter, the investigation into the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which had been overseen by ACPO’s Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee.
In its opening statement to Tranche 1 it wrote:
The NPCC does not act for any individual officer or former officers in this Inquiry, whether officers from the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) or the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). Instead, the NPCC has a generic interest in each Tranche, including Tranche One, which derives at least in large part from the following factors:
a) The NPCC’s ongoing role through the National Undercover Working Group [“NUWG”] in formulating policy and practice relating to undercover policing operations. The NPCC coordinates the operational response, across the Police Service, to some of the country’s most serious threats including terrorism, organised crime and national emergencies.
b) The fact that the NPCC has custody of the extremely voluminous documentation generated by the NPOIU (by virtue of being the successor to ACPO) and is, therefore, heavily involved in the disclosure and associated redaction exercise relating to former NPOIU officers. This exercise continues but to date has involved several million documents being collated and uploaded to Relativity and liaison to make documents available to the Inquiry;
c) The NPCC facilitated the involvement of risk assessors, whose reports have informed anonymity decisions taken by the Chair in respect of former NPOIU officers.
In the Inquiry, the Council has been represented by Sir Robert Francis KC and Gerry Boyle KC leading Cecily White (all based at the Serjeant’s Inn chambers) .