Budget cuts hit doomed forensics unit

Police can no longer afford to send work to the doomed Birmingham-based Forensic Science Service because of stinging Government cuts to force budgets, the West Midlands' top policeman has told MPs.

Chief Constable Chris Sims, who takes the lead on forensics for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said there was less demand for the unit's services as police forces themselves developed their own "in-house" laboratories.

He said there were some practices police services already emulated such as ballistics, now an IT system owned by the police service.

However, he acknowledged there were other more specialist processes forces would never seek to undertake.

And he suggested that even if demand were to increase, police forces would struggle to find the money to pay for the FSS's expertise.

The FSS analyses evidence from crime scenes in England and Wales, but has been losing about £2 million a month.

It employs 1,600 people and analyses more than 120,000 cases each year.

In December, the Government announced it be wound up by March 2012, and that as many of its operations as possible were to be transferred or sold off.

Campaigners have warned closing the unit — which has helped snare killers such as Suffolk Strangler Steve Wright and Soham child killer Ian Huntley — could make it harder to convict murderers in the future. The Commons science and technology committee has launched an inquiry into the closure of the unit, based at Birmingham Business Park in Marston Green.

Called to give evidence to the panel at Westminster yesterday, Mr Sims said: "It is a very dynamic market. The composition of what we do within forensic science changes very quickly as the technology changes.

"Not too long ago we would have bought from FSS and other suppliers all of our work around ballistics and that would have been a reasonably large spend area. That is now an IT system that is owned within the police service.

"The final factor, topically, is every police force is facing a 20 per cent cut in budgets, and in a sense, that has been anticipated in the year that we are in, and is beginning to impact on this area as it does on everything else. Every police force in the country is having to make some really difficult choices on spending. My force in the West Midlands, we have taken £40m from our budget."

Gary Pugh, director of forensic services at the Metropolitan Police Service, echoed Mr Sims' views. "We are in a difficult financial climate. There are other priorities, I have to fight my corner to retain budget provision for forensic science," he said.