To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what data her Department has collected to identify growth in county lines activity across the UK.
Answered on
23 April 2018
The NCA produces a threat assessment that provides information about the extent of county lines across England and Wales. Following a request from the Home Office, the NCA undertook the first national county lines assessment in 2014 which was published by the NCA in August 2015. They then provided a second threat assessment on county lines in November 2016 and its most recent threat assessment was published on 28 November 2017. This sets out how the issue of county lines has continued to develop and is now being seen as a problem in more areas of England and Wales.
We are supporting the work of the NPCC and NCA to establish a new National County Lines Co-ordination Centre (NCLCC) by providing specific funding of £3.6 million over the next two years (2018/19 and 2019/20).
The NCLCC will help bring the law enforcement effort together as the links behind county lines are complicated and the threat crosses police force boundaries. The NCLCC will support operational policing, for example, through supporting police forces in their use of the Drug Dealing Telecommunications Restriction Orders (DDTROs) to close down mobile phone numbers used for county lines drug dealing, as well as providing a central point at which intelligence and information is shared and the links with criminal exploitation and illegal drugs markets are identified.