As part of a fraud crackdown, government has unveiled a new nationwide unit which will bring together law enforcement and the wider public sector with representatives from the commercial world
The government has announced the launch of an online crime squad, a public-private partnership intended to drive coordinated action against fraud.
The Online Crime Centre (OCC), to be led by the Home Office and National Crime Agency, will bring together specialists from the government, police, intelligence agencies, and the private sector. These partners will share data and collaborate on interventions designed to eliminate online fraud at scale.
Launching in April, the OCC will have permanent staff and personnel from across the public and private sectors, conducting its work from fixed locations, and virtually, and where possible the OCC will co-locate with other counter-economic crime teams and industry.
The centre, which will be backed by £31m in funding, will be tasked with identifying the accounts, websites and phone numbers used by organised crime groups, and then shutting them down en masse – blocking scam texts, freezing criminal accounts, removing scam social media accounts, and disrupting operations at source.
The announcement forms part of a new fraud strategy published this week, which sets out how the government will disrupt fraudsters and protect the public – with £250m to be invested over the next three years.
Through collaboration, the OCC “will build a comprehensive picture of the tools, methodologies, trends, and perpetrators involved in these crimes”, the new 2026-29 fraud strategy says. “With this understanding, the OCC will share information, identify operational and technical solutions to mitigate harm, and coordinate investigatory and law enforcement actions in the UK and overseas.”
This initiative will build on the NCA’s long-standing public-private partnership initiatives which, according to government, provide a structure for collaboration between the public and private sector in response to serious and organised crime threats.
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The OCC will eventually join the new National Police Service, which was announced in January to create a single source of strategic leadership for policing across England and Wales. The NPS will merge national policing bodies including the NCA, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the College of Policing, and Counter Terrorism Policing.
James Babbage, director general (Threats) at the NCA, said: “Over the last three years, the National Crime Agency has been building a stronger response to fraud. However, the threat will continue to grow globally, and the launch of the fraud strategy provides the basis for a further step change in our collective work to protect the UK public from these criminals. We have worked intensively with partners to pilot a range of new approaches to fraud and cybercrime: sharing data, stopping and blocking more online crime at source, and helping to design out vulnerabilities through more resilient industry processes. We are looking forward to working with partners across the public and private sectors as part of the new Online Crime Centre to continue this.”
Fraud minister David Hanson added: “Fraudsters are exploiting new technology, industrialising their operations and targeting the British public at scale. That’s why we’re bringing together the key players in the system – police, intelligence agencies, banks, mobile networks, regulators and tech companies – to shut down the channels scammers rely on, wherever they operate from.”
The strategy also promises changes to governance which will see the creation of a new Fraud Ministerial Accountability Group to be chaired by the Home Office minister of state with responsibility for tackling fraud, currently Lord Hanson.
The group will sit alongside the Joint Fraud Taskforce, which brings together ministers from relevant government departments, along with law enforcement, regulators and industry, to coordinate action and monitor progress on issues that have been considered too difficult for a single organisation to manage alone. Together, they will provide a single cross-public sector function for strategic decision-making and accountability at the highest level.
