‘No excuses’ for tech firms as new UK fraud reporting service launched

There will be “no excuses” for technology and telecoms companies not to step up to stop scams as a new national fraud reporting system is launched, a policing chief has warned.

Report Fraud, the £175 million system built to replace Action Fraud, went online in December and is being publicly advertised this week.

Tijs Broeke, chairman of the City of London Police Authority, told the Press Association: “With Report Fraud, led by the City of London Police nationally, there will be no excuses for them any more.

“The information is there, the safe space to share and collaborate together will be there, on a safe platform, potentially even working together in the same building.

“There are no excuses for the tech company or telcos to not step up.”

Police forces are also now measured on their performance dealing with fraud by watchdog His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services.

Action Fraud was labelled “inaction fraud” by some critics who felt victim reports went into a black hole with no action taken.

An investigation by the Times newspaper in 2019 revealed that Action Fraud call handlers were trained to reassure victims that their cases would be investigated, when most were not looked at.

The new system will use AI to spot connections between cases, and from March will allow specialist police officers from across England and Wales to access intelligence.

This is the first time that police from outside the City of London will have been allowed direct access to the information.

It will mean they can do so instantly instead of waiting up to two weeks to receive case details, as under the old system.

In its first month of operation, the number of reports received by the service, previously around 35,000-40,000, rose by 11,000.

Around 1,600 packages of information have been sent out to police forces so far, with 319 investigations completed.

There were an estimated 4.1 million fraud offences in England and Wales in the year to June 2025, according to the annual Crime Survey.

Police recorded 1,225,778 fraud offences in the year to March 2025, with 42,847 investigations completed.

Of these, only 5,530 led to a prosecution or court summons.

The Government has set a target for a 10% reduction in police-recorded fraud and cyber crime per year once the new system is fully operational.

The system is also designed to keep victims updated after they have made a report.

But Detective Superintendent Ollie Little said it is not realistic to expect fraud to be investigated in the same way as other crimes.

“People, when they report a fraud to the police, they maybe expect to have a kind of traditional police response like they may have seen on television, or experienced for another kind of crime type,” he told PA.

“Where they’re going to get a phone call from a detective who’s going to come and see them in their home, take their account and then go and carry out a traditional investigation.

“That’s not realistic for fraud. There’s a big scale challenge, 40,000 reports a month as an average, and that can make people feel like this is kind of hopeless.

“But we don’t want people to have this kind of sense of despair.

“Because the reality is that by reporting to us through this service, which has been designed to make it as easy as possible and to get the best information out of people, you can protect the next person from falling victim.”

Minor scams

Service delivery director Chris Bell said the public should even report minor scams such as common messages asking for a 99p fee to collect a fictitious parcel, because the intelligence is still valuable.

Major change is ahead for policing in the UK, with a white paper on the future of the service as early as this week.

But officers in the City remain confident that they will keep their national responsibility for fraud under restructuring plans.

Mr Broeke said: “There is no police force in the country that has this expertise, that has this experience and these connections.

“And there is a risk, if you merge fraud into something wider and bigger, it will get lost, and actually it will be victims and businesses that will feel the difference.”

A new Government fraud strategy is expected in the coming weeks.