National Crime Agency

National Crime Agency
Abbreviation	NCA
Motto	Leading the UK's fight to cut serious and organised crime
Agency overview
Formed	7 October 2013; 10 years ago (2013-10-07)
Preceding agencies	Serious Organised Crime Agency Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) Parts of National Policing Improvement Agency
Annual budget	£859.9 million (2023/24)[1]
Jurisdictional structure
National agency (Operations jurisdiction)	United Kingdom
Operations jurisdiction	United Kingdom
Jurisdiction of the National Crime Agency
Population	65,182,178[2]
Legal jurisdiction	Full in England and Wales and Northern Ireland; limited in Scotland
Operational structure
Headquarters	1–6 Citadel Place, Tinworth Street, London SE11 5EF
Sworn officers	1,791
Overall workforces	4,194
Elected officer responsible	James Cleverly, Home Secretary
Agency executive	Graeme Biggar, Director General
Parent agency	Home Office
Child agencies	Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre National Cyber Crime Unit
Website
nca.gov.uk

The National Crime Agency (NCA) is a national law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom. It is the UK's lead agency against organised crime; human, weapon and drug trafficking; cybercrime; and economic crime that goes across regional and international borders, but it can be tasked to investigate any crime. The NCA has a strategic role as part of which it looks at serious crime in aggregate across the UK, especially analysing how organised criminals are operating and how they can be disrupted. To do this, it works closely with regional organised crime units (ROCUs), local police forces, and other government departments and agencies.

It is the UK's point of contact for foreign agencies such as Interpol, Europol and other international law enforcement agencies. On a day-to-day basis, the NCA assists police forces and other law enforcement agencies (and vice versa) under voluntary assistance arrangements. In extremis, the NCA Director General has the power to direct a chief officer of a police force to give directed assistance with NCA tasks where necessary (but only with consent of the relevant Secretary of State).^[3] The NCA itself can also be directed by the Secretary of State to give directed assistance to a police force or other law enforcement agency.^[4]

It was established in 2013 as a non-ministerial government department,^[5] replacing the Serious Organised Crime Agency and absorbed the previously separate Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) as one of its commands.^[6] It also assumed a number of responsibilities from other law enforcement agencies.

The NCA has also assumed a range of functions from the National Policing Improvement Agency, which has been scrapped as part of the government's changes to policing.^[7] These include a specialist database relating to injuries and unusual weapons, expert research on potential serial killers, and the National Missing Persons Bureau. The agencies going into the NCA had a combined budget of £812m, yet the new agency only had £464m in its first year—a decrease of 43%.^[8] Some of the responsibilities of the former UK Border Agency (now Immigration Enforcement and Border Force) relating to border policing also became part of the NCA. Like its predecessor SOCA, the NCA has been dubbed the "British FBI" by the media.^[3]

The NCA's leadership team sets the Agency's strategic direction and provides senior operational oversight. Executive and non-executive directors bring a wealth of experience and expertise from across policing, government and the private sector.

As of October 2021, the Director General is Graeme Biggar CBE.^[9]