GRP-04Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Safer streets, fewer scams
A broad priority grouping A06, A07; its scores are its own, never an average of its members.
Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Population not yet defined. Jurisdiction: not defined.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 14.0–20.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline not yet stated
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Marginal change not yet defined
- Domain home: Crime & safety
- In the national plan: Wellbeing list
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Fraud prevention and place-based violence prevention address different victims and delivery systems; one group score cannot establish both effects.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Retain separate fraud and violence work packages with their own comparison designs, owners and safeguards.
- Test whether it works
- Fraud victim losses and repeat victimisation; serious injury and harm in treated and neighbouring places. Report each outcome rather than a combined incident total.
- Establish the cost
- Data integration, investigation, patrols, victim support and evaluation, avoiding overlap with existing police and industry programmes.
- Protect against harm
- Protect lawful data sharing and community trust; test displacement, unequal enforcement and exclusion from banking.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Safer streets, fewer scams: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)3 of 3 — Severe harm across a broad population
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional problem-importance judgement from linked site pages; not the scale of achievable benefit.
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Reviewer’s reason: Choose scam pathway, bank/platform partners, lawful data sharing, comparator and compensation safeguards; separate policing action. A missing rating requires a defined marginal change.
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)0 of 3 — No effect evaluation
Reviewer’s reason: Cross-sector scam-sharing proposal has no evaluated effect in the artifact. Hotspot-policing evidence is not evidence for scam prevention.
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown unless a reasonably defined target-population benefit can be judged; no bonus merely for spanning domains.
Residual harms (Hm)1 of 3 — Material harm/unresolved mitigation
Reviewer’s reason: Privacy and false positives; harms cannot be assumed minimal.
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Data integration, operations, investigation, evaluation and victim support.
Delivery capacity (Ca)2 of 3 — Stretched but plausibly obtainable
Reviewer’s reason: Choose scam pathway, bank/platform partners, lawful data sharing, comparator and compensation safeguards; separate policing action.
Distribution (Fa)2 of 3 — Mixed or broadly neutral with safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional distribution judgement for the stated target; verify who pays, who gains and excluded groups.
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Reviewer’s reason: First meaningful outcome, not announcement: Victim losses and repeat victimisation; false flags, displacement and privacy.
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Reviewer’s reason: Police, banks, platforms and relevant regulators; Split fraud pilot from violence prevention
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 14.0–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 12.7–18.2 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 15.5–20.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 15.6–18.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Data integration, operations, investigation, evaluation and victim support.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending: incomplete appraisal”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Full incremental costing not established in reviewed material”.
Still to cost: Data integration, operations, investigation, evaluation and victim support.
Funding status: not established in review.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: Police, banks, platforms and relevant regulators (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: unverified.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- not assessed
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Not defined in the review.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
- Choose scam pathway, bank/platform partners, lawful data sharing, comparator and compensation safeguards (proposed, not yet specified)
Risks and residual harms: Privacy and false positives; harms cannot be assumed minimal.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Victim losses and repeat victimisation; false flags, displacement and privacy.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Fraud incidents (Crime Survey): latest 4.5 million (2025–26); baseline 3.7 million (2019–20 (year to March 2020)) (England and Wales).
- Police-recorded knife or sharp instrument offences: latest 48,774 (2025–26); baseline 55,170 (2019–20 (first year on the current recording method)) (England and Wales (including Greater Manchester)).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Victim losses and repeat victimisation; false flags, displacement and privacy.
Cross-sector scam-sharing proposal has no evaluated effect in the artifact. Hotspot-policing evidence is not evidence for scam prevention.
SWOT points it addresses
- Fraud is the most common crime the survey measures: 4.5 million incidents and 3.8 million adult victims in 2025–26, 47% of all survey incidents — up from 3.7 million incidents in 2019–20. (Crime & safety)
- Scams adapt faster than controls: the 2023 Fraud Strategy aimed to cut fraud to 10% below 2019 levels by the end of that Parliament, yet survey fraud rose instead. (Crime & safety)
- Treat the two harms separately: stop scams where they pass through banks, telecoms and platforms, and focus patrols and problem-solving on the few places where violence clusters. (Crime & safety)
- Violence prevention has been evaluated: Home Office serious-violence funding (Violence Reduction Units with hot spot policing) was associated with about 550 fewer sharp-object assault admissions among under-25s (−8.5%) in funded areas. (Crime & safety)
- Poorly targeted enforcement can move crime or damage trust: the main hot spots review did not assess community effects, and English results swung from a 7% fall in 2021–22 to no significant effect in 2022–23. (Crime & safety)
Review record
Assessment status: Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
First 90 days (review): Produce a signed scope and current-delivery baseline; Choose scam pathway, bank/platform partners, lawful data sharing, comparator and compensation safeguards; separate policing action. Obtain incremental costs and an accountable decision before expansion.
Decision route: Split fraud pilot from violence prevention
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.