Firearms database out to tender at £17m 

After two decades, a defunct police firearms database is to be replaced, with applicants invited to tender for the sizeable five-year contract.

A 20-year-old national firearms database for police in England and Wales may finally be replaced, as a £17 million contract goes out to tender, three years after plans were first revealed.

The National Firearms Licensing Management System (NFLMS) will be run by the Police Digital Services agency, replacing a system full of errors since the mid-2000s. The Home Office describes it as needing to be “adaptive to change and future refinement.”

The NFLMS holds data on around 643,000 firearms licences. The current system has been criticised for complicated processes, long wait times, and incompatibility with online payments, forcing some forces to still require paper forms and cheques.

Bill Harriman, director of firearms at BASC, said the legacy system “desperately needs replacing.” He emphasised the importance of standard data input definitions to prevent inconsistency across police forces.

The Cloud-hosted Law Enforcement Data Services (LEDS) system, which the NFLMS will feed into, is due to go online in March 2026. The new NFLMS should be operational by 2027.

The Home Office aims to award the contract by October 2025. Bidders must register at gov.uk/find-tender. Deadline: 30 June.