The National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) has launched the Police National Database (PND) for police forces to share and access locally held intelligence and information.

The project took eight years to be completed and was led by technology comany Logica. Other companies including IBM Initiate, Microsoft Fast, Oracle, Huntsman, Sunguard (Capita) and Northgate also contributed.

The NPIA said on its website that the new tool would provide the full intelligence picture immediately to the police, help them identify patterns of criminal behaviour much earlier, and take action more quickly.

The PND fulfils the primary recommendation of Lord Michael Bichard’s inquiry in 2002. Lord Bichard had urged that a national IT system to support police intelligence sharing in England and Wales should be introduced as a matter of urgency.

Lord Bichard said, "I chaired the Soham Inquiry into the murders of Holly and Jessica and, coming fresh to that situation, I was surprised by some of the things that I found. One of the things that surprised me the most was the fact that police forces in this country were not able to exchange information routinely and electronically on individuals, and of course one of the reasons why Ian Huntley remained free in the end to murder those two girls was that the police service wasn’t able to share the information on him. I was shocked by that and one of the most important recommendations from the inquiry was that we did something about it as quickly as possible, and from that the Police National Database was born."

The PND replaces a basic ad hoc system brought in shortly after he reported.

NPIA chief executive Nick Gargan said child abusers, drug dealers and terrorists do not respect force boundaries, but in many cases forces have been conducting their investigations in isolation, unable to see everything the police service knows about a suspect and unable to make fully informed decisions.

Gargan said, "The PND pulls together all that local knowledge and allows investigators to see the full intelligence picture. As a result, they can react far more quickly and effectively when it comes to protecting the public."

Gargan added until now the information had to be shared manually, a fallible and sometimes bureaucratic process dependent on the right staff being able to access and share the relevant files, which could take up to two weeks.

He said, "Enabling the police to identify offenders like Ian Huntley earlier means we stand a much better chance of preventing others like him slipping through the net again."

"Many people will be surprised to know that the police service has not had this capability for many years – the good news is that they have it now."

The PND was developed in partnership with the police service and technology and service company Logica. The £75m project was funded by the Home Office. And NPIA said that the programme will be completed well under budget.

Policing and Criminal Justice Minister Nick Herbert said, "The Police National Database will be a powerful crime fighting tool allowing forces to access existing intelligence which is currently only held on local systems. It is strongly in the interests of the public and the victims of crime that this information is shared so that criminals can be pursued and brought to justice.

"Equally, robust safeguards are in place to ensure that access to this information is properly limited and civil liberties are protected."

Logica CEO Craig Boundy said, "This has been a hugely important project for Logica and our partners because we have helped to deliver a system that will make a real difference in protecting the most vulnerable people in society."

Boundy told the BBC that the project was completed "slightly ahead of time and on budget".

The database will bring together 150 separate computer systems and combine intelligence from the 43 police forces in England and Wales. It will also connect the eight police forces in Scotland, the British Transport Police, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP), the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the military police.

While less than 10 million Britons have criminal records, the NPIA estimates that the data will contain personal details of up to 15 million citizens, which is nearly a quarter of the UK population. Details of people who have been questioned by police, but not charged, will also be on the database.

Civil liberty and privacy campaigners have raised concerns over the security of such a database. Human rights activists have warned that sensitive information of millions of innocent people if the database fails into the hands of hackers.

The NPIA said that the database has been tested by forces since November, as the "most secure police system developed to date". It said that all users will be checked stringently and access will be controlled strictly.

Logica’s Boundy said that the database observes six different security measures, including Access Management and audit.