Serious Organised Crime Agency - Governance

Governance

The agency is an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by, but operationally independent from, the Home Office. It is funded by the UK's central government, with a provisional budget for 2006/7 of £457m, of which £416m funds on-going resources and £41m is capital investment. At formation it was intended to have around 4,200 employees, of which 400 were support staff. Of the remaining workforce, half will be criminal investigators and the other half will focus on analysis and intelligence. SOCA co-operates closely with the police, intelligence agencies, HM Revenue and Customs, foreign police forces and others.

SOCA is led by a board comprising non-executive and executive members. The founding non-executive chairman, responsible for the overall approach of the Agency, was Sir Stephen Lander, former Director General of the Security Service(MI5). Lander was succeeded by Sir Ian Andrews, a former MOD Civil Servant. The other original non-executive directors of the board were Stephen Barrett, Elizabeth France, Ken Jarrold, Janet Paraskeva and General Sir Roger Wheeler. Today, the non-executive directors are Peter Clarke, Sue Garrard, Francis Plowden and Dr Martyn Thomas. The original executive directors of the board were David Bolt, Malcolm Cornberg, Paul Evans and Trevor Pearce, and today they are Malcolm Cornberg, Paul Evans, Trevor Pearce and Brad Jones. The agency's headquarters are in Victoria, not far from New Scotland Yard. There is also an office in Vauxhall, South London, not far from the Palace of Westminster and the SIS Building.

The founding Director General was Bill Hughes, formerly of the National Crime Squad. Hughes retired in 2010 and was succeeded by Trevor Pearce, who until then was Executive Director of SOCA's Enforcement Directorate.

The board has directed that around 40% of its effort should be devoted to combating drug trafficking, 25% to tackling organised immigration crime, around 10% to fraud, 15% on other organised crime and the remaining 10% on supporting other law enforcement agencies.