MI5, The Security Service, is due to offload anti-terror work to Police bodies in the UK – such as the National Crime Agency (NCA) and New Scotland Yard – in an effort to diversify its community outreach effect and to enhance rolling functions put in place to inhibit any attacks from taking place.
This is part of a wider strategy to move on from mature investigations that have taken place as part of its Intelligence activity. Insiders say the security body is able to move on because the effort to combat terrorism that has been taken up by those separate to its own work are capable of handling the matter as an ongoing criminal threat.
As terror groups and networks have been suppressed in some parts of the world, and since the elimination of many key figures worldwide, it’s now believed to be a part of broader criminal activity. This means crime networks now hold much of the potential of terrorism and it needs to be seen in this way.
The handover is not yet determined as a specific date, and many Police staff and Officers are trained in how to spot signs of radicalism and counter or deter terror-based threatening activity already, but MI5 is thought to have broader considerations in mind and can’t spare time for overlap.