Home>Case studies>Policing & Blue Light

Avon &
Somerset Police

Avon and Somerset Police have migrated 64 WAN sites from a legacy incumbent to Cloud Gateway’s platform – eliminating the need to backhaul traffic through a central network, gaining direct access to cloud services and the Public Services Network, and laying the infrastructure foundation required to deliver on their 2022–2025 digital policing strategy. The migration is being delivered in partnership with Neos Networks.

Modernising the network for one of England's largest
police forces - 64 WAN sites, cloud-first connectivity, and the foundation for digital policing

Policing WAN sites migrated.

With network, traffic and security data now in one place, the force is an active operator of its own network rather than a passive consumer, and capabilities such as secure internet access, SD-WAN and ZTNA can be added as they mature.

IT Principal Delivery Manager - Infrastructure, IT Directorate, Avon and Somerset Police

The challenge

Avon and Somerset Police’s 2022–2025 Corporate Strategy set out a clear ambition: to be progressive and innovative in the use of technology and data, and to act as an exemplar for digital policing nationally. Delivering on that ambition required a network that could keep pace – something their existing estate, built on legacy systems and an incumbent provider, was increasingly unable to do.

Three problems needed solving. First, the network architecture required all traffic to backhaul via a central Avon and Somerset site – creating bottlenecks and preventing direct access to cloud services. Second, the resilience and redundancy of the existing network was insufficient for an organisation where connectivity failures directly affect operational response. Third, the existing estate couldn’t support the cloud adoption the strategy required – as more policing data and applications moved to the cloud, the network needed to move with it.

What we did

Working with Neos Networks, we designed a phased migration plan for Avon and Somerset Police’s WAN – moving 64 sites from their incumbent provider to Cloud Gateway’s platform over a three-year period.

Each migrated site receives:

Direct, private access to cloud service providers and the Public Services Network – without backhauling via the main Avon and Somerset network
Increased bearer bandwidth with scope to scale further on demand
Site-specific network security policy enforced at the edge
New CPE router hardware

The platform is built to scale – additional sites, cloud environments, and endpoints can be added on demand as the force’s requirements evolve.

The impact

64 WAN sites migrated
Direct cloud and PSN access established across all migrated sites – eliminating backhaul dependency
Increased bearer bandwidths delivered at every migrated site
Site-specific security policy in place across the migrated estate
Network foundation in place to support cloud adoption, AI tooling, and data-sharing with other police organisations in line with the national policing agenda