Witness care, redefined

Facing rising court workloads and growing expectations, Humberside Police saw Witness Care teams balancing increasing caseloads with the need to support people through an often stressful and unfamiliar process. By redesigning processes and introducing digital case management, the force created a more resilient way to support witnesses while reducing pressure on frontline teams.

Serving communities across East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire, Humberside Police is recognised for its progressive use of technology to improve public service delivery. Building on its earlier digital victim journey work, the force has applied the same approach to Witness Care to improve coordination, speed up communication and make it easier for teams to keep witnesses informed.

While that earlier work demonstrated the value of proactive digital communication, Witness Care teams continued to face significant operational strain. Officers were coordinating hundreds of witnesses using letters, phone calls during office hours and spreadsheets, creating fragmented processes that placed pressure on teams and made consistent engagement difficult to sustain.

Designed around frontline workflows

To address this, Humberside Police partnered with Infomentum to design a Witness Care solution grounded in real operational workflows and frontline needs. The solution provides:

• Salesforce-powered case management to manage witness cases as they progress through the court process.
• Structured task assignment and tracking at each stage, replacing inboxes and manual spreadsheets.
• A single, reliable view of every witness case, improving oversight, accountability and court readiness.

This approach enables teams to manage high caseloads more confidently while delivering more timely, transparent and consistent support to witnesses throughout their involvement.

“My witness care officers are managing between 700 and 1,000 witnesses each. We're still sending letters, making phone calls between 9 to 5, and managing workloads on spreadsheets. It is a huge amount of work and affects morale as much as service delivery.”
- Chief Inspector Wendy Lusby, Humberside Police

Momentum gained

Early adoption has driven strong engagement from both care teams and witnesses. Officers now have improved visibility of workloads and court activity, while witnesses are responding more quickly to requests and updates. This shift is helping teams move from reactive coordination to more proactive case management.

Interest in the approach has extended beyond the force itself, with high demand for Humberside Police’s Victim and Witness Care webinar highlighting a growing recognition across UK policing of the need to modernise Witness Care services.

“This is their solution, not something done to them. Involving the witness care team every step of the way created real ownership and made business change more straightforward.”
- Colin Dring, Digital Innovation Manager, Humberside Police

Key deliverables achieved

As the solution embeds into day-to-day operations, early indicators point to tangible improvements across both service delivery and team efficiency:

• Reduced reliance on manual processes, with fewer phone calls, letters and spreadsheets needed to manage witness cases.
• Faster court readiness through quicker confirmation of witness availability and clearer coordination.
• Improved visibility and control for Witness Care teams, supporting more confident engagement with witnesses throughout the justice process.

Looking ahead

Humberside Police is now looking at how it can go further, particularly through closer integration with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The ambition is to bring CPS activity into Salesforce, giving Witness Care teams a more complete view of each case and making it easier to track progress across agencies.

At the same time, there is a focus on simplifying day-to-day work. Reducing duplication and moving away from the CPS Witness Management System (WMS) would streamline how cases are handled and help teams keep work moving without switching between systems.