TOEX Uncovers £156.3m Worth of Annual Social and Economic Costs

The TOEX operating model has uncovered £156.3 million worth of annual social and economic costs to the UK from organised exploitation - not recognised elsewhere in the policing system - of which £30.8 million is cashable. 

A new report by Crest Advisory, who were commissioned as independent evaluators for the programme and are specialists within the field of crime and criminal justice, has analysed the economic and social value of the TOEX model to date and concluded that the resulting TOEX response has significantly reduced the time taken to identify, prioritise, and disrupt high-harm threats.

Crest analysts reached these findings by building on previous Home Office costing and modelling methods, which estimate the annual cost to the UK of organised exploitation to be £2.63 billion.

Based on the programme pilot, and national implementation thereafter, Crest calculated that the TOEX approach in tackling organised exploitation, particularly the identification and scoring of threats faster has saved a total of £1.27 million per year in resources, compared to what would have been required to identify the same threats without TOEX.

It also found that TOEX-supported investigations are:

They concluded that the TOEX contribution to improved identification of threats, prioritisation of law enforcement resources, and the significant disruption of organised exploitation equates to a cashable saving of £1.4 million per threat.

A detailed breakdown of one specific operation, Op Volvox, has been used to demonstrate the TOEX impact on investigations.  

Since 2018, a Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU) had been aware of an Eastern European individual involved in drug and firearms offences. They were suspected of modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) offences as well - involving the exploitation of vulnerable Eastern European nationals who were being coerced to work on building sites in the UK.

Crest found that without TOEX involvement there would have been insufficient capacity or capability to investigate or manage the exploitation aspect of this organised crime group (OCG).

As a result of TOEX support to Op Volvox, two individuals were arrested and identified as potential victims, with 10 victims of labour exploitation identified in total. Using the Crest economic evaluation, Volvox realised:

• The identification of an additional £52 million in estimated social and economic cost from an OCG that would otherwise remain hidden.
• A saving of £4,043.66 related to personnel cost efficiency needed to identify, prioritise, and disrupt the threat relative to a non-TOEX team progressing the investigation.
• And a saving of £4,358.10 per day with the exploitation being reduced for the 10 individuals of labour exploitation identified.