The UK's police service is looking to purchase technology and services under a £120 million ($163.3m) effort to digitize its VHS archive.

As reported by the Register, non-profit Bluelight Commercial, which acts on behalf of the UK's emergency services, has put out a planned procurement notice on behalf of an unnamed police force.

Additionally, this month has seen the Metropolitan Police Service - which serves the Greater London area excluding the City of London - has renewed a data center hosting contract with Datum Datacentres.

The VHS digitization contract is split into three Lots: Lot 1 is for "inhouse VHS media digitization" and includes the provision of software, hardware, and training for the police force in question to do the conversion; Lot 2 is for "outsourced VHS media digitization" which will see a company handle some of the converting of tapes, to be "returned securely" to the police force; and Lot 3 is for "niche media digitzation" and includes other forms of media including microfiche, CD, and DVD.

Lot 1 has an estimated value of £60m ($81.6m), and Lots 2 and 3 have a value of £30m ($40.8m) each. The contract is expected to run from 6 October 2025 to 6 October 2029, and will go to either a small and medium sized enterprise, or a voluntary, community, and social enterprise.

An official tender notice is expected to be published on August 12.

VHS tapes were invented in 1971, before being widely introduced in 1976. They lost popularity in the late 1990s as DVDs became more popular. Today, most content is stored and streamed digitally.

BlueLight Commercial was formed by the Home Office in 2020 to work with the emergency services and is publicly funded.

Met Police renew Datum contract

In addition to the UK police force seeking to digitize its archives, London's Metropolitan Police Force has renewed a data center contract.

Dubbed the Hawk Data Centre Facility Services, the contract has been awarded to Datum Datacentres and is valued at almost £14.1 million ($19.18m).

The contract runs from July 2025 to June 2031, with a possible extension to June 2033.

Datum operates data centers in Manchester and Farnborough, just outside London.

In Manchester, the company operates the MCR1 and MCR2 facilities.

Launched in 2007, Datum’s MCR1 facility is located in the adjacent Delta House. The company offers colocation space across five data halls in an eight-story, 70,000 sq ft (6,503 sqm) building. MCR2 was launched earlier this month and is located in Wythenshawe, with a capacity for up to 1,200 racks, each with a density of up to 30kW.

The Datum FRN1 facility in the QinetiQ Cody Technology Park in Farnborough outside London was launched in 2012. The 40,000 sq ft (3,716 sqm) facility was built by KeySource in 2012.

Datum was acquired by funds managed by the UBS Asset Management (UBS-AM) Real Estate & Private Markets business (REPM) in September 2021.

Last year, the UK's Home Office announced plans to migrate all the systems and services out of a core Police data center located in Hendon, northwest London. That data center is government-owned, and has been home to the Police National Computer - a database of more than 130 million items - for the past 50 years. The Hendon facility spans 7,231 sqm (77,834 sq ft) and is located on Aerodrome Road.