Police in Hertfordshire will soon be using palm held computers thanks to a successful £1.9 million bid to the Home Office for funding.

Hertfordshire will receive a share of £50m allocated by the Home Office to the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA). A total of 38 forces across England and Wales made bids for funding.

The cash will finance palam held computers - Personal Digital Assistants - and should help them make decision on the street as they tackle and help prevent crime.

Deputy Chief Constable Simon Parr said: "This is excellent news for Hertfordshire and an acknowledgement of the work we have carried out recently as one of five pilot forces taking part in a national trial, involving officers using hand-held Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)."

Work has been ongoing to develop the information available on the PDAs to ensure officers are provided with improved information at the scene of incidents to assist them with decision making.

One thousand PDAs have already been distributed to officers across the constabulary and the additional funding will enable the provision of a further thousand, along with 300 car-borne devices.

Simon Parr added: "Ultimately, the aim is to provide officers with access to incident logs, crime reports, the Police National Computer and intelligence, along with a raft of other useful facilities including satellite navigation.

"This will enable our processes to become more efficient and there will be less need for officers to return to a police station to carry out checks, increasing the time they can spend out on patrol.

"We intend to change the way this force does business, increasing our responsiveness and our visibility."

Chair of Hertfordshire Police Authority, Yasmin Batliwala JP, said: "This grant will enable the Constabulary to step up its work on cutting bureaucracy for officers and staff on the frontline of policing and make them even more visible and accessible to the people of Hertfordshire."