Action Fraud was subject to an undercover investigation by The Times newspaper which highlighted poor quality call handling and issues with the algorithm used to filter and prioritise cases. Only a tiny percentage of calls resulted in charges.

A report by a committee of MPs in March said  that the reputation of Action Fraud had been left ‘in tatters’ by its failure to manage the expectations of victims and a lack of action on cases.

PwC and Capita have signed a five-year deal worth £50 million to take over contact centre operations and provide new fraud reporting tools. The current service, which will be run by Capita, receives more than 350,000 calls and 2.3m unique website visits each year.

PwC will provide the technology services for the crime and intelligence management that underpins the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB).

The new service has also received £152 million of funding from the Home Office and City of London Corporation to support the link-up of fraud and cybercrime reports from across the country.

Angela McLaren, commissioner of the City of London Police, says: “The transformation of the current Action Fraud and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau is a much needed and critical component of the national Fraud Strategy.

“Key to success is having the right supply chain, and, after a rigorous procurement process, I am confident we have secured quality suppliers who will work with us in delivering our aims and objectives.”

Capita at least has first hand experience of the devastating effects of cybrecrime, having been attacked in March in a hack that resulted in 90 organisations reporting breaches of personal information.

The attack prompted the Pensions Regulator (TPR) to write to more than 300 pension funds to ask them to check whether data had been stolen by hackers.

A second data breach emerged in May when it was reported that the London-based firm had left benefits data files in publicly accessible storage, prompting several councils to say they thought their data had been compromised.