THE future of crimefighting in Sussex has been placed, in part, in the hands of a computer systems specialist with a base in Birchwood.

Bosses at Esteem Systems, which has a north west office at Kelburn Court, Daten Park, have signed a £2.5 million deal with the county's police force to completely overhaul their criminal intelligence computer system.

Esteem has been taken on to install a new IT infrastructure, to support the constabulary's incident management system, provided by ABM.

They will also supply the Sun Microsytems hardware on which the ABM software will run.

Nigel Howard, the force's IT programme manager, said: "Up-to-date technology is an important tool in the fight against crime."