Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command
Command of the UK's National Crime Agency
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command, or CEOP Command, is a command of the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), and is tasked to work both nationally and internationally to bring online child sex offenders, including those involved in the production, distribution and viewing of child abuse material, to the UK courts. The centre was formed in April 2006 as the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and was absorbed into the NCA on 7 October 2013 by the Crime and Courts Act 2013.
Purpose and operations
CEOP combines police powers with expertise from the business sector, government, specialist charities and other interested organisations.
Partners
CEOP is made up of police officers with specialist experience of tracking and prosecuting sex offenders, working with people from organisations including the NSPCC and Childnet, Microsoft, and AOL. Partnerships have been set up across non-government bodies, including: Action for Children, NSPCC, Barnardos; business (Microsoft, AOL, Serco, Vodafone etc.) and UK Government departments (Department for Education; Home Office; Foreign and Commonwealth Office etc.). CEOP works with organisations such as The Scout Association, the Football Association, the England and Wales Cricket Board, BT, and Lycos to widen the scope of its work.
Budget
The CEOP's Home Office funding was frozen in 2010 and reduced by 10% over the subsequent three years. Staff numbers were increased during this period according to the CEOP, though former employees dispute this. In 2012–13, the budget was £6 million and there were 109 posts, which included 13 seconded police officers. Additional money and resources came from the NSPCC, Google, Microsoft, and BAE Systems Detica.
Global work
The CEOP Centre is also a partner in an international law enforcement alliance – the Virtual Global Taskforce.
“Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command” enters the record as command of the UK's National Crime Agency. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Child, Exploitation and Online can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5097728. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2013, 2010 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.