Police officers and businesses are still waiting to hear if the government will approve £1.3m in funding for a national e-crime unit, more than a year after the project was first proposed.

The Association of Chief Police Officers is pushing to create a centralised agency to co-ordinate the fight against internet crime, estimated to cost UK businesses about £6bn a year, according to a recent government report.

However, Acpo has yet to convince the Home Office to give the green light for seed capital for the 50-strong unit, which would cost £5.3m to set up.

Regional police forces have already contributed £1.3m towards the scheme, but need the Home Office to match funding. Acpo is also asking for business contributions to the project, including staff secondments and equipment.

The Home Office is still considering the business case, and a decision is expected within the next two to three weeks, according to Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie, former head of e-Crime at the Metropolitan police, who has been a force in pushing the project forward.

The unit would partly replace the former National High-Tech Crime Unit, which provided a central reporting point for internet crime until it merged with the Serious Organised Crime Agency two years ago.

Since then, businesses have been confused about where to report online crime, with many saying their local police officers lack the technical knowledge to understand the problems.

"With the National High-Tech Crime Unit we had someone to talk to about issues. However, since it was absorbed into Soca, the communication has been zero," said Paul Simmonds, the former global information security director of ICI.

"Half the time businesses don't report e-crime, and half the time when they report it, police officers don't understand it," said Ms McMurdie. She said Soca was focused on a number of big issues such as drugs and terrorism, and estimated the organisation devoted only about 10 per cent of its resources to internet crime.

The central unit would not handle crime reports from the general public, but would co-ordinate responses to e-crime across the country.

For example, an internet scam could hit people across the country, and the e-crime unit would be able to identify the pattern better than local forces acting alone.

The Home Office may be reluctant to provide additional funding for the project after recently allocating £28m to be spent over three years to combat fraud. This includes the setting up of a national fraud reporting centre, which would be a forum for the reporting of all fraud, including electronic fraud.