Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Official Report 823KB pdf

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Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)

Item 2 is our first evidence session on post-legislative scrutiny of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012. The committee will take evidence in a round-table format, which is a more informal way of taking evidence and exploring the key issues relating to the legislation. However, it is still a formal evidence session. Rather than there being set pieces of evidence, the format gives a better flow and is a good start to any post-legislative scrutiny. Although the session is informal, people still have to go through the chair so, if you want to catch my eye or the clerk’s eye to indicate that you want to speak, that is fine. You do not have to press any buzzers or buttons; the microphones will come on as if by magic.

We will start by introducing ourselves around the table. I am the convener of the committee.

I am one of the Justice Committee clerks.

I am a Justice Committee clerk.

I am the MSP for Coatbridge and Chryston.

I am a Police Scotland chief superintendent and the president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents.

I am a Highlands and Islands MSP.

I am interim spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities wellbeing board and deputy leader of East Ayrshire Council.

Good morning. I am from the COSLA communities team.

I am the MSP for the Orkney Islands.

I am the Scottish secretary of the Fire Brigades Union.

I am an MSP for North East Scotland.

I am the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland.

I am the MSP for Dundee City East.

I am from the University of Dundee and the Scottish Institute for Policing Research.

I am the MSP for Edinburgh Southern.

I am the deputy convener of the committee.

I thank all the witnesses for giving us written submissions. It was very helpful to have the opportunity to look over those submissions before the formal session.

I refer members to paper 1, which is a private paper. We will now move to questions.

I was not an MSP when the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 was passed, but there was a lot of talk then about financial reasons being the main reasons for reform. I do not know who to go to first, so whoever wants to answer the question should do so. Was the initial case for reform sound?

We are looking at the very beginning of the process. One of the policy objectives was to protect services in light of financial threats. Was that a sound basis in retrospect?

At the start, the FBU supported the creation of a single Scottish fire and rescue service. Unfortunately, however, that has amounted to the loss of more than 700 front-line firefighters and the closure of five operational fire control rooms. That impacts most on women, as those who work in operational fire control rooms are mostly women.

We now believe that the move has not supported the front line, what with the on-going budget cuts to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. On any day, between 60 and 100 fire appliances are unavailable to deal with fire calls, because we do not have enough crews to staff them all the time.

We supported the creation of a single service because we believed that the Scottish Government’s intention was to protect the front line by ensuring that there was no duplication. That was the direction that we wanted to go in but, unfortunately, that has not been the case.

Does anyone else have any comments on the financial aspects?

I was around at the time and know that significant work was done on the outline business case. I cannot comment on the due diligence that was applied, but expectations were built in of on-going savings being made as a consequence of the amalgamation of the precursor organisations—the eight forces and the other two agencies.

The reality is that, as is widely known and as has been widely reported, the service has been running with a structural deficit in its budget for the past five years. It has been trying to narrow the gap; indeed, the money allocated to the service’s transformation budget was, in some ways, used to fill it instead of being used for transformation. The scale and complexity of the challenge and the timescales in that respect were perhaps underestimated, the consequence of which is that we are still coming out of a phase of integration and consolidation rather than going through a phase of transformation.

The picture now is that we have a more stable budget platform, although we still face significant challenges with regard to information and communications technology development and transformation. Perhaps it was not only the scale and complexity that were underestimated but the need to invest and to create a bulge of resource to enable transformation before the situation could be stabilised and we could move forward with a national service. A challenge of such a size and scale had not been attempted before, and perhaps with the benefit of hindsight and the learning that has come from what happened, one might say that significant investment is needed to achieve this aim.

The main driver for this structural change was financial. It is quite interesting to put this into an international context and look at what has been happening in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, where there has been a similar process of policing reform and the merging of what had been autonomous regional forces or divisions into a single structure. However, the driver in those cases has been not money but efficiency and effectiveness. The view is that, because of the changing nature of criminality, particularly with regard to terrorism and organised crime, a single, more centralised structure offers economies of scale and operational benefits such as the ability to mobilise specialist capacity to deal with more complex forms of criminality. The pattern of change is similar, but it is not all driven by money.

Have the financial imperatives been realised?

My sense, particularly from the work that Audit Scotland has done, is that there are still many financial challenges to face in reaping the benefits of reform. There has certainly been a lot of progress on reducing duplication. However, one of the challenges in the first phases of reform was that Police Scotland was required to maintain the number of officers that it had at the outset. That is one of its biggest costs. As a result, it was quite constrained in what it could do to realise any financial benefits.

Local government is very aware of and understands the need for transformation. We have seen benefits, including, as Nick Fyfe has suggested, a reduction in duplication, and we have also been able to pull specialised services together at a more local level, which has been really good. We are concerned at the difficulties that we are seeing on the front line as a result of budgets being cut but, in the round, a lot of positives have come out of the creation of a single police force.

Ivor Marshall raised a point about the complexity of the change that was required. Some of the submissions raised that also. Would you comment on that, before we move on? Was the complexity of merging eight forces underestimated?

It probably was. We did not have the time, experience and expertise to understand the scale of what was involved.

In the best traditions of the service, we got on with it and gradually learned from mistakes along the way. Five years in, the important thing is to recognise that the service has started to develop a 10-year strategy, which it did not have at the start. The ASPS supports that. There needs to be a sense of what the strategy looks like and for there to be a roadmap for the future.

The biggest challenge to do with complexity is that there has rightly been a focus on structures, process and practice to keep the wheels on the wagon and keep going to calls, but that has perhaps been at the expense of changes to the organisational culture—the vision and values. It has also been at the expense of harnessing the workforce and understanding that ultimately policing is a human endeavour that relies upon the women and men who deliver the service to the citizens and that it has to be delivered through them. It is about understanding, supporting and developing them through the structures and leadership.

Are there any other comments on that? Nick Fyfe referred to it in his submission.

The complexity of the changes required was underestimated. Scotland is not peculiar in that. There have been similar challenges in other parts of the world where similar integration has been tried.

As Ivor Marshall said, it is one thing to change the structures, but it is another to change the cultures that underpin them. In our evaluation, we saw a number of challenges around the vision for policing and how that has changed over time. In the early days of the reform, there was a strong focus on enforcement and performance management. There is a shift now, as greater emphasis is put on prevention, protection, localism and engagement. Those changes have taken time to play through.

People talk of reform as a journey with different phases. The first phases were focused on integration and consolidation, and we are coming to the end of those phases. The third phase is transformation. We are only just beginning to see the possibilities of transforming the way in which both the police and the fire and rescue services are delivered. Too many people saw reform as an event rather than a very complex process.

We have recently harmonised uniform terms and conditions in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. It has taken five years to harmonise eight different legacy sets of procedures, policies and terms and conditions. It has been particularly challenging to unify the service as a national service, given the different resources, standards and terms and conditions in each area. It has been a long and hard process. Industrial relations have generally been good with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and that has helped the process more recently.

We need to have the foundations settled first, before we look ahead to transformation. There is no point in building a house if the foundations are not solid at the start. We do not just harmonise. We need to make sure that all the policies and the detail are in place, and that the nuts and bolts are on the policies, if we are looking to move in another direction.

That is helpful. We have supplementary questions from Rona Mackay, John Finnie and Liam McArthur.

I will pick up on what Denise Christie said at the beginning. On a visit to Montrose earlier this month, the committee spoke to a fire officer in charge who said that they had much more autonomy on the operational side, that they had to go through less bureaucracy to get things done and that there was more co-operation—they could just call on other forces for help, whereas that might have been a stumbling block before. That person was complimentary about the operational side—will you comment on that?

10:15  

Collaboration work has taken place with other agencies, some parts of which have been reasonably successful. Other areas go into different role maps of a firefighter. A firefighter’s terms and conditions are based on their current role map as identified in our grey book, which sets out our terms and conditions. To open up a role map and ask firefighters take on other responsibilities, we must go through a negotiation process and ensure that the resources and training are there for firefighters to succeed in that.

Resilience is another aspect. Firefighters have 300 hours a year to maintain their core fire service skills. If a fire station takes on a specialist responsibility, such as water rescue or rope rescue, firefighters need to do another 80 hours of training. If we are to work with other agencies and open up the firefighter’s role, we must have the proper numbers, resources and infrastructure.

Nick Fyfe touched on international comparators and changes that have taken place. For the Scottish Government, one of the main drivers for the mergers was the reduction in the block grant by £3.3 billion, which equated to 10 per cent, and meant a reduction of £50 million—12.8 per cent—in funding for fire and rescue services. Did that shape the legislation and has it shaped where we are now?

The reform involved all sorts of changes not just to the structure of policing but to its governance, so it had lots of implications for local government’s role in the new police service and for its influence locally. Taking away the financial contribution to policing from local authorities has changed how they influence local decisions and play a role in the appointment of local officers. The funding is intertwined with some of the governance changes, which have been important.

Back in 2011, before the reform, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary in Scotland talked about

“weaknesses in police governance and accountability”,

so that was an on-going issue.

It has taken a long time to create a governance structure that properly balances the three elements—the Scottish Government, the Scottish Police Authority and the police service. In the early stages of reform, there was some asymmetry in the relationships—the chief constable and the Scottish Government were the more powerful partners and the Police Authority was a weaker partner. The authority is now becoming more assertive and has developed the capacity to call the police to account. All that has taken time. How to engage local government more in the governance of policing is still an issue; that is a work in progress.

We will certainly come on to local government’s ability to scrutinise and affect matters, because the reform was not about just money.

I will give Liam McArthur a shot, but I really want to hear from more witnesses round the table. Sandy Brindley can come in when she wants.

I am interested in what Nick Fyfe said about the structure, but I will go back to the point that Ivor Marshall made about the transformation fund. I recall criticisms of the approach that was taken to college reorganisation and restructuring, because the perceived savings and efficiencies were banked and it was assumed that that would be able to fund the reform. I am interested in the views of Ivor Marshall and Nick Fyfe in particular on whether the same error was made again here. Were the efficiencies and the savings assumed, guaranteed and locked in, and then used as a justification for not putting in additional funding for the transformation fund through the early stages of the merger?

A big chunk of the budget allocation is spent on wages and personnel, as Nick Fyfe alluded to. What was fixed was the magic number of 17,234 officers. The business case, as it was structured, indicated the savings that were to be accrued year on year. To achieve that, the only areas where savings could be squeezed out were the police support staff roles and the very small part of the budget that concerns running cars, fuel, buildings and so on. The squeeze was on those areas.

There were unintended consequences of losing police staff. For example, officers were taken away from their mainstream roles to fill support roles. As we went through the process of amalgamation and integration, all those factors militated against our ability to get to the transformation projects. The money that had been allocated by the Government to pump prime some of the transformation projects could not be used in that way.

The red line on police numbers was well known at the time of the reform and the bill being passed. You have talked about unintended consequences, but surely the consequences of greater efficiencies needing to be derived from police staff and other areas must have been known. Was the level of savings that was assumed exaggerated or wildly optimistic?

There were known knowns at the time, but the issue was that, despite the due diligence that was done, the expectation in the outline business case was that the savings from amalgamation, stopping duplication and so on would be realised quickly. Given the scale and complexity of merging eight police forces and two precursor organisations, and given the changes to governance, it was unrealistic that that could have been achieved within a timescale in which savings could start to be rendered down. We have run a structural deficit for five years because the transformation has not generated the income, so we have needed to take a patch-up-and-make-do approach to the budget in order to keep things stable.

We now have projects online for 2026, and I know that the service is looking at its ICT infrastructure, in particular, and working towards a business case that will say that we still need money to make the transformation on that scale.

It comes back to the fundamental question whether we knew the size, scale and complexity of the challenge, and the answer is that we probably did not.

As a footnote to that, I think that the costs of transformation were underestimated. For example, the investment in ICT to reap the benefits of having a single organisation as opposed to having legacy ICT systems is significant—there is a whole history associated with the i6 project. Until that element is sorted, a lot of the other benefits are much more difficult to achieve.

I have been quite a close observer of the police reform in Norway, and it was interesting that the initial approach there was to invest hugely in the front line, particularly in technology. Norway’s approach to reform involved giving officers new information technology equipment so that they could work more efficiently on the street, and then it started worrying about structural changes and back-office functions. It was a very different approach: they started with the front line, then looked at the wider structures; the approach here was to start with the structures, then deal with the front line at a later stage.

I am afraid that you have opened the Pandora’s box of ICT. I have two questions. To what extent is the challenge of integration about ICT, and to what extent is it about other things?

The second question is to both Nick Fyfe and Ivor Marshall. What have been the practical consequences of that? We hear stories of police officers having to input into multiple systems for a single incident. Can you bring the issue to life with practical consequences?

ICT is not what it is all about. Policing is a human endeavour; it is about how women and men in the role of police officer interact with citizens and members of the public at times of crisis and need, and it is about delivering a service. ICT is an enabler of that and, as Nick Fyfe alluded to, if we invest properly and give officers the right equipment—be that cars, radios, telephones, tablets or whatever—that might enable them to work more effectively and efficiently.

Particularly for policing in the 21st century, when information about victims, witnesses and so on is critical and across numerous systems, ICT is an essential element in how quickly we can access and share information with partners. However, it is just an enabler towards delivering the service, which is still anchored in understanding the fundamental basics of policing. It is about enabling, encouraging and training officers to go out and do their job, which might be on the front line on the streets. There is a lot of talk about what the “front line” means, however; it could be about working on cybercrime and so on.

We need to understand the scale of the complexity of 21st century policing. ICT is an ever-growing element of that in the technological world that we occupy, but it cannot be the be-all and end-all. If the ICT is good, it can make our job easier and we can be more effective and efficient. If it is bad, we can still deliver a service, but it might not be as effective and efficient.

We have moved on a wee bit, but I want to go back to the case for reform. I know that much of the driver for that was financial but, as Nick Fyfe mentioned, there were other reasons. Without going into areas of questioning on the benefits and negative consequences, which will come up later, does the panel think that the reasons for reform were generally sound and based on the Scottish people’s needs for police and fire services?

That is nothing to do with the timeline, which we thought that you were going to ask about.

I felt that Ivor Marshall covered the timeline, so I was going back to the original question on reform. I would have incorporated that in the initial question.

We were going to look at whether there were barriers to reform that have hindered progress. Do witnesses feel that we have covered the barriers? Are you happy to move on, or is there something that you wish to say in reply to Fulton’s question?

I have things to say about the benefits that we have seen, but I do not know whether that will come up later in the meeting.

We might well go into that, so let us move on to Liam Kerr’s questions on governance. That was mentioned in Nick Fyfe’s interesting contribution.

Professor Fyfe, you talked about the structure and, in particular, governance. We have seen some evidence that suggests that the Police Scotland-SPA structure, which you alluded to, might not be ideal or sufficiently clear. Do the witnesses have views on that structure and, in particular, on the role of the SPA as defined and as it has come to be?

Again, there was an underestimation of how long it would take to establish new governance arrangements at the outset of reform. Although the preparations for the operational side of policing went on for some time, the establishment of the SPA happened very quickly and it has taken time to get the right mix of skills and knowledge in the organisation. My sense is that it is in a much better place now than it was.

10:30  

A key issue that we have looked at is the relationship between local authorities—particularly their local scrutiny committees—and the SPA. We are trying to find effective ways to feed local concerns through to a national body.

A common theme throughout reform has been the balance between centralisation and localisation. In the early stages of reform, the focus of governance arrangements and of operational and strategic elements was much more on the national aspect and on centralising activity; now, the focus needs to be much more on addressing the balance that I mentioned and giving localism a stronger presence in discussions about policing. That can be seen in “Policing 2026”—the strategic document that Police Scotland and the SPA produced—which focuses much more on localism.

In governance, the question is how local scrutiny committees have a voice nationally. Many decisions that are taken nationally have all sorts of local implications but, in the early stages of reform, those committees did not have a particularly strong voice in the outcomes of such decisions.

I would be keen to come back on that, but I presume that Councillor Whitham wishes to speak.

COSLA definitely wants to comment.

I absolutely echo what Nick Fyfe said. Local government welcomed the creation of local scrutiny committees under the 2012 act, but there has been a disconnect that we are catching up with. COSLA, Police Scotland and the SPA have a joint officer group that is working to bridge that disconnect.

At the moment, decisions that have local implications are made at a national level without local input. If local police and fire scrutiny forums are there to make decisions locally, it is imperative that they feed views up to COSLA level—COSLA has a police scrutiny forum—and that needs to feed views up to the national bodies that make decisions. If that does not happen, the feeling will be that decisions have been handed down to the local level for implementation. We are on a journey to address that. The joint officer group will make a big difference and that will build the bridge between the levels.

Overall, local government has had quite a negative experience of the policing arrangements in the past five years. However, work has taken place more recently to improve arrangements, under the leadership of the SPA’s new chair and with our COSLA spokesperson, Councillor Whitham.

A number of controversial issues have emerged in relation to temporary traffic regulation orders—that was last October—as well as police station counter closures, closed-circuit television and armed policing, because national decisions have been taken without sufficient dialogue, communication and meaningful engagement with local elected members. That needs to be improved, and we are working with the SPA, Police Scotland and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers to address that. That has been a learning experience.

Do you feel that, if there had been more local accountability and more local power, a better case could have been made for supporting or changing decisions locally?

Absolutely. Involving the layer of governance that is closest to communities at the creation and ideation stage of policy making and decision making will mean that we have an influence and can produce a better outcome and a better case locally.

That is also because one size does not fit all.

Absolutely.

My question is for Nick Fyfe. Ivor Marshall touched on the fact that 10 organisations came together. If we compare present arrangements with the previous arrangements, can the same argument about the dearth of local accountability be made in relation to the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency or other historical central services? I want to maximise local involvement, but is that a reasonable comparator? Local authorities had zero input into such bodies.

Yes. That is a reasonable comparison. The governance arrangements for those bodies did not allow any local input into the decisions and deliberations of those groups, so it is a fair comparison.

Professor Fyfe, based on what you said earlier, do you have a view on whether the SPA’s recent challenges have been personality and/or culture driven, such that the recent changes in personnel will positively impact on the SPA’s operations, or is there something endemic in the structure that mitigates against its efficient working?

No, the structure can be made to work better as it is. The production of “Policing 2026” was a watershed, because it was a joint strategy between Police Scotland and the SPA. It showed that, working together, they could come to a joint vision of what policing in Scotland would be about, what its priorities would look like and so on. Evidence of good and effective working between those two organisations is beginning to emerge.

Part of the evolution of the SPA has involved making sure that it has the right skills and knowledge in the composition of the board and the wider organisation and, as has been mentioned, ensuring that the connection between the SPA and local government is strong. A lot of progress is being made. In the early days, there was a disconnect between the SPA and local communities, and between the SPA and Police Scotland. Police Scotland was forging ahead with rapid change and the SPA was struggling to keep up with some of what was emerging from that.

Is a single oversight body—the SPA—the best structure by which to hold Police Scotland to account, or is there a better way?

That is a good question. I think that the structure can be made to work effectively. It is important to see it as part of a wider landscape of governance. It is not the SPA alone; there is also Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary in Scotland, Audit Scotland and other bodies that can call the police to account. At one level the SPA can do a very good job. One should not look back to the previous arrangements with rose-tinted glasses—previous police authorities had their own challenges and weaknesses. The key thing now is to address the issue of how to get a stronger local voice in the SPA’s deliberations.

I will throw in my tuppence-worth and answer the questions, but perhaps backwards. I have seen improvements in the relationships at strategic level—the police authority, the various other elements that Nick Fyfe alluded to, such as HMICS, and the force executive working together in a more collaborative and cohesive way, with a shared leadership responsibility rather than a fractured one.

If we are being candid, some of the personalities and leadership styles, the tensions in the early days and the disputes about the interpretation of the legislation about who had responsibility for police staff were unhelpful. That festered for some time and took considerable time to be resolved. We still have not achieved harmonisation of pay for police support staff, and the genesis of that probably goes back to that time. However, it is on a better trajectory now, and it is incumbent on all of us who are involved to try to shape that.

There are still issues of centralists versus localists that are taking time to work through. As a commander in a division with four local authorities I had positive relationships with four scrutiny boards that were all very different and had different needs, and I know that colleagues in similar positions have similarly positive relationships. Those have continued over many years. The voice of local scrutiny boards in affecting national policies has not been heard as strongly as it could and should have been.

Other factors, including financial control and the centralist approach to cuts and budgets, have meant that local area commanders do not have autonomy or as much flexibility with budgets to enable them to commit to local initiatives, in partnership with local authorities. That, in essence, is stymieing community planning and community empowerment. I have been in the job for 29 years and I am yet to see real progress being made in proper community planning and community empowerment. That comes down to the fact that money cannot be shared across budgets at times. We should follow the money trail and trust the people who are in local management positions to provide local services. There is an egg to be cracked in terms of centralist, nationalist control through big entities vis-à-vis what is important for local communities.

Does Denise Christie have a view from an FBU perspective?

In relation to the governance of the fire service, we have the SFRS board, but we believe that there is insufficient knowledge of operational matters and insufficient operational experience. The board scrutinises the service, and it is given papers, policies and procedures from officers in the service. However, there is no independent scrutiny from a professional operational point of view on the fire board. We suggest that a mechanism should be identified so that the board has ready access to independent objective advice and information on operational matters, including known or projected impacts of proposals on operational matters. To scrutinise an organisation, there must be the knowledge, information and experience to do so. That is not happening within the current board structures.

Could you give an example of how that situation plays out and where the fault line lies?

For example, before we amalgamated into the single Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, a minimum number of firefighters was needed on an appliance in order to have a safe crewing model to go to a fire or an incident. Recently, that crewing model has gone from five firefighters on each fire appliance to five on the first appliance and four on the second. As operational firefighters and experienced members of the Fire Brigades Union, we know the impact that reducing the number of firefighters on a fire appliance can have. When such policies and procedures go to the SFRS board, we believe that the board needs independent knowledge and advice and to be given all the information, so that it can make an informed choice to scrutinise or to agree with the decision of the service. That is a specific example.

That is very helpful.

I am interested in the interplay between the centre and local scrutiny panels, particularly given what Ivor Marshall has said. To strengthen the local scrutiny panels, do we need to see the flow of money—

Can I interrupt you? That is exactly the question that Rona Mackay is going to ask, but I will come back to you.

I will continue in the direction in which Daniel Johnson was going, on scrutiny. I listened to what the witnesses said about it having taken a long time to begin to reach the objective. Are we going in the right direction on local policing and local scrutiny? I know that there is a long way to go. In her submission, Councillor Whitham says:

“The model of local policing has allowed councils to retain a local relationship through local police commanders.”

That is positive, and I think we all agree that the model has eradicated some duplication of services, which is also positive. Are we going in the right direction? Will we get there soon? Can you think of any other benefits from the first five years?

Daniel, would you like to add anything to that?

Will the scrutiny panels need budgetary control and powers of appointment in order to have teeth and be heard?

There is quite a lot in those questions.

10:45  

There is. We will get there with the scrutiny. We are making great strides, and if we continue on our current path, local government will have the influence that it needs at that level. We need to ensure that divisional commanders are adequately resourced and empowered to make decisions to help them and their community planning partners to deliver services on the ground at a local level. We have always felt that scrutiny committees should have some involvement in making local decisions when it comes to budgetary spend, appointments and so on. We would welcome a discussion on that.

Having the new chairs of the SPA and the fire board come to our meetings at COSLA has been well received by the representatives on the committee, who are from all 32 local authorities. We are on the right path, but we need to ensure that we empower the divisional commanders to do the good work that they do. Much good work is being done on community planning partner boards around Scotland; it is just about how we build on that, which is about devolving more power down the way.

I broadly concur with Councillor Whitham. Improving governance arrangements with the SPA is a work in progress, but we have moved along positively so far. It is about being in a place where we, the SPA and Police Scotland are comfortable with one other’s positions.

As Councillor Whitham said, it would be helpful at a local level if local police commanders could be empowered by being given more autonomy to deploy resources in line with local priorities, as articulated by the elected members. After all, they are closest to their communities on issues that relate to policing. It would also be helpful to have more scope locally, because a lot of Police Scotland systems and processes are fairly centralised. We need them to be more adaptable and flexible in order to meet local circumstances.

I absolutely agree with what has been said. We need to re-engage with the policing principles that were set out in the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, which said some good things. It is a progressive vision of policing that is about community wellbeing and working in partnership with localities, communities and so on. In a sense, we just need to re-engage with those principles, as they are a really good statement about how policing should be a partnership between different bodies. It should be focused on community wellbeing.

On that point, is there something in your submission about reviewing and going back to the 2012 act? The aim is in the act, but it has not been achieved, so we need to look at where to go now.

Absolutely. For the first three or four years of reform, we lost sight of those policing principles, which was understandable because there were other pressures and demands. However, “Policing 2026” is a good step in that direction. A good statement about the purpose of policing in the 21st century is embedded in the legislation, and if we go back and make that a reality, it will be positive.

Is that almost going back to what you said about where other countries started?

Yes. Other countries look at our legislation and are really impressed by the statement about policing that is set out in it. Also, unlike in England and Wales, where the focus has been very much on crime reduction and where there is a crime-centred view of policing, the statement in the Scottish legislation is about wellbeing, harm reduction and a much more holistic vision of policing. That is much more in tune with the needs of vulnerable populations.

Just to be absolutely clear, I add that relationships at local levels between divisional and local area commanders and communities, scrutiny boards and partners have always been and continue to be strong. That is one thing that has transcended all of this. In the early days, the service withdrew from some partnerships because it was so busy, but some of those have been re-established.

The commitment to collaborative working is still exceptionally strong. We can commit a certain amount of people resource to issues, but there may be no discretionary budget to enable us to run initiatives and match fund them, because money is so tight. Money has been drawn away from the local structure that was used prior to Police Scotland, because of the budget pressures. It is about empowering and enabling local managers to do some of that.

I will give you a tangible example of the frustrations around that. Some local authorities funded community officers for certain divisions, but if that funding was withdrawn, the officers were taken away from the divisions to the centre. That was part of the panoply of maintaining officer numbers, deciding who was paying for what and so on. In the division at that time there was frustration that officers were taken away from performing an important community role in order to make a political point about where the money came from. I think that that was wrong.

However, I reiterate that that is around the fringes of what is a very strong partnership in local policing. Its engagement and working relationships with local communities are still exceptionally strong. I would add that wee bit of polish on top by giving local area and divisional commanders a discretionary budget to do that wee bit more.

Are we starting to move back that way? In my local authority, we still have community police officers, so I am not sure about your point that they are not there. Does that differ?

In some places there were legacy arrangements under which local authorities funded police officers. Whichever council it was had committed money to the police budget that paid for certain officers—say, for 10 officers in a particular local authority area. They were generally community-based officers. If the council withdrew that money from Police Scotland because it felt it could no longer support that, those 10 officer posts were taken back into the overall 17,234 officers in Police Scotland, and at times they were taken away from the local division whether they were needed or not.

As I said, it is a small thing and the issue is probably now being expunged from the funding envelope for Police Scotland, because the vast majority of it comes from the central budget. I do not know whether there is a local authority or COSLA point of view on that.

I was going to give another example of something that is happening at present with local resources for divisional commanders. A huge number of local initiatives may be happening in conjunction with the police and our community planning partners. In my area, the police have become trauma informed and completely aware of adverse childhood experiences, which are embedded throughout the strategic aims of our community planning partnership. Our divisional commander would love to run some initiatives but does not have the resources to do that or to match fund what the local authority is doing.

There are historical examples of local government funding police officers and current situations in which the police are looking at national priorities. ACEs are a national priority that we are all looking at. We want to figure out how we can deal with that at a local level—for community justice to work, we need to understand that—and here we have a divisional commander who really wants to do that but does not have a budget to do any work on it.

Does Denise Christie have any comments on localism—the ability to set local priorities?

I would say the same things that Ivor Marshall said in relation to the police. The frustration for senior managers in local authority areas is that they do not have the budgets to look at local needs. For example, the north area of the Highlands of Scotland has a completely different demographic from the city centre of Glasgow or Edinburgh. The resources that are available and the ability to respond to different incidents and initiatives will be different, and they can be more complex. There needs to be more local autonomy but, in order to have that, people must have the budget responsibility and the freedom to use it.

It is about having the autonomy and flexibility to deal with the issues.

Absolutely.

I apologise to Shona Robison and Sandy Brindley. I will come to them, but Daniel Johnson’s question follows on from that issue. I know that Sandy has a good specific example to give, which Shona will ask about, but we will conclude the discussion on the current issue first.

The questions about the resource that is available to local divisions are key. One of the drivers for the creation of a single police force was to do with specialist divisions. How much have they taken priority at a cost to local divisions, whether that is about local availability or just police numbers? I believe that, in the past five years, local divisions have lost 326 officers and regional forces have lost around 79. Where does the balance lie between the national specialist divisions and local divisions? Does the balance need to be redressed in terms of police numbers?

Everyone is looking at me, so I will answer first. There is not an easy answer to that. As part of the 10-year 2026 strategy, the service has embarked on a demand and productivity analysis. That work needs to be accelerated as we need to properly understand the current demand for policing across Scotland in the 21st century, what we project it to be over the next few years and, as a consequence, the resources that will be required to address that demand. We will then be able to assess whether that is the current envelope of 17,234 officers plus the support staff and the budget that it takes to run that, or whether it is more or less than that. We will then understand the need for specialist resources at national level—whether those are specialist roles relating to national assets; support; firearms search; public order; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents; cyberfraud or whatever—and then, significantly for me, what is required for local policing and local divisions.

At the moment, there is probably a lack of clarity about where the resources need to be at the local level, whether those demands are being addressed appropriately, whether we have got that right and whether the withdrawal of resources that used to be in local policing to support the centralist roles has been the right thing. The indications are certainly that there has been a removal of some resources into the centralist roles, but there may be a good business case for that.

Sometimes we are fighting against the acute challenges of, perhaps, a sex abuse inquiry that is time critical and needs to be resourced, or a need to uplift firearms resources because the terror threat has gone up. Commanders have to decide whether to put resources to the acute or the strategic. Those resources have to come from somewhere, and the most obvious place where they ultimately trickle down and come from is the front-line, operational, uniformed resources. We always tend to take people away from there.

The question is about what is happening at that level because of that chronic removal over time—it is drip, drip, drip—to address acute issues. I know from my Scottish Police Federation colleagues, who are more in tune with the front-line officers in uniform, that those officers feel that that chronic erosion is not being seen and that local policing is being stretched and is getting to a difficult point. Does that answer your question?

I think so.

I again echo what Ivor Marshall said. We looked at that issue in some detail as part of our evaluation and it was clear from our discussions with local officers that they can see the benefits of being able to access specialised resources, particularly with complex crimes such as murders or high-risk missing persons. The ability to draw on those resources is definitely seen as a benefit.

However, local officers have concerns. One is that officers are being redeployed from local policing teams into specialist services and are not being replaced, so there is a diminution in the local resource. Another concern is about how local officers access those resources—how they bid for them and how bureaucratic the process is. They are concerned about how quickly they can mobilise those resources if they need them locally.

A third theme is the interface between specialised, centralised resources and the local knowledge of officers. Local officers have a huge amount of rich local knowledge about what is happening in their communities. There needs to be an effective way to share that knowledge with more specialist teams that come from outwith the local area.

11:00  

Finally, officers wanted to know what it means in terms of their careers. What does a career path look like for a specialist officer as opposed to someone in a local policing team? There is a sense that those who work in specialised functions are being quite well supported in their skills and career development whereas those in the local policing teams are relatively neglected. That creates a two-tier system.

Ivor, you make a point about careers in your submission. Would you like to add to that?

I can corroborate that point. There is concern that there is a divergence between being a specialist in a national role and those who have a role in local policing. That issue came up during the reform process. We want to avoid the American model, where there are national teams—such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation—and local policing and never the twain shall meet. It is nowhere near as bad as that, but that is what we want to avoid. There is a sentiment that specialists are more visible and that it is the sexier part of policing when compared with local policing.

Members of ASPS are concerned that there has been a natural drawing of types of senior posts towards more central locations because that is where the demand is and where the specialist roles are based. As officers from the far north or south who were in national roles have retired, their roles have been engineered into the central belt. That reduces the opportunities for people who hold higher rank to remain in more rural parts of Scotland.

We need to be flexible and agile in our ability to enable officers to work in all parts of Scotland, perhaps by using technology. If we limit the opportunities because of geography, officers and staff may choose not to pursue certain promotions and so on. That would mean that we lose talent from across Scotland as people choose not to move, perhaps because of family commitments or whatever.

We need to be mindful of that and have meaningful conversations with staff to find out where they are, what their development needs are and what the potential is, so that we can maximise the entire workforce and not just those who happen to be geographically located in the right place.

I have also been told about the flipside of that, which is that Police Scotland is developing overspecialised senior police officers and so losing a breadth of experience. Do you agree with that view?

There is a balance to be struck. We invest in certain specialist roles, such as in counterterrorism, to build up a level of expertise, and it is important that we do not lose that expertise. In the national service, you can see that people have a career path by ascending in certain specialisms. I understand that to a point, and we need to be mindful of that.

Nevertheless, there is a real benefit in cross-fertilisation, and we need to keep that as much as we can. Throughout my career—this is also true for others—whenever I have taken a more central role, I have then gone back to a more localised role for my next posting. If the service can accommodate and facilitate that because it knows its people well enough, we can share knowledge and expertise. If someone has been in a specialist role for several years, it is easy for them to forget how acute things are in a local policing context. When they go back out there, they realise that the specialist world is not everything and that it all comes back to what is happening in a local community and what is affecting local citizens. It is always good to have that touchstone.

Nick Fyfe, you summed it quite nicely, I think, in the reference in your submission to

“the lack of clarity around career development and training opportunities for local officers in the new national organisation, contributing to low morale.”

Yes. My sense is that that issue is now being addressed. However, certainly in the early stages of reform, that was not given a high priority and people felt that they did not really understand what their career paths would look like in the new organisation. It was a huge change for them.

It also raises a wider question that it is important to have a bigger conversation about: what size and shape of workforce does Scotland need? Again looking at international comparisons, we find that Scotland has a lot of police officers compared with countries such as Norway, Sweden and Finland, which have populations of a similar size. In those countries, they are having conversations about the skills that are needed, given the changing demand on police organisations.

One huge and increasingly important area of police activity is cybercrime. The skills that people need to tackle such crime are very different from the skills that have been focused on in traditional police training, and you might need to bring more civilians into the force to work in such areas. As a result, the balance between uniformed officers and civilian staff will need to be rethought.

I will be brief, because I know that members want to ask other questions.

Local government and local councillors really welcome the shift back to locality policing. Indeed, we have seen that in community council meetings. Specialist areas such as counterterrorism, cybercrime and so on are important, but the fact is that, given the time that they are being allowed to undertake community policing, local police officers’ knowledge of the areas that they serve can only get wider. That will make a big difference for us in local government, and we really welcome that shift back.

We have had the same experience in the fire service. It has been difficult to recruit and retain senior and middle managers in more rural areas. Previously, those going for promotion did so in their own local brigade—in other words, in one of the eight brigades—but firefighters and middle managers who are looking for promotion might now have to move from Edinburgh to Inverness or from Glasgow to Aberdeen. Moreover, those posts are expanding, and middle and senior managers are having to take on much more responsibility than they had in the eight legacy brigades, which is leading to stress and low morale. According to a freedom of information request that was made last year, there has been a fivefold increase in the number of people in the fire and rescue service who are going off work because of work-related stress and pressure.

As I have said, it has been difficult to recruit and retain those individuals. Indeed, the Auditor General recently published a report on succession planning in the senior elements of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and the findings were quite worrying.

My question is for Nick Fyfe. To what extent do you believe that this discussion about growing specialism would have been happening anyway, whether or not reform had taken place? I am thinking in particular of the use of language. As a Green, I am very keen on using the word “local”—I think that it is terribly important—but it can be bandied about quite casually. For instance, locally in Forfar, we visited two highly significant national specialist units, but they would not be presented as such. Similarly, in the Highlands and Islands, where there have been challenges with regard to the fire service, there are two state-of-the-art training facilities that were not there before. Is the language that is being used sometimes adding to the confusion?

That is a good point. Some of it goes back to the original legislation, which talked about local policing without defining what that actually is. Over the past five years, we have had a very important debate about what is “local” and the local implications of national decisions. That debate is happening all over Europe—it is not peculiar to Scotland—and the questions that are emerging from it are whether the issues are about local empowerment or about ensuring that policing is sufficiently flexible to meet local needs and whether there are ways in which local communities can articulate what their needs are.

We should also recognise that a lot of the demands that are made on policing are national and international in their origins and character. We need to maintain national and international collaboration in order to tackle organised crime, terrorism, cybercrime and so on.

Language is important. Sometimes we do not unpack enough what we mean by “local” in an operational sense and in terms of wider strategic requirements.

In the debate, we sometimes lose sight of what the reforms and the merger have meant for people who receive services and what the outcomes have been for victims of crime. I am struck by Sandy Brindley’s evidence on behalf of Rape Crisis Scotland, which states that

“the move to a single police force has transformed the way rape and other sexual crimes are investigated in Scotland.”

It would be useful to hear from Sandy Brindley about the outcomes for women before and after the merger. Can you give some examples of what the merger has meant and how those outcomes have been achieved?

Yes, of course. It is not for us to comment in any detail on the governance and finance aspects of a single force. However, given the direct feedback that we have received from people whom we work with and who report crime across Scotland, I would say that, in general, there has been a transformation since the advent of a single force. Prior to the establishment of the single force, progress had been under way through the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, but having one structure has assisted in the move to specialism, and the move to specialism in the investigation of sexual crime has made a concrete difference for the people whom we work with.

We have a feedback protocol with Police Scotland whereby we proactively ask callers who are referred from Police Scotland a number of questions about their experience of reporting to the police. We then provide monthly reports to Police Scotland that summarise people’s feedback, which is overwhelmingly positive. That is not to say that there are not still learnings to be taken from people who are unhappy with their experience, but such cases are very much the exception these days. Even 10 years ago, we frequently heard complaints about the police response to people reporting sexual crimes.

Our experience is that the merger has been very positive. The structure enables specialism and, when there are difficulties, Police Scotland is very much open to working in partnership with organisations such as Rape Crisis Scotland. Police Scotland is also keen to proactively get feedback and learn from that. When we notify Police Scotland of difficulties, the structure of Police Scotland enables any learnings from complaints to be integrated into practice much more easily than would have been the case when there were distinct forces across Scotland. At that time, there were a number of challenges to improving the responses to sexual crime.

Was one of the major game changers the fact that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service prioritised the prosecution of rape and sexual assault cases and set up a dedicated unit? That happened under Stephen House, who was the force commander of the new single police force. I completely take your point about communication; it was important that the message was able to cascade down through the single force. However, I want to tease out the extent to which the policy change in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has contributed.

My experience is that Police Scotland has led the way in transforming the response to sexual crime. However, without being overly critical, I think that there are still a number of difficulties in relation to the prosecution of crime, so that aspect has not matched the improvements in the policing side of the approach. It is very much the creation of a single force that has led to improvement. A number of individuals in Police Scotland have shown real leadership in driving forward the improvements, but the new structure has made a concrete difference for people who report sexual crime across Scotland.

11:15  

I am picking up that, previously, there may have been geographical variation in how the police responded to sexual crimes but that there is now consistency of approach so that, if a woman reports a sexual crime, it does not matter whether it is in Orkney, Inverness, Glasgow, or Edinburgh—the response will be the same. First, is that the case? Secondly, are there any remaining issues to be addressed to make sure there is consistency of approach across all geographical areas? At the heart of that, has it been about not just the use of specialist officers but the training of police officers more generally across the board, including those who work in the community?

In our experience, when people have a negative experience in reporting a sexual crime to the police, the biggest issue is attitudinal. It is about shifting a culture within an organisation with a significant workforce, and having a single force has assisted with that. Some cases from the previous forces are still coming through the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner. I hope that such cases will not arise under the single force, because the rape task force now has oversight, which was not the case in the previous system.

I do not want to make it sound as though things are perfect, as there are still issues with attitudes, training and culture. However, the situation is significantly better than it was in terms of the experiences that we are hearing about from people across Scotland.

The role of the national rape task force in monitoring the situation and making sure that the improvement continues is critical.

Yes, it is critical.

Having a single police force has enabled us to look at tackling violence against women at a local level in our partnerships in local councils, and we have been able to embed that as a strategic priority within the strategic aims of our community planning partnerships. It is about the police force speaking with one voice and taking that right down to the local level so that we are seeing a good move in that direction as well.

A strong message has been able to come out.

Definitely.

I want to ask about communication within the police force and within the day-to-day running of Police Scotland. I think that the point appears in Nick Fyfe’s submission; I am not sure whether it comes up in Ivor Marshall’s submission.

We looked at elements of internal and external communication, and there was a strong sense—particularly among local policing teams—that internal communication is relatively poor. They felt that there is a lot of emphasis on what needs to change and how it needs to change but less emphasis on why that change is happening. Officers wanted to know a lot more about why particular changes are being introduced. There was a strong sense that communication could be better. It is a question of striking the right balance, though, because they sometimes felt that there is an information overload and that they are being overwhelmed with new procedures, new protocols and so on.

There was also an issue about the balance between face-to-face communication and electronic communication. Partly because of the restructuring, local officers sometimes felt more remote from their more senior colleagues and said that there is less day-to-day interaction with local commanders in some areas.

On external communication, there was a feeling that, in the early stages of reform, Police Scotland did not place enough priority on consultation and engagement when it embarked on a series of changes that would have implications for other organisations. However, that situation is beginning to change and there is a stronger movement towards consultation.

Was communication an issue for the FBU?

Because we amalgamated eight brigades into one and a vast amount of information on policies, procedures and new processes comes through internally, it is difficult for individuals in the organisation to take on board that information and learn from it before more information comes through. The issue is the speed at which that information comes through and the fact that it is almost constant.

I think that Nick Fyfe covered the issue of the frustration about internal communication. It is a feast or a famine, regardless of how we do it. There have been issues for senior executives in getting messages out to a big organisation that are authentic and informative and that include people so that they understand why we are doing things. The messages can be quite complex, and there is a balance to be struck between posting messages on the intranet and having face-to-face conversations—the latter being the most effective way of communicating. There is something about using the chain of command and briefing appropriately all the way down the organisation so that people feel that they are still part of the police family rather than an employee being told what to do and how to do it through standard operating procedures and so on.

We have carried out two large-scale staff surveys and three surveys in the superintendents association, and more survey results are coming in. The service needs to pay attention to the results of such surveys and must be seen to be doing something quickly. If you ask a question of your workforce but do not respond or do not seem to respond, that is almost worse than not asking the question in the first place. It is imperative that the listening and learning organisation element of this gathers pace, so that the workforce see that they are being listened to. That is key to communication.

A key theme in the Scottish Police Federation’s evidence is the importance of communicating—and of listening and responding—to people who are out there daily on the front line.

I touched on the need to maintain confidence in local policing throughout local communities. In the past five years, we have learned that we should have a no-surprise agenda. Local authorities should genuinely engage at an early stage so that no potential national policy or priority emerges from Police Scotland that causes alarm or the controversies in local government that I mentioned earlier. It is about enhancing that approach, and we are working with partners to address that. It has been encouraging to hear newly appointed Chief Constable Iain Livingstone talk about the need to better engage local communities and to consider devolving policing.

We have about five minutes left and have exhausted our questions. What one thing would you like to flag up to us as we continue our post-legislative scrutiny?

It is important for us to flag up the need for response time targets and response standards. Previously, we had response time targets for a fire engine leaving a fire station to go to an incident, which helped to keep the infrastructure in place and to maintain the number of fire stations and firefighting personnel, but those targets have gone. We need to restore response standards in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to ensure that the public are being provided with a world-class service and to ensure public safety and firefighter safety. We go into more detail on that in our written submission.

It might be helpful to raise the issue of forensic responses to sexual offences, which cuts across the single force, health and the Scottish Government. Progress in that area has been much slower than it should have been. People are still being examined in police stations, and some people wait for two days after rape to be examined, while others are being examined routinely by male doctors. The difficulty arises when an issue falls between different agencies such as the police, the health service and Scottish Government departments. There is an SPA responsibility, too. Progress is under way under the chief medical officer’s task force. However, we need to put a marker down that we need urgent action on that issue, because the current approach is not acceptable.

I reiterate a point that I made earlier: we need to go back to the principles of policing and make them the heart of policing. It must be about community wellbeing and working in partnership. In order to do that, we need to constantly review the relationship between centralism and localism. We did not get that right in the early stages of reform but we are moving in the right direction through greater empowerment of local commanders and having a stronger voice at local scrutiny committees. Continuing in that direction makes a lot of sense.

We have a workforce of women and men who are vocationally driven, dedicated, professional and committed. They turn up to work and want to do a fantastic job day in, day out.

Over the past five years, we have dealt with many of the practices and processes. Now that we have done that, we need to change the organisational culture to show that we will listen to people, invest in them and give them training and development. We need to totally empower and unleash them to give of their best every day to serve the citizens of Scotland. If we can couple that vision and sense of police family with the technical excellence that we now have, our police service will be the envy of the world. That would be a key step forward.

I echo what Nick Fyfe said. Keeping direct, open lines of communication with local government is key for us. If we can get that right with the police scrutiny forums and cascade up rather than down, we will be doing really well.

It is also about genuine partnership working between the national and local levels and with SFRS and Police Scotland to ensure that national policy priorities do not override local priorities. We need to maintain police confidence locally, with an assurance from Police Scotland and SFRS that there will be effective performance reporting. There must also be effective information sharing at a local level between community planning partners as part of the wider community safety agenda.

I thank everyone for attending the meeting. It has been a worthwhile opening session in our important post-legislative scrutiny. I also thank you all for your submissions.

11:27 Meeting suspended.  

11:33 On resuming—