Chapter 1 Executive summary
Policing in a changing world
1.1 Policing in Scotland is facing unprecedented changes in demand and expectation, driven by both global and local events. Policing is becoming increasingly complex, with new technological developments and new policy areas. There is now also greater emphasis on partnership working, particularly at a local level through community planning.
1.2 These changes emphasise the importance of ensuring there is an effective balance between delivering locally visible, accessible and familiar policing, the cornerstone of policing activity, with the specialist policing required to deal with the high impact but less frequent crimes and incidents.
1.3 This review is concerned with identifying the action required to ensure Scottish police forces are properly supported and can continue to deliver effective policing across the wide range of demand and within available resources.
Understanding risk
1.4 Policing in Scotland is almost by definition 'high-risk'. Whether responding to emergencies or working with other agencies to reduce the risk of serious offending, its routine activities can have serious consequences if they go wrong. Understanding and assessing risks, both those to the general public and those to the police service itself, is fundamental to the effective delivery of policing. For this review, we have grouped the key policing risks into five categories - operational, organisational, national, professional and programme/infrastructure risks.
1.5 Our findings indicate that only operational risks (and not all of these) are currently assessed systematically through the National Intelligence Model ( NIM) process. Other types of risk are assessed on a more ad hoc basis by different parts of the service. We also found that strategic risk assessment for national risks is currently primarily undertaken only by the police.
1.6 In our view, the management of risk should be shared between the police and those responsible for providing local or national governance and financial support. We do not consider this is currently being achieved to the extent required.
The financial environment
1.7 Policing in Scotland is a relatively expensive concern costing more than £1 billion per annum. Forces are facing increasing financial pressures, arising both from current commitments and from a lack of robust costing of new demands. The potential loss of ring-fenced funding through the Concordat may put further pressure on existing force budgets.
1.8 However, despite these pressures, there is little evidence that the high level costs of different policing activities are properly understood. In our view, this lack of understanding, combined with the current lack of common service standards, means that important decisions on the delivery of police services are not supported by robust information.
1.9 This lack of systematic risk assessment, common service standards and understanding of costs, means that the tension between demands for expert and specialist policing and the need to deliver locally agreed community safety outcomes is more difficult to resolve.
Managing the risks - how police services are delivered
1.10 Although police services in Scotland are primarily delivered through the eight police forces, this formal structure hides a more complex service delivery framework covering three different levels - local, regional and national.
1.11 At a local level, the provision of community policing is a strength of Scottish policing, and a significant amount of effort is devoted to managing local risks, mostly through working in partnership with other agencies.
1.12 However, at regional and national levels, there are a number of different approaches for managing those risks which require more specialist resources. These include:
- chief officers acting through the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland ( ACPOS);
- forces acting individually through inter-force collaborations; and
- the creation of the Scottish Police Services Authority ( SPSA).
1.13 In 2005, the then HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland ( HMCICS) asked ACPOS to review the capability and capacity of policing across Scotland. We found only limited progress had been made since then in some of the important risk areas included in this work. Overall, we cannot provide robust reassurance that either these risks or other emerging high risks are being managed effectively.
1.14 The varying sizes and capacity of the eight police forces in Scotland also means that different collaborative arrangements have arisen to enable forces deliver some of the specialist services required to deal with increasingly sophisticated criminal elements. In essence, an internal market is developing in some aspects of policing. We are concerned by the weaknesses in information about need, costs and standards that underpin these processes, by the lack of national oversight of such arrangements to ensure best use of policing resources in Scotland and by their lack of robust governance.
1.15SPSA is fundamental to the future delivery of policing across Scotland, in a range of areas, although its current focus is on consolidating its existing responsibilities and workload.
Governance
1.16 Ensuring proper accountability for policing services is important, whether these are provided nationally, regionally or locally in communities. We conclude in this report that there are gaps in the current arrangements and that more support is required to ensure effective governance across the different levels of service delivery.
1.17 At a local level, we found that police authorities and boards, who have overall responsibility for funding individual forces and holding them to account for their performance, currently have very little influence over local policing decisions made through community planning partnerships and their Single Outcome Agreements ( SOAs). The lack of formal governance at this level is a particular concern, given the increasing importance of these decisions in the delivery of local police services.
1.18 At a regional or force level, while there are formal governance arrangements through joint police boards and police authorities, these require further support to work effectively. There is a lack of independent support provided to police boards or authorities, to enable them to properly deliver the degree of scrutiny, challenge and accountability required.
1.19 We also identified a gap in the current governance arrangements for national policing decisions. Chief constables are, on the one hand, bound by the current legislative framework to give primacy to the decisions of their local police authority/board. On the other, through ACPOS they have a role to promote the common good of policing in Scotland. This gives rise to a potential conflict of interest between national and local requirements.
1.20 Separate, but similar to the above, police authorities/boards have no mandate to consider the national policing requirement. As a consequence, the only element of the tripartite arrangement having such responsibility is Scottish Ministers. Given these circumstances, we believe that current legislative arrangements should be reviewed.
The way ahead
1.21 In order for policing to deliver the outcomes that people in Scotland need and deserve, it must be supported by sound mechanisms at local, regional and national levels for:
- prioritising its work;
- improving its practice;
- delivering efficient and effective services; and
- providing sound governance that assists decision-making, and promotes Best Value.
1.22 We appreciate that the shortcomings identified through the review have arisen from circumstances rather than a lack of will of any individuals or organisations. We are therefore proposing a way forward which is intended to fill the gaps and steer policing in Scotland towards a position where it can address both local community needs and the increasing complexity of national and regional risk.
1.23 In particular, we recommend that a national forum be established which reflects the tripartite structure underpinning existing governance arrangements for policing in Scotland. Such a forum, chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, would bring all those with responsibility for the governance of policing together to manage the most nationally significant policing risks and issues. Our detailed recommendations are listed below.
Recommendations
1) We recommend that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice establish and chair a national group that reflects at least the tripartite arrangements for policing in Scotland (Policing in Scotland Steering Group or PSSG). This group should:
- decide which policing risks require co-ordination at national level, having taking cognisance of both operational and Best Value considerations; and
- oversee the response to these national risks, where it is deemed necessary to do so.
2) We recommend that the PSSG initiate and oversee a programme of work to ensure that it is able to achieve its purpose in managing national policing risks. This programme should be initiated within three months of this report going to the Scottish Parliament, and progress reported to the Parliament within 12 months. The work programme should include the following:
a) the expansion of the Scottish Strategic Assessment, which should include:
- a more robust and continuing analysis of the capability and capacity of policing to meet the high-risk operational demands and needs currently identified, as well as those referred to below; and
- an analysis of national organisational risks such as the provision of adequate police buildings, and those risks arising from failure to deliver major change programmes such as the national IT convergence strategy.
Within this same recommendation, the PSSG should also:
b) oversee and expedite the work underway by ACPOS to develop standards for policing across Scotland, recognising that these should be focused on service outputs and outcomes rather than methods and style, so that local variations in delivery can be preserved and supported where appropriate;
c) initiate and oversee joint work between the Scottish Government, ACPOS and police boards/authorities to increase the range and detail of information on the high level costs of policing;
d) with some urgency initiate and oversee work to develop a mechanism through which collaborative arrangements between forces for operational services can be drawn up and agreed. This mechanism should properly reflect local and national needs whilst ensuring that Best Value principles apply at both of those levels;
e) initiate and oversee work to develop proposals on how the weaknesses in governance highlighted in this report can be addressed; and
f) initiate a thematic review of current collaborative arrangements between forces in order to establish whether:
- demand, need and risk have been effectively assessed in advance of the arrangement;
- national risk has been effectively managed;
- Best Value at both local and national level has been achieved; and
- decision-making and governance arrangements reflect the level of risk being managed.
And finally, within this recommendation:
g) that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice require HMICS to conduct a thematic inspection of the SPSA with a focus on covering the relevant issues identified within the Independent review of policing.
3) We recommend that Scottish Ministers bring forward draft legislation to impose a statutory duty on chief constables and police authorities to take the following explicitly into account in all decision-making: Scotland's national policing capacity and capability; its national resilience to catastrophic events or strategic threats from criminality; and the reduction of the costs that arise from unnecessary duplication of services.