09:02
Our next item of business is an evidence-taking session by way of reflecting on the budget proposed for 2026-27 and the Scottish spending review. This morning, we are focusing on Police Scotland. I refer members to papers 1 and 2.
I welcome to the meeting Chief Constable Jo Farrell; Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs, who is Police Scotland’s DCC for professionalism and enabling services; and Sarah Roughead, who is chief financial officer. A warm welcome to you all.
We have around 60 minutes for this evidence session, but I remind everyone to ask succinct questions and to provide succinct responses. I start by inviting the chief constable to make a short opening statement.
Good morning, and thank you for the invitation to provide some reflections on the budget and the spending review. Throughout our evidence to inform the committee’s pre-budget scrutiny, we have been clear about the pressures on policing. I also recognise the acute pressures on public finances.
There is recognition and consensus, in the Parliament and in the Government’s reform strategy, of the reform that has been achieved by policing, which has included significant workforce reductions. I am grateful for the committee’s explicit call for achievements to be reinvested.
The budget was outlined in January. Notwithstanding the fact that the allocation was less than requested, I have made difficult decisions that prioritised front-line services for our communities to ensure that we can maintain officer numbers at 16,500 in the coming year.
I recognise the difficult choices that are faced across the public sector. I believe that the Scottish Government’s support is welcome recognition of the reform that has already been achieved by Police Scotland. Our recent best-value audit highlighted our clear vision of safer communities, less crime, supported victims and a thriving workforce, as well as policing’s hard-won track record of strong financial management and a commitment to collaboration.
Policing has demonstrated value to communities and to the public purse. The spending review, however, highlights the scale of the challenge for the public finances moving forward. Pressures on policing and other areas are driven by unmet mental health need, a strained criminal justice system, growing online harms, poverty, civil unrest, geopolitics and a heightened assessment of counter-state and terrorist threats, as well as an increasing demand to service public inquiries.
I underline my commitment to continue to maximise capacity from the resources available through strategic planning and supporting more people back to work. We will continue to drive improvements and efficiencies to cut out bureaucracy and to automate and rationalise processes in the middle and back-office functions so as to focus every possible resource on our front line.
I am leading a cultural shift that is prepared to carry a greater risk appetite and that draws clearer lines with ourselves and our partners about where policing starts and where it must finish. I will work with the Scottish Government and across the public sector to ensure that policing continues to be a good partner and that we are in good partnerships.
The potential for further savings must continue to be set against the threat, risk and harm that I have outlined and the service that our communities need, deserve and expect, with an understanding of the pressure on officers and staff. My focus will be on keeping people safe, giving victims of crime a professional, trauma-informed service and supporting our front line relentlessly. We can all support a whole-system prevention approach that delivers better outcomes and value and that reduces the demand that is placed on policing and the criminal justice system.
Police Scotland will continue to play its part in striving to meet those ambitions, while we do our level best to respond to the existing need, demand and risk in our communities, online and across borders.
Thank you very much. We will move straight into questions.
I will first pick up on a point that you made in your opening remarks about the challenges relating to unmet mental health need. You will be aware of the evidence that we took from your colleagues Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton and Nicky Page on 18 February on the impact on policing of responding to wellbeing-related situations and to vulnerable people in the community.
One of the issues that was flagged up in that evidence session was the specific duty under section 32 of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, which states that one of the main policing principles is
“to improve the safety and well-being of persons, localities and communities in Scotland”.
At a recent Scottish Police Authority board meeting, you provided figures to say that Police Scotland was now being called out to around 700 mental health incidents every day. You are reported as saying that the police
“cannot continue to operate in this way”.
I note your comments in the recent issue of 1919 Magazine, in which you said:
“Around 80 per cent of police callouts now involve no criminality, with police time increasingly taken up by public safety concerns, wellbeing checks and mental health crises.”
That is an issue that the committee is well familiar with, having held a number of evidence sessions on it.
Do you have a view on the level of police resources that are being used to respond to the wellbeing challenge on the police?
I will kick off on that question, and I will then ask DCC Speirs to discuss some of the specific detail.
In my opening remarks, I talked strongly in relation to my commitment and our commitment to partnership working and working in collaboration for the greater good of the people whom we serve, while ensuring value for money from the public purse.
I have previously been very vocal about the criminal justice system. I mention that as a point of comparison, because, during my time as chief constable, we have made—with partners—significant improvements to the justice system through leadership across the different agencies that work within it. For example, we have introduced judicial-led summary case management and expanded the use of body-worn video and digital evidence sharing capability—I could go on and on. You might be familiar with the joint inspection report on citations that was published yesterday, which clearly highlights that more work is to be done. However, we are seeing improvements, reduced costs and a better service for victims.
In contrast, we have—to address the point of your question—entered into strong collaborations to develop better solutions for people who find themselves in mental health crises and distress. Nothing that I say about mental health detracts from the harm that it causes to individuals, but, as my colleague ACC Paton said, it is a matter of mental health and not justice. Given the context of this year’s budget and spending review, and given my patience in that space since 2023, I have reached the conclusion that we will have to do something quite significant about our level of response, because our priority cannot be to care for those who find themselves in vulnerable positions. Our response must relate to preventing and detecting crime and bringing criminals to justice.
On that point, would there be any value in revisiting the wellbeing duty that is set out in the 2012 act, and could that potentially lead to a freeing up of front-line police resources? I know that it is very hard to balance helping those who are most vulnerable while recognising the reality of the pressures that doing so brings to the force.
I am very cognisant of the legislation. Somebody might tell me different, but I do not think that the word “wellbeing”, as it is used in the legislation, has ever been tested legally. My interpretation of it is that our policing response must acknowledge our role in supporting the wellbeing of broader society and the people of Scotland, but, unless somebody wants to bring a legal challenge in this space, it does not mean that we are responsible for every individual’s overall health and wellbeing. We absolutely focus on our article 2 right to life responsibilities under the European convention on human rights, but broader care as it relates to vulnerability—in situations in which no other issues directly relate to us—must sit somewhere else.
DCC Speirs can give the committee a broader flavour of what we have done, where we find ourselves and some of the data in relation to that.
We recognise that there will always be a small number of incidents in which police attendance and support is critical because people are in extreme crisis. As you know and will have heard much about, we have introduced a mental health pathway, which enables us to divert calls away from the service. We have also introduced a mental health index, which allows officers to access clinicians when dealing with incidents.
However, the impact of those initiatives has little bearing on the day-to-day volume of calls. We have talked about dealing with 475 calls and incidents per day. On average, two officers are tied up with such an incident for about six hours. The drain on the resource of officers is huge, so we need to look at ways that we can free up people a lot more quickly.
We try to transfer a range of calls into different parts of the national health service. Right now, we do a warm transfer, which means that we are stuck with those incidents and calls until we get a service on the other end of the phone, so we need to find a more efficient way of doing that. Some 27 to 30 per cent of those calls are from another service passing people on to the police service, so we need to engage with partners on that.
09:15
We spend an inordinate amount of time at hospital—that is what consumes those four to six hours—but, as you will have heard, in the case of 85 per cent of those calls, it is not about a crime. We are looking at what we can do to have a much more significant impact. The mental health pathway and mental health index are working well, but only for a fraction of the calls. Over two years, we have transferred 15,000 incidents, which is 20 a day. Set that against the 475 calls a day and you can see that the effect on a front-line officer’s experience is negligible.
In this area, the focus understandably tends to be on the capacity of the health service to accommodate those who are brought into the hospital environment. We understand that that is a significant issue; it might be the primary issue. I was taken with evidence that the committee gathered at the meeting that we held on 18 February, when we heard from Dr Robby Steel, a consultant psychiatrist who works with NHS Scotland. He is involved with Police Scotland to try to improve things. I was taken with his point that, presumably, the police officers who bring someone to a hospital environment think that it is the right place and a safe place for the person to be, but that it is his experience that, sometimes, he says to officers, “You’ve brought the person here. You can go now” and they say that they cannot go and that that is at the instruction of a superior officer. I pressed that point with David Threadgold, and he said that that is sometimes his experience, too.
ACC Paton said that work is being done to build confidence among officers to recognise when they can leave someone at the hospital, but do you recognise that as a challenge? Even if that is marginal, there would presumably be a cost benefit—we are talking about the budget today—to saying that officers can leave once they have taken someone to the hospital.
Yes, I recognise that as a challenge. From speaking to officers, I know that the desire to stay with the person is driven by two things: genuine empathy with the person who is in crisis, and wanting to do the right thing; and then, in varying degrees—David Threadgold will have spoken about this—a fear of the consequences, because, if that person then leaves the hospital and some harm comes to them, as the committee knows, we are bound, for those incidents, to be investigated by the Police Investigations and Review Commission. That is quite a strong cultural grip on the organisation, and, on an individual officer level, I understand that.
David Threadgold and I have spoken about this in the past week or so, and I think that you heard him say that we and I need to give front-line sergeants and inspectors the confidence and the tools to raise our risk appetite and then to use the tools that are available to us—we have a decision-making model that we use in all sorts of scenarios—to say that, based on those criteria, officers could leave. We are heading towards the complete roll-out of body-worn video in May. That will be a powerful tool in giving officers support and confidence. For example, I might take a short video of you and say, “Mr Hepburn, I’m going to leave you here. We’re in A and E. You’re going to be seen in due course. There will probably be a wait.” We will be able to use that as one of the levers to give our sergeants and inspectors the right support to say, “We’re going to leave you. You’re in a place of safety. It’s an A and E department. You’re not here under arrest. We need to move on to other duties.”
I would have—
We must move on, Jamie. I will bring in Sharon Dowey and we might come back to your question if we have time, although we have limited time. I ask for questions and responses to be succinct. I will first bring in Rona Mackay with another supplementary question.
I will try to be quick.
DCC Speirs, you said that you are looking at ways of freeing up officers earlier in the process but, in many instances, the police should never have got the call in the first place. I do not know whether you saw the evidence that we took a couple of weeks ago from the NHS. The witnesses spoke about frameworks for collaboration, community triage guides and so on. Do you have any comments on what the NHS is doing to try to prevent calls from going to the police in the first place? Is the NHS moving at enough pace or putting in enough help so that you do not get the calls?
Over the past couple of years, it has felt as if we have been the driving force in attempts to make inroads into the handling of mental health calls. There is a lot more that partners could do, and they could definitely do it with a greater degree of urgency. We must recognise that the public’s go-to is often to phone 999 or 101. People realise that, with those calls, they get a really quick service. Therefore, on one hand, we will always end up dealing with a range of calls—we will arrive at hospitals and will take the approach that the chief constable has described.
However, moving forward, we are looking to start to have a cold transfer. That means that, at the point of a call coming to the police, when it is not for the police, we will divert it straight to the NHS. As I said, right now, there is a warm transfer, which means that we wait for somebody to answer the phone and, ultimately, if the phone is not answered, we send our officers.
You are absolutely right that we need to do more at that initial point, and I think that we will do some of that. As I said, 27 to 30 per cent of the calls are being pushed to the police from other services, because they do not have a service to provide at that point. We need to influence that space as well. I welcome the initiatives that I am hearing about, but I have a concern that the pace at which progress has been made over the past couple of years has been incredibly slow and, ultimately, the issue remains with us.
Rona Mackay can come in briefly.
Good morning. How does your new strategy, for want of a better word, translate to small communities such as villages and rural communities? Would you still operate in the same way, in that, if someone is in distress, you would be the first point of call?
We use the THRIVE—threat, harm, risk, investigation, vulnerability, engagement—assessment in our service centres and that will never change. We will always look at threat, risk and harm. The message is not that we will never be there; I think that there will be lots of instances where, due to proximity and availability, there is a space for a police response. However, in instances when we provide a response, we need other services to come behind us an awful lot quicker. It is really important to say that we are not intent on abandoning communities at their point of need, particularly remote and rural communities. We recognise the importance of that, and we will THRIVE assess and work with the Scottish Ambulance Service and other elements of the NHS service.
Sixty per cent of the calls that come in in this space involve an individual or family member requesting help from us. When we look at that data, we would all have to say that there are significant shortcomings if people think that the police are the go-to for support for their family members. We could talk at length about that, but NHS and social care have to step into this space. It is not a policing requirement. I have probably said enough on that.
Good morning. Chief constable, you told the committee—your written submission reiterates this—that you required a minimum uplift of £104.9 million simply to cover pay, inflation, new legislation, unavoidable pressures and national insurance hikes. You have been given £90.3 million, and your submission also says that a further cost of £5 million has been identified. That begs the question, what specific operational reductions will be required as a direct consequence of the £19 million shortfall? Will that mean fewer officers on the streets?
We have spent considerable time working through where we can take costs out of the budget in order to maintain officer numbers. You have heard me speak many times about front-line policing being a priority. The measures that we have taken are not without risk, and I will talk you through some of those areas.
We have looked closely at prioritising the front line and ensuring that we maintain an on-going commitment to driving efficiencies, removing duplication and increasing capacity across the system. Some of the specific levers that we have pulled to ensure front‑line policing strength relate to vacancies across some of our police‑staff functions, with the exception of our custody staff and our control‑room staff. You are aware that we ran pilots on workforce modernisation involving civilian investigators. These were people working in our professional standards department. The feedback is really positive, and we have managed to maintain some of the modernised posts in our control room and in firearms licensing. Unfortunately, we were not able to take forward some of the other modernised posts into this year.
We have gone through our non-pay costs line by line, as you would expect us to do. However, the biggest point—and the area of greatest risk—is our overtime budget. We have some degree of control over parts of that, but no control over others, such as officers attending court on rest days or while on annual leave. Overtime is an important tool in policing. I will point to two big operations that you are familiar with from last year: operation portaledge, which related to the organised crime feud across the central belt; and operation leste, which was our response to protest across the country. We are bearing down on overtime spend, but there is risk associated with that.
I will highlight two other areas of risk. Last week, a further public inquiry was announced. Currently, we have limited budget for that. We also have limited budget for implementing new legislation. Discussions are on-going with the Government on those areas, together with the inflation guarantee issue.
There are significant risks, but my priority is the front line.
The related question is that the Scottish Police Authority budget for 2026-27 includes £86.3 million of capital funding, but you requested £93.9 million. You said in your opening remarks that you have made difficult decisions already, so that begs the question, what capital works have been put off and what will suffer as a result of this significant shortfall? Where will that have the greatest impact, for example, on your planned information technology improvements?
DCC Speirs will pick that up, then Sarah Roughead will probably also want to come in.
You have begun to focus on where part of the answer lies by using that example. A big proportion of our capital spend is on data and digital systems. Over the past few weeks, we have been working through a series of challenge panels to determine what is affordable. In effect, some of the work will have to slow down, including the pace at which we introduce improved systems. We were looking at introducing an ecosystem where finance and people come together, which connects to our resourcing model. We also have old systems that are probably outwith support just now. We will have to progress them at a much slower pace. It remains our ambition to deliver on our data and digital programme, but not at the original pace and level of ambition.
09:30
One of the debates that we will probably have in the coming weeks will be about what phase 2 of our body-worn video roll-out looks like and whether we continue to use it. The other big element to consider is our estate. We have been vocal about the need for it to be significantly improved. When it comes to progressing that work in the next financial year, we will have to take a closer look at how we manage our ambitions. We recognise that we will probably have to do some critical work in the health and safety space, but we are recalibrating whether we will be able to deliver on every aspect of the estate work that we hope to do.
Just to add to that answer, most of our capital spend is across the estate, the fleet and the digital transformation that DCC Speirs mentioned. We have a five-year master plan for the estate, which, together with a prioritisation matrix, helps us with multiyear planning and also with prioritisation when annual budgets perhaps do not allow us to complete everything that we need to.
To add to DCC Speirs’ point, we do not want to lose sight of the balance between our ambition—what we could achieve on the estate and with digital transformation—and what we need to do to restore the estate. That means focusing on health and safety items, not luxury upgrades but critical maintenance, and considering what is achievable within the funding envelope. We need to manage that balance.
In the past, we have raised with Mr McKee and with this committee that the area that would be most helpful to us when it comes to multiyear planning, outside of the annual budgeting process, is borrowing. We lost the ability to borrow when we became a national force and regaining it would be a really important factor in helping with our capital budgets. If we had the ability to borrow and roll over our reserves, we could think about other income streams that we could bring to the organisation.
Good morning. I want to ask the chief constable about community policing, but I will first ask Sarah Roughead whether she can clarify something about the budget. I hope that it is an easy question to answer.
The justice and home affairs portfolio is to receive £30.4 million of additional funding in the spring budget revision. The largest component of that is a £24.7 million sum for the United States presidential and vice-presidential visits. Is that figure part of the £90 million uplift or is it additional?
We received the funding for the presidential and vice-presidential visits in the current year, 2025-26. We recorded that separately to our main budget allocation in the current year, and we received the funding through the spring budget revision in the current year. It is all for this year and nothing relates to next year. The £90.3 million figure is for the 2026-27 budget.
So, the £90.3 million does not include the £30.4 million?
It does not.
That is a relief.
For other major events, again, we expect no detriment to policing. In our view, that £90.3 million does not cover, for example, the Commonwealth games. We are already speaking to the Government about the implications of that.
Thank you. Chief constable, I want to ask you about the 600 community police officers that you asked for. The committee fully supported the idea: communities want to see more visible police officers. How much are you able to do with the budget, short of getting 600 new community police officers?
We will continue to roll out a community policing model, which has four key elements, and I could talk at length about that. You are aware of some of the areas: response, dedicated neighbourhood policing, community policing officers and an investigation hub to investigate those crimes that affect local people. In addition, and over time, we will seek to centralise some of our safeguarding functions to make them more efficient.
In the bid, we discussed putting an additional 600 officers into community policing. That would have been ideal, from my perspective—in response to your point about having a strong, visible presence. I am a realist, however. As I said in my opening remarks, we know the position around the public finances. However, that will not stop us progressing with that model.
One of the key elements, where we have received some positive feedback, consists of being efficient in attending to people, responding to people, taking non-emergency calls and ensuring that we have resource to support what we call our diary system—so that, if we say, “We’re going to be here at 2 o’clock tomorrow,” we will be there at 2 o’clock tomorrow. We are building that, and we were moving it into a couple more divisions during last month. We will continue, and we will have some academic evaluation of that approach as we develop it.
Would the 600 extra officers have been good? Would that have been nice to have? Absolutely. However, I am a realist, and we will continue to move forward and make policing teams as visible and effective as they can be at a local level.
I talked earlier about some of our middle and back-office functions. While they are important, some of them are currently done at a divisional level, whereas they could be done at national level. I will give you an example. We have 13 crime management units, and it has only been at the point of moving to a national crime system that we have become able to move from the local crime management units to a national provision, using the technology as the foundation. That will drive efficiencies, and all of that efficiency will be pushed into the front line.
So, you will have fewer than 600 of those officers under the budget arrangement.
Yes.
I guess that communities want to have a connection with the local police officer. To what extent, in your model, do you think that there might be more connection with local communities, with a named police officer, for instance? One of my criticisms of the centralisation is that Police Scotland feels like such a big organisation. When someone calls the police to find out what has happened following a crime that has been committed, the officer concerned will often not be on duty for ages. There is a disconnect there: that is where people feel a lack of confidence. Will the model bring some connection or some identity back?
Yes. One of the priorities for the investigation hubs is to ensure that we progress inquiries quickly and that victims are updated; in addition, we want to ensure that we can see patterns of crime, so as to respond to them quickly and nip them in the bud.
I absolutely take your point that victims expect to know who is investigating their crime and how they can contact them, with an expectation of regular updates on the progress of the crime investigation.
Good morning. It sounds like you have done a really good job with the budget, making things work and ensuring that the main services are functioning well, but it does not sound like there is a lot of room for movement.
I want to ask about emergency situations that cannot be predicted. I have in mind the situation that we are witnessing in the middle east, which will ultimately have an impact back home. We know that you will be picking up on that in the main, ensuring that there is community cohesion and so on. How do you factor that in with such a tight budget? Do you get extra support for such situations, or do you just have to work with what you have?
As you mentioned, we saw an immediate impact following events in the middle east at the weekend. There was protest on the streets of Glasgow. We expected about 100 people but there were between 400 and 500 people at lunchtime last Saturday.
You talked about cohesion. In addition to supporting that protest, our response was to engage heavily with different communities across Scotland to get a sense of the impact that the events were having at a local level. I anticipate that that will continue.
In our original bid, we had a request for an uplift in relation to serious organised crime and counterterrorism. I have already started conversations with Scottish Government officials on that. I will wind back to what I said about where the risks are for us in the budget, one of which is overtime. One of our responses that is intended to ensure that we fulfil those obligations is to use overtime—officers working on rest days or working extra hours—which has an impact. That is the practical use of that money and we have scrutinised and borne down on it. However, that might be the basis of some on-going discussions with the Scottish Government in the new financial year because safety and security are our priority and yours.
You do not know how things might escalate, but are you confident that you will be able to continue to respond to such events or the continuation of the current events and how they might impact communities in Scotland?
We absolutely will respond. We have a strong track record on that but, inevitably, if there are risks as we move into the new financial year, that will be the subject of continuing dialogue with officials and politicians to ensure that we can meet communities’ needs.
I know from work in my constituency with, for example, local mosques when there have been similar events that you have a strong track record on that, so I thank you very much.
Thank you.
Chief constable, in your opening statement, you mentioned the cost of public inquiries and legislation. We were having a review of grooming gangs and you were allocated money for that. That has now been changed into an inquiry. Will that mean additional cost for Police Scotland? If so, has the Scottish Government given you the extra money that will be required for it?
You did not get what you asked for in your budget. You said that what you are getting would just keep you standing still. With the lesser amount of money that you are getting, how can we ensure that your police officers are able to investigate fully any concerns that are brought to them about grooming gangs?
I have a last question—I am sorry that it is my third one. A lot of Scottish statutory instruments come to the committee. One on trafficking is coming to us today. It will not come into force until February next year, but costs will be associated with that, even if just for training. Because the commencement date is February, it will still be within the new year’s budget. Do you have conversations with the Scottish Government in advance of it bringing SSIs to the committee? Has it committed more money so that that SSI can be implemented properly?
I will pick up a couple of those points and see whether we can work through them and get you all the answers.
We have a limited amount of money that is allocated to public inquiries. That is part of the continuing dialogue with Scottish Government officials. We all know the importance of public inquiries to getting answers for families, so we enter all of them with absolute candour.
09:45
Something that I welcome, and which I would just draw the committee’s attention to—although I know that members will be aware of it—is the report that was produced on the cost-effectiveness of public inquiries, which said that inquiries are currently “poorly defined”. With that comes the need for time extensions, which lead, in turn, to costs, and I wonder whether it serves families well to have to wait great swathes of time—years, in some cases—in order to get answers. Something different needs to be done in that space, but we are committed to them, albeit with a limited budget currently.
We are also engaging with absolute candour with the public inquiry into grooming gangs and group-based child sexual exploitation. Moreover, you will be aware that we are carrying out a review of some historic cases in line with Baroness Casey’s report; it focused on England and Wales, but we have followed the same methodology to see whether, when we look back at cases through the lens of both 2026 and the UK-wide intelligence that policing has, there is further work we can do to support victims in that space.
Have I missed anything?
You have just talked about looking back at cases. One of my biggest concerns is that, if you do not get the budget that you need to have more community officers—more boots on the ground, as they say—those people will not have enough time to investigate all the things that are happening right now.
You have just pulled out a key point. The question is: how do we meet some of the day-to-day challenges—the threat, risk, and harm—that we are facing, and strike a balance between addressing the vulnerability and victimisation that is happening now and looking at what happened in the past? In that respect, we have been using some of our civilian investigators to work on historic inquiries so we can move through them as quickly as we can while at the same time safeguarding the vulnerable people, vulnerable children and vulnerable victims that we have today.
And what about my question on the SSI?
Oh yes.
We are engaging with that really well and are well aware of what is coming up, but the fact is that, when it comes to legislation, public inquiries, SSIs and so on, we do not have any budgetary provision. We are very actively engaging with Government on receiving financial support for all that work, but I should point out that we have identified affordability as one of our big risk areas.
Building on the chief’s point, I want to make it clear that we quite simply do not have the budgetary provision to service six public inquiries in year, and we have no budgetary provision, at this point in time, for any legislation that might be introduced. That is one of the large risks facing us as we go through the year.
So that is a huge concern. Thank you.
I have just a couple of questions. First, going back to the capital budget allocation, I note that you got around 92 per cent of the amount that you were seeking, which I think was around 23 per cent up from the autumn budget revision position. Clearly, though, you did not get everything that you were seeking.
You have touched a little on the issue of prioritisation, but I just want to go back to the estate and digital data requirements. I appreciate that body-worn cameras, which have been mentioned, are very specific things that only Police Scotland can carry, but in previous evidence sessions, with a range of bodies, we touched on the potential for greater collaboration, particularly in the digital area, but perhaps in the estate, too. I am keen to understand whether that is being actively looked at. For example, if we are talking about the sharing of data between, say, the Crown Office and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, I know that they have a shared campus in Livingston. Are those sorts of cost benefit opportunities still being actively explored?
Yes, they are. It sounds as though we have painted a pessimistic position around the estate, for example, but over the course of the current financial year, we have delivered on something like 139 projects to improve and enhance our facilities.
We have 400 locations across Scotland, and about 70 of them are co-locations. The evidence tells us that, where we can co-locate with key partners, we make some pertinent inroads. As we go into the next financial year, we will still be as ambitious as we can be in the estate space, but that will be set against a five-year capital plan of spending £296 million, and our allocation for next year will be a tiny fraction of that. We are now starting to moderate and look at what we might do better in that space.
We are connected across the UK in terms of data and digital. We work with the National Police Chiefs Council and the College of Policing, and we are trying to draw on the systems that would be used in other parts of the UK. Of course, some of the systems that we use are used across the UK. Speaking pessimistically, there is definitely a tale of how, as the eight forces became one, we inherited a lot of legacy systems, and it has taken us until recent months to roll out DESC and have a single crime recording system. We still have a bit of a lag in getting to where we want to be with data and digital, but we are actively engaged with a range of partners in Scotland and, importantly, with UK policing.
Just to add to that and to the point about efficiency across the system and a forward look, we are in discussions with transport colleagues in the Scottish Government. We are making strong progress on roads policing and investing in digital technology that streamlines the process from someone being stopped at the roadside or being caught on the camera all the way through to who was driving the car being returned to the police and summonsed into court. There is more investment in diversion schemes to ensure that we are educating people about speeding and using mobile phones and seatbelts, which takes some demand off the courts. At the same time, we are working closely with other agencies to drive efficiency.
I do not have the number of those types of road traffic offences that go through the courts, but it is considerable. There is a strong momentum in digitising all that and there is a focus on education.
The whole area of collaboration will be for our successor committee to determine, but it should be an area of interest to it.
I have one final straightforward question that I have asked everyone, and you might or might not have the answer to it. It is about the impact of increased employer national insurance contributions. Could I get a reminder of what the impact of that was this year—not so much the proportion that was allocated to mitigate it but the overall cost—and whether there has been an assessment yet of what the cost is likely to be for this coming financial year?
Absolutely. We receive funding for 60 per cent of employer national insurance increases, and £10 million equates to the 40 per cent—
So what is the global sum? I could try to work out the maths myself, but could you tell me?
It is about £25 million.
Do we know what it will be for this coming year?
That was the impact for the current year, and the total cost to Police Scotland will be in steady state for next year.
Okay, but I presume that it will increase a little because of pay increases and so on.
I would have to find the detail for the national insurance increase on the pay award.
It would be useful if we could get that. I think that you told us at the last meeting that it equated to about 500 officers’ salaries.
You are testing me on the numbers now, but 100 officers is about £3.85 million.
Okay. I need to get a calculator for this. I think that you said 500 last time, but that is fine.
I want to follow up on my colleagues’ questions about digital modernisation. My question is about body-worn cameras. DCC Speirs, do you have figures for the percentage of the roll-out that has been achieved and what is still to be done?
We have moved the roll-out of body-worn cameras to the west, and we are probably at 75 per cent. Front-line policing was always going to be phase 1 so, by the time we hit May, it will be rolled out where it will have the greatest impact for local communities. It is in the final stages in the bigger areas, such as Glasgow.
When you say 75 per cent, do you mean throughout Scotland?
Yes.
How much will the constraints on your budget hamper that? Will you be able to progress it at all?
We are confident that we can. Part of our plan was to ensure that the capital spend and technology were in place, and we have that. We are measuring our ability to roll out phase 2, but that will be in the less front-facing roles, elements of our specialist crime division and other elements such as professional standards and parts of operational support.
You are having to prioritise the areas.
We are, but the early benefits that we are seeing from the roll-out of phase 1 are incredibly positive, so we are keen to progress with phase 2. The key message to set against the budget is that we have to take a moment, pause and measure that against other elements of the data and digital roll-out for the year.
I am looking forward to being able to see the impact over time through the evidence being provided to the court and early guilty pleas, although there will be a lag in that. That will be significant for victims of crime, and it will also have a significant impact on the efficiency of the system. There will be a time lag before those cases get through, but the scale of the business that is going through the courts in Glasgow, for example, means that having body-worn cameras across Scotland will have a strong and tangible system-wide impact.
That is encouraging. The joint audit by Audit Scotland and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland commented that transformation in digital and estate modernisation
“has not been well managed or delivered at pace in the past.”
Do you agree with that, or would you say that that is a result of financial restrictions?
We broadly agree with that and we probably recognised that in the early part of last year. We built up a function that could administer change and perhaps there was less focus on delivering transformational change. We introduced a transformation director just over a year ago to lead on that, and we now have a programme and are building a team that can deliver on transformation. That puts us in a good place.
There is no question but that the strain on the budget has a negative impact on our ability to do that. One of the exercises that we are doing now is looking at what key projects we want to deliver on in 2026-27 and 2027-28, because we cannot do everything that is within our ambition.
I will come in on a financial technicality about transformation. We have talked a lot about capital today. As we transform and as we digitise our infrastructure, much of it becomes about resource funding. From historic capital establishment and funding, we are flipping to licences, which means licence fees, and cloud software, which means resource funding. Across the spending review, the balance between our capital and resource needs will be significantly different in 18 months, in two years and in five years. I wanted to set that out, because we have been talking about capital and resource and the intricacies of both.
The balance is changing.
It will change.
Sarah, you spoke earlier about the force’s inability to borrow as a single force. Have you had conversations with the Scottish Government and has there been any movement in the UK Government dialogue on that?
We wrote to Mr McKee just before Christmas. He is supportive of on-going discussions, so we are picking that up. I am new in tenure, so I am re-engaging through those conversations. The issue is important for us, and there are lots of elements to it. There is borrowing and there is the reserves roll-over, which will help us from a resource funding perspective.
I am also starting to think about other areas where we are different from England and Wales and where we could receive income that would be incredibly helpful. I know that ACC Houston spoke to the committee earlier this year about proceeds of crime; we do not receive that, but England and Wales benefit from it. There are lots of areas of Treasury funding that I want to pick up on in discussions.
10:00
Are you confident that that will come together and that you will make progress?
We are having early discussions; that is where we are.
We are just on the hour, but I wonder whether I can come in with the final question for the chief constable. In your opening remarks, you highlighted the spending pressure that comes from the impact of new legislation, much of which has come from this committee in the past few years. However, as my colleague Sharon Dowey highlighted earlier, we are just about to consider a Scottish statutory instrument on reporting human trafficking to Police Scotland. We are also considering the impact of the HMICS report on vetting for police officers. All of those additional requirements, plus the legislation that is coming down the track under the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025, for example, must add significant costs to your budget. I am interested to hear a wee bit more commentary on that pressure.
We are supportive of those legislative measures and have advocated strongly for the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Act 2025, which connects to vetting, and the importance of conduct regulations as well as some of the domestic abuse legislation. The organisation is supportive of that.
We recognise that all that comes at a cost. In the past couple of years, our interaction with the Government has been more positive, in that we have quantified the financial costs of new legislation. Although we have no provision budgeted for this year, we are in positive discussions with the Government, which will work with us to support the introduction of the legislation. I have a degree of confidence that, as we go through the financial year, we will be supported in that space. It would be wrong for me not to highlight that the situation carries a degree of vulnerability, but I do not want to lose sight of the importance of the legislation and our support for those legislative measures.
On that, we will draw this session to a close. I thank the chief constable, DCC Speirs and Ms Roughead for an interesting session.
We will have a short suspension to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
10:02
Meeting suspended.
10:09
On resuming—
Air adhart
Subordinate Legislation