Current status: Answered by Angela Constance on 17 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the suggestion in the paper, Scotland’s Future High Streets The Scottish Retail Consortium’s Manifesto for Town and City Centres, that a directly elected Police and Crime Commissioner be elected to replace the Scottish Police Authority.
The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) was created via the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 and is the primary governance body for policing in Scotland, holding the Chief Constable to account and to promote, support and oversee improvement in policing.
There are no plans to replace the SPA with another means to scrutinise policing in Scotland. In a report published last year, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Policing Scotland (HMICS) acknowledged considerable improvements in the governance of SPA and highlighted its effectiveness.
The 2012 Act has also improved local governance, ensuring each local authority can put in place a system which best meets their needs, requiring Police Scotland to involve individual local authorities in setting of priorities and objectives for the policing of its area, and take into account feedback received.
I fully acknowledge the work of the Scottish Retail Consortium in supporting its members when such businesses and their staff are victims of retail crime. The Scottish Government recognises the distress this kind of crime can cause and has made an additional £3 million available this year to help tackle it, as part of a record £1.64 billion investment in policing.