I was delighted to represent the Authority recently at the Police Strategy Forum 2024. This annual event brings together people from all aspects of policing across the UK and Europe, with a focus on future strategy and improvement.

My presentation covered the joint work of the Authority and Police Scotland on benchmarking our performance with other police forces. For the past few years we have developed our approach to comparing what we do and how we do it with others in the UK. This was an exciting opportunity to talk about what we have achieved.

Benchmarking can be difficult because of the challenges in making sure we are comparing like with like. As Scotland has a single national police service, we need to compare ourselves to forces in other countries, who often have different laws and crime recording rules.

Our project developed a set of Guiding Principles and Benchmarking Tiers to ensure that these challenges do not stop us benchmarking. This approach ensures we make comparisons in a balanced way, with a focus on finding and sharing best practice.

At the Forum, I outlined the benefits this work has brought to Police Scotland and the Authority. These include:

• a better understanding of where we are performing well
• where we need to improve, and
• a stronger focus on sharing learning.

We have also made our reports more open and transparent for both our Board Members and the communities we serve.

If you would like to know more, my presentation is available in Related Content below. Our benchmarking project was also reported in full to Policing Performance Committee in March 2024 and you can watch the discussions on our YouTube channel.