Further Detail

The Scottish Government’s Resource Spending Review (May 2022) states that it was “essential to drive reform across public services” and the Government supports “An enhanced focus on delivering efficiency savings across the public sector” through a variety of levers, including:

Innovation;
efficiency;
improvement in procurement;
collaboration; and
reducing the public sector workforce.

The creation of a single national police service on 1 April 2013 delivered the financial and operational benefits of significant reform which are now being asked of the wider public sector.

As a result, the reform of policing in Scotland (integrating eight separate police services and two supporting bodies into a single national police service) has already delivered substantial cost savings and service improvements. This has been widely recognised as one of the most significant reform programmes in the UK over the last 20 years.

This reform has saved public finances £2bn by removing over £200 million from the annual cost base compared to legacy arrangements, including through significant reductions in chief officer, senior officer and staff numbers, as well as efficiencies and improved working practices.

Delivering these savings has been a significant achievement and an ongoing challenge. As the significant financial benefits from reform and transformation have already been realised through the creation of the single service, it is not possible for policing to deliver substantial savings for a second time through efficiency alone.

Further significant savings can only be achieved through a redesign of the policing model underpinned by a reshaping of the workforce, alongside targeted action to reduce the overall non-pay cost base.

It is recognised and accepted that more can be done to re-shape and re-size policing to ensure the most effective and efficient use of its resources aligned to the policing priorities. This will require initial investment and cannot be achieved should a flat cash settlement be awarded.

This budget ask should therefore be seen as a spend-to-save proposal as the investment would enable policing to move into the next phase of reform and continue to contribute to the redesign of the wider criminal justice sector.

2024-25 BUDGET REQUIREMENT

Police Scotland, supported by the Authority, is committed to developing and delivering a sustainable new model of policing to effectively utilise the available resources, meet the policing priorities and exist in a constrained fiscal environment.

The budget requirements for 2024-25, set out below and in more detail at Appendix A, seek to provide sufficient time for policing to develop a comprehensive 3-year efficiency programme outlining how we will re-shape, re-size and re-invest in policing:

Revenue ask of £1,402.7m (+£74.5m)
Capital ask of £76.5 (+£26.4m)
Reform ask of £25m (+£5m)
VR/VER ask of £22.6m

It is anticipated that the 3-year efficiency programme can be delivered by Autumn 2024 to feed into the 2025-26 budget cycle and the years beyond.

The programme will maximise efficiency within the service to ensure ongoing sustainability and balanced budgets, and opportunities for the re-investment into new areas of capability. To support this, in addition to the 5% uplift in our resource budget for 2024-25, we would seek;

A capital allocation of £76.5m to support the roll out of new capabilities such as body worn video and for spend to save initiatives;
A re-instatement of our reform funding to £25m to allow us extra capacity to bring in resources to drive the changes in our operating model; and
A non-recurring resource allocation of £23m (for VR/VER) in 2024-25 to allow us to begin to reshape and re-size the organisation to generate efficiency/capacity between years 2025-26 – 2027-28 and to support reinvestment into priority areas of policing and new capabilities.

The proposed budget request is inclusive of Forensic Services and SPA Corporate. It is assumed that there will be a pause in the roll out of the Forensic Services operating model.