Outcome 2: The needs of local communities are addressed through effective service delivery

Challenges and opportunities

The role of policing is to keep people safe, wherever they live. Police Scotland must continue to be responsive to all forms of community. By doing so, services will continue to evolve and be designed to meet the needs of individuals and communities, building a safe and confident society for them to thrive, creating real participation and genuine partnerships between the police and the community.

Police Scotland has people and communities at the heart of its vision for a better society, and will continue to provide modern, visible and accessible policing to local communities, supplemented with new support services that adapt and respond to societal shifts. The growing pace of technological change means that people increasingly feature or are active participants in a digital world. Policing will reflect this in how specialist and operational resources are allocated, ensuring the services provided are inclusive and proactive in meeting the needs of all communities.

As Scotland emerges from the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the rising cost of living will continue to impact demand on public services. These pressures affect people in different ways and Police Scotland will have to adapt policing services and provision in response.

To do this Police Scotland will modernise services to meet communities’ needs to ensure that vulnerabilities are understood and responded to by the most appropriate body at the earliest opportunity.

As our communities evolve, Police Scotland recognises the role played by policing in ensuring that Scotland is a place where people want to live and work, are safe, and feel free to be themselves without fear of discrimination.

Today’s challenges

Engagement and insight from the public are needed to improve how we make our service more inclusive and accessible

Our resourcing model needs to be reviewed to ensure that people with the right skills are allocated and deployed in the right places

How people identify within communities and society continues to evolve and policing must adapt

Policing in future

We understand all our communities and shape our service design and delivery to match their varied needs

Our policing services continue to be delivered locally, drawing on the assistance of national assets and teams as required

We reflect and respond to the changing nature of communities, ensuring that our workforce and our services are inclusive and diverse

To achieve this outcome, Police Scotland will:

Understand our communities and deliver the right mix of services to meet their needs

Support our communities through a blend of local and national expertise

Support the changing nature of communities

Understand our communities and deliver the right mix of services to meet their needs

For policing to meet the needs of local communities work must take place closely with individuals, their representatives and other service providers to ensure a shared understanding of their vision, the environment and the role of policing within it.

Local divisions are empowered to develop, test and deliver innovative and collaborative changes to suit local needs. Proactive sharing of learning and best practice across policing and with partners will provide an effective platform for Police Scotland to be at the forefront of delivering improved collective services to our communities.

Local engagement is critical. To do this meaningfully and effectively requires genuine dialogue, respect, integrity, transparency and accountability. It provides an opportunity for people to shape services and influence decisions. It should be action and outcome focused. Police Scotland has developed an engagement framework to reflect these principles to reach out to the myriad of groups in our communities.

Built around inclusion and accessibility, engagement standards and principles will continue to be embedded across Police Scotland. Local and national engagement will be broadened, and Police Scotland will use this insight, together with operational and national data, to fully understand the context of people’s experience, public perception and demand.

Police Scotland will actively seek to include people who need additional support and people from seldom heard groups across society who may not traditionally engage with the police.
Successful policing is delivered by being visible, accessible, understanding and responsive to the community needs.

Support our communities through a blend of local and national expertise

The benefit of being a national service is that all areas can now call upon additional operational support and specialist services to assist with incidents and investigations, both pre-planned and spontaneous events, and other situations where these resources may be needed.

For example, Police Scotland’s Major Investigation Teams have provided specialist national and international experience to deal with serious crimes, including homicides, people trafficking and serious organised crime groups.

Since the inception of Police Scotland, the model of local policing, drawing on supplementary expertise and operational support, has worked well. As Police Scotland continues to create capacity through transformation, review and adaptation must take place to ensure that our people are deployed in the right places to provide the highest quality service to all.

Community policing and the relationships policing has with the public is fundamental to how Police Scotland operates to build meaningful partnerships within communities. The expertise of our local policing commanders determines the balance of provision that suits the needs of their area, whether urban, rural or remote.

Technology is changing rapidly. Police Scotland will offer greater choice and convenience for people wanting to make contact, with expanded digital options and improved accessibility.

Police Scotland has introduced a new approach to call handling in Contact, Command and Control Division (C3) to improve the response provided to the public. This has been rolled out across the country enabling staff within the C3 Division to tailor responses to the individuality of each caller. The Division’s skilled staff assess the threat and risk of harm of every call and decide the most appropriate response. This increases Police Scotland’s ability to despatch police officers to urgent incidents, which means getting to the people who need services the most, and when they need those services. In other cases, the most appropriate response may be provided by a partner agency whose staff have the appropriate skills to better support the caller’s needs.

Frontline police officers have been equipped with mobile devices, making them more autonomous and allowing them to spend more time in communities. Police Scotland will continue to identify and improve functionality so that our people can be effective where they are needed most. Police Scotland’s vehicle fleet will be adapted to become more supportive of mobile working. Front line police officers will be equipped with Body Worn Videos and new technologies will be considered to support officers to deliver services to the public.

Support the changing nature of communities

Police Scotland will embed accessibility and inclusivity into service design. Accessibility standards will be applied across technology, processes and systems, both internally and externally.

More must be done to attract the brightest and best candidates to policing as a positive and inclusive employer. Police Scotland will continue to eradicate barriers to recruitment and retention of people from underrepresented communities, and will strengthen its recruitment and vetting procedures to ensure unsuitable individuals who do not represent the core values of integrity, fairness, respect and upholding human rights cannot pursue or continue careers in policing.