Achieving our vision - what will be different?

Our transformation journey to 2030 will be planned, organised and delivered over two three-year planning periods:
• Phase one: April 2024 – March 2027 (first three-year plan).
• Phase two: April 2027 – March 2030 (second three-year plan).

This section outlines what difference our communities and our workforce will see when we have delivered this phase one business plan.

Safer communities

By delivering our new community policing model, the public, our partners and our colleagues will see an enhanced focus on prevention, localised problem-solving and more co-location with partners to maximise community access.

A consistent approach to community policing will ensure identifiable local officers are available across the whole of Scotland, improving visibility, communication and engagement for the public and our partners.

We will increase frontline capacity through transformed back-office services and modernising our workforce, for example by creating specially trained firearms licensing roles, along with further roles for police staff within area control rooms and public contact centres where warranted powers are not required. By maximising the value and contribution of volunteers while also creating efficiencies within our back-office services, we will build capacity and enhance the capability of our frontline.

Bringing an enhanced focus to the priorities of policing, we will examine our own practices and work with key partners to ensure that non-crime demand is met by the most appropriate organisation, creating vital capacity for officers to best serve their communities.

Through our Policing Together programme, we will endeavour to provide a workforce which is representative of the communities of Scotland and uses modern, multi-channel means of community engagement, listening to and working with local communities to understand and address local problems and issues.

We will carry out meaningful engagement with women and girls to improve trust and confidence in Police Scotland’s service provision. Working with partners to promote physical and online spaces where women and girls are safe, we will raise awareness and continue to influence gender-based violence through behaviour change campaigns while also exploring opportunities to implement early intervention initiatives across the health and education sectors.

We will invest in technology and replace our existing office telephony and contact platforms, call recording solutions and analytics to reform our public contact services and ensure that we are accessible to the public in the modern way that they would expect.

We will explore the potential for further rollout of Taser across the operational frontline. We will provide Body Worn Video (BWV) capability to the front line, improving transparency and supporting investigations, including incidents of violence towards the police or complaints about police conduct. This will reduce pressure on the wider criminal justice system and increase early guilty pleas.

Year one milestones
1.01 Progress work to strengthen our community policing model to meet current and future needs.
1.02 Begin to re-organise local policing approaches to incident response, community policing, local investigation, public protection and divisional support.
1.03 Start critical updates of our call handling systems to improve stability and unlock new functionality.
1.04 Design and develop approaches to engage and involve the public and communities in policing services and challenges.
1.05 Improve partnership working with the NHS and local authorities and ensure data protection is prioritised while continuing to protect the public.
1.06 Continue to work in collaboration with partners to progress objectives as set out in the COSLA / Police Scotland / SPA Partnership Delivery Plan 2023-25
1.07 Increase our officer establishment levels, attracting a diverse workforce to reflect and represent our communities.
1.08 Conduct a rank ratio review to support increased frontline supervision capacity.
1.09 Implement an effective resource management process that supports the dynamic movement of staff and officers across the organisation to better align to priorities.
1.10 Strengthen frontline policing by reviewing role profiles and redeploying officers to roles which make best use of their training, knowledge and skills.
1.11 Adjust our approach, in liaison with partners, to responding to mental health related incidents and non-crime related vulnerability.
1.12 Increase capacity of police officers who are supporting the administration/operation of judicial processes.
1.13 Reduce the volume of witness citations that police officers are required to serve.
1.14 Enhance the response to missing people enquiries through multi-agency partnerships.
1.15 Understand, measure and evidence demand to influence decision making at strategic, tactical and operational levels through the development of demand data dashboards, which are available to all staff.
1.16 Continue to implement our Policing Together Strategy and drive cultural improvement.
1.17 Continuously review our policies, processes and procedures to ensure that we tackle discriminatory behaviours within our organisation.
1.18 Provide training to support an understanding of everyday discrimination and the application of equality and inclusion within the workplace.
1.19 Develop our Culture Dashboard, capturing key metrics that inform progress and evidence of culture change and improvement.
1.20 Increase support and coordination around disability, LGBTQI, race and religion portfolios with community partners.
1.21 Co-ordinate the delivery of trauma informed practice in collaboration with partners to provide person-centred support to victims and witnesses.
1.22 Continue to support our neurodivergent colleagues and communities.
1.23 Explore the potential for further rollout of Taser across the operational frontline.
1.24 Commence rollout of BWV to frontline officers and staff, enhancing our ability to capture evidence and allowing us to increase transparency, better support victims and keep our officers and staff safe.

Year two milestones
1.25 Complete the upgrade of our command and control call handling system, harnessing the latest technology to improve our response to calls for service.
1.26 Enhance community policing by developing a modern volunteering service that is flexible and adaptable and meets the needs of policing challenges now and in the future.
1.27 Continue to deliver and respond to evidence-based data of emerging drug trends and drug-related deaths.
1.28 Work with partners to develop a prevention focused non-fatal overdose pathway to ensure that services are tailored to meet the needs of the person.
1.29 Progress the Rural Crime Preventions National Strategy.
1.30 Progress the Acquisitive Crime Preventions National Strategy, encompassing retail crime.
1.31 Invest in supporting Community Planning Partnerships as a means of delivering real benefits for communities over the longer term.
1.32 Monitor and evaluate workforce modernisation in relation to staff investigators.
1.33 Implement a new operating model for criminal justice which releases officers back to the frontline through redesign of services and continuous improvement.
1.34 Complete the modernisation of the firearms and explosive licensing workforce mix.
1.35 Further develop trauma informed training and mental health awareness ensuring staff are confident, trained and empowered.
1.36 Embed the work of the mental health taskforce to support decision-making around mental health calls to police.
1.37 Continue to embed and enhance mental health pathways, developing stakeholder working and relationships and being clear on our responsibilities in safety and justice.
1.38 Implement inclusive, consistent and transparent standards within recruitment, tenure and development through the Policing Together programme.
1.39 Conduct an evaluation of processes developed and implemented during public inquiries and fatal accident inquiries to ensure they are fit for use and contribute to the ongoing, wide-ranging development of training and policies across Police Scotland.

Year three milestones
1.40 Deliver a new model for policing courts which removes all officers other than those performing core policing duties.
1.41 Identify and implement a sustainable model of policing roads across Scotland.
1.42 Use a public health approach, working with violence reduction partners, to support the co-ordination and implementation of the National Violence Prevention Strategy.
1.43 Collaborate with partners including Scottish and UK Governments, creating formalised frameworks to capture and embed system-wide learning from major incidents and national emergencies.
1.44 Implement technical solutions to ensure efficiency of the mass mobilisation of officers and staff.
1.45 Introduce a new duty management system to provide significantly greater flexibility of resource planning to respond to emerging crime trends and demands and to support staff wellbeing.
1.46 Establish and embed a mobile solution for emergency and resilience partners to support them to effectively respond to major incidents/national emergencies.
1.47 Complete BWV phase two rollout.

Less crime

Our incident response services will be more clearly defined. We will deliver an efficient and affordable policing model which provides national consistency with nationally agreed local variation. We will modernise our approach to resource deployment to ensure the right resources are available at the right times to respond to crime, public threats, risks and harms.

We will work to ensure that we effectively manage the changing nature of threat, risk and harm in communities. We will create a high-risk offender management team to ensure the robust long term management of high harm offenders, drawing on multi -agency best practice to ensure strong and consistent risk management.

By developing a referral protocol following the issue of a direct measure and launching a new standard prosecution report with a greater focus on diversion, we will ensure justice is served at the closest point to the commission of the offence and maximise the amount of people who can be diverted from prosecution and reduce reoffending.

We will adopt a national approach towards proportionate response to crime, maximising prevention and detection opportunities and delivering swifter justice.

Nationally consistent, clearly defined investigative roles and responsibilities alongside improved access to national specialist and regional investigative capabilities will support complex and cross boundary investigations, increasing flexibility and delivering a better service to everyone across the country. We will increase our investigative capability at all levels of the organisation through review and application of professional training and development.

Through better use of data analytics, backed up by our commitment to a rights-based approach, we will equip our workforce to identify patterns and anticipate where crimes are likely to occur, allowing for targeted patrols and interventions and broader understanding of emerging crime challenges. We will use data analytics to identify and reduce repeat victimisation and repeat offending.

We will improve integration of science technology, data and digital innovation in policing. The creation of a cyber and fraud specialist division will coordinate and provide an enhanced response in conjunction with UK law enforcement agencies and other partners. We will increase our investigative capability, with improved use of cutting-edge technology, building our future response through cyber and online training for the workforce and availability of support and guidance.

Year one milestones
2.01 Embed our proportionate response to crime across Scotland.
2.02 Re-launch direct measures to ensure lower-level offending can be dealt with at an early stage, ensuring effective proportionality in respect of reported cases directed to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS).
2.03 Offer alternative options for voluntary attendance at police stations for interviews, creating capacity in custody.
2.04 Implement our Data Foundation Platform.
2.05 Develop and invest in our data science, AI and analytics capabilities to enable officers and staff to search, interpret and generate value and insights from various data sources.
2.06 Deliver Digital Division programme, including Office 365 and criminal history system technology refresh to address impacts of legacy technology and enable innovation in process, service delivery and ways of working for officers and staff.
2.07 Invest in capabilities outlined within our Policing in a Digital World workstreams to better prevent, protect, prepare and pursue cyber-crime, including, Police Cyber Alarm.

Year two milestones
2.08 Conduct a review of processes, policy and resourcing rules to ensure a modern, fit for purpose resourcing function that better balances operational need with welfare of officers and staff.
2.09 Launch a new reporting framework to improve the quality and standard of cases to COPFS.
2.10 Develop a referral protocol following the issue of a direct measure.
2.11 Further strengthen investigative standards across the organisation to embed an investigative mindset culture from the first point of contact to the last.
2.12 Work with the Scottish Government and national partners to embed a harm prevention approach to all aspects of public policy.
2.13 Invest in capabilities outlined within our Policing in a Digital World workstreams to better prevent, protect, prepare and pursue cyber-crime, including joining the fraud and cybercrime reporting and analysis service.
2.14 Continue to invest in AI capability, standards and new policing AI powered products.
2.15 Pilot rollout of new Single Search capabilities to Local Policing and Specialist Crime Division (SCD) to accelerate access to accurate and valuable data and intelligence.
2.16 Continue to rollout Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC) and BWV, maximising opportunities to capture and share best evidence at the earliest opportunity, ensuring speedier justice for victims and reducing bureaucracy and delays in the justice system.
2.17 Continue delivery of our Core Operational Solutions (COS) programme to provide better, joined up systems for our frontline officers and staff which reduces rekeying of information, speeds up processes and provides higher quality national data sets.
2.18 Develop means of using data to identify and proactively target high harm offenders.
2.19 Use a phased approach to increase the use of roadside drug testing to establish and tackle the scale and nature of drug driving.

Year three milestones
2.20 Further professionalise and equip community policing teams to effectively prevent local crime working with statutory, community and third sector partners.
2.21 Digitise productions and introduce a new operating model that covers the storage of productions.
2.22 Enhance capabilities of digital forensic laboratories to create efficiencies and keep up with technological developments.
2.23 Establishment of a new, permanent multi-disciplinary digital and data innovation product team to support officers and staff in finding efficiency and power real innovation.
2.24 Invest in capabilities outlined within our Policing in a Digital World workstreams to better prevent, protect, prepare and pursue cyber-crime, including enhancing capabilities of digital forensic laboratories to gain formal accreditation, create efficiencies and keep pace with technological developments.
2.25 Continue investment and development of policing AI products.
2.26 Continue the rollout of single search capabilities to operational policing.
2.27 Modernise public contact platforms to provide a more responsive and user-focused service enabled by digital technology with enhanced self-service options to create capacity for frontline officers.
2.28 Continually review our processes to ensure they are efficient and effective to provide swift resolutions, reduce call abandonment rates and contact wait times.
 
Supported victims

We will better support victims in Scotland, offering improved trauma informed victim care.

Through enhanced training and support to officers, we will offer an improved, person centred, trauma informed approach to supporting victims of violent crime. To complement this, we will continue to develop our understanding of violence against women and girls, diversity and intersectionality, mainstreaming cultural considerations into our approach.

We will make clear to victims of crime how and when an investigator will contact them. This will ensure all victims receive a consistent and supportive response and we will refresh the commitments in our Victim Charter to support this.

Through development, training and support to specialist staff, uniformed and detective officers we will increase their skills, reducing the number of different police employees that victims and witnesses interact with and number of occasions victims recount their experience. We will provide victims with a tailored and professional level of care and support, based on individual needs from the earliest point of engagement.

We will complete our review of third-party reporting, providing a more consistent and supportive environment for victims to report hate crime. We will supplement this by implementing improvements in our use of community advisors.

Working with our criminal justice partners, we will commence national rollout of Summary Case Management (SCM) pilot, promoting earlier guilty pleas, reducing the necessity for trial and seeing a reduced requirement for victims and witnesses attending court.

We will seek to improve the justice experience of domestic abuse victims by supporting the piloting of dedicated and trauma informed domestic abuse courts.

Our National Violence Prevention Strategy will use a public health approach alongside violence reduction partners, to support the co-ordination, implementation and sharing of good practice in prevention activity, reducing the number of victims of violent crime.

We will improve our public contact, to better keep victims and witnesses updated on the progress of our investigations, allowing them to access information in a self-service capacity. We will provide better victim care, so that victims are signposted or referred to the most relevant support, improving user experience.

To supplement this, we will have an established mechanism to learn and receive feedback to help understand and improve victim care.

Year one milestones
3.01 Further enhance our work to better protect all children and vulnerable people from harm and sexual exploitation.
3.02 Continue to implement our Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and the policing elements of the Scottish Government’s Equally Safe Delivery Plan.
3.03 Uphold the rights of children and young people as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) by embedding it within all policies and procedures.
3.04 Continue the rollout of DESC.
3.05 Work with other criminal justice partners to redesign and enhance our processes, speeding up justice for victims.
3.06 Research and continue to embed a preventative and public health approach to reducing violence across Scotland.
3.07 Develop a Corporate Parenting Plan for 2024-27.
3.08 Deliver Contact Engagement and Resolution Project (CERP).
3.09 Launch new unified communication platforms to enhance resilience and further strengthen collaboration opportunities.
3.10 Build on our Contact Assessment Model (CAM) to enhance the quality of all contact and engagement with the public.
3.11 Deliver training to improve quality of contact handling by Contact, Command and Control Division.
3.12 Implement mental health pathways to ensure individuals are referred to mental health partners and receive appropriate support.

Year two milestones
3.13 Design urban, rural and remote models for local public protection which are trauma informed and victim-centred.
3.14 Improve our response to victims of Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB), many of whom are vulnerable, through prevention and problem-solving focused community policing approaches.
3.15 Complete our review of third-party reporting in relation to hate crime to provide a more consistent and supportive environment for victims.
3.16 Enhance resources for frontline officers to support victims and tackle offenders of human trafficking and prostitution.
3.17 Review our approach to implementation of the Victims’ Code for Scotland and refresh our own Victim Charter, being clear on how and when an investigator will make contact to ensure a consistent service to victims of crime.
3.18 Improve our victim referral rate to Victim Support Scotland.
3.19 Support the national implementation of SCM across Scotland.
3.20 Support the piloting of a fully virtual trauma informed domestic abuse model in courts.
3.21 Complete the national rollout of DESC and BWV to secure best evidence and improved outcomes for victims.
3.22 Improve the quality and timeliness of cases reported to COPFS.
3.23 Roll out of a national enquiry system creating a new national data set with advanced features, improved resilience and allowing decommissioning of legacy solutions.

Year three milestones
3.24 Develop partnership working in line with the Scottish Government’s prostitution plan – ‘Challenging and Deterring Men’s Demand’.
3.25 Develop lifetime management plan for DESC to support the platform and continue to enhance the product in line with wider criminal justice ambition and demand.
3.26 Introduce an automated electronic communications process to deliver aftercare and support to victims, survivors and witnesses.
3.27 Provide communities with more direct, accessible ways to access our services.
3.28 Offer consistent and reliable access to help at the first point of contact and signpost service users to partners whenever appropriate.

Thriving workforce

Bold choices will be made to modernise our workforce and become an anti-racist, anti-discriminatory organisation. By ensuring that more officers are in operational policing roles, we will deploy police staff within frontline community policing, criminal investigations, professional standards and public protection roles. Non warranted roles, where appropriate, will be occupied by police staff. This modernised workforce will ensure our officers spend more time in their communities, doing the job they signed up for where they can have the greatest impact for the people of Scotland.

Our back-office functions will be transformed through adopting a service led and technology enabled approach. This includes a strategic centre of excellence, business partnering, an operational centre of excellence, reviewing our approach to modified and restricted duties, addressing the day shift pattern to enhance capacity and investing in the supporting technology required.

To better meet the needs of the public and support the wellbeing of our officers and staff, we will modernise our estate, moving to regional and divisional deployment hubs in areas of population density. We will maximise opportunities to co-locate with partner agencies. We will ensure our continued presence in communities across Scotland and work hard to improve our visibility.

We will take a coordinated approach to health, safety and wellbeing which meets the needs of our people. We will support our people to be effective leaders, with equitable access to career development opportunities, ensuring our recruitment induction, lateral development and promotion processes meet the needs of underrepresented groups.

We will reshape our training and development offer to reflect future skills needed, with clarity on essential learning, role-related learning and continuous professional development opportunities, with support for colleagues to acquire new skills and transition to new posts.

We recognise that developing our leaders is vital to the growth and effectiveness of our organisation and we will continue to invest in our people to ensure they are supported to lead with the necessary skills and capabilities and to build and lead teams underpinned by our values.

We will retain and attract the best people by investing in digital technology which enhances frontline policing capability and improves employee experience. We will put operational information at the fingertips of our officers and staff. We will minimise administrative duties and equip them with the appropriate tools to do their job and perform their roles in a safe, effective and efficient way.

We will seek to enhance productivity across the service and will learn from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Policing Productivity Review (April 2024).

We will deliver the capability for officers and staff to streamline the entry of data, improving quality and using automation to eliminate the need for re-keying, ensuring data is automatically transferred to all systems that utilise it.

To ensure that only people fit to represent policing remain with or join Police Scotland we will work with elected representatives and stakeholder to strengthen our recruitment, vetting, performance and disciplinary regulations and procedures, taking a robust approach to discrimination, abuse of position, domestic abuse and sexual misconduct.

We will build on the improvements already made to bring greater transparency, fairness and accessibility to the police complaints and misconduct processes. This will increase consistency and efficiency, as well as providing a swifter resolution for all those involved. To drive cultural improvement, there will be a continued focus on the behavioural changes that are necessary at all levels of policing, working with justice partners to improve our conduct and performance regulations.

Year one milestones
Number Milestone description
4.01 Redesign divisional back-office support to improve the service provided to operational policing by reducing its size, removing duplication and improving efficiency.
4.02 Review and re-design corporate functions to maximise efficiencies while delivering agreed services internally and externally.
4.03 Roll out the Scottish Government’s suicide bereavement support service across Police Scotland.
4.04 Work with elected representatives to ensure that our vetting, conduct and performance regulations are fit for purpose.
4.05 Deliver an Estates Masterplan and 10-Year Capital programme.
4.06 Establish an improved colleague engagement forum and carry out a whole workforce survey annually.
4.07 Commence and embed new learning and development approaches, while continuing to maximise opportunities to reshape training, support colleague learning, improving skills and knowledge of our workforce.
4.08 Enhance our use of MyCareer to support positive and proactive development conversations.
4.09 Deliver an improved occupational health provision which responds to and supports colleagues’ needs.
4.10 Continue the upgrade and replacement of critical infrastructure, including desktops, laptops, mobile devices and Airwave radios.
4.11 Progress work to utilise conduct and performance regulations to ensure a zero-tolerance approach to inappropriate conduct.
4.12 Develop and make available enhanced support for victims and survivors to access when complaints against colleagues are being investigated.
4.13 Enhance our approach to performance management and internal governance to enhance accountability at all levels.

Year two milestones
4.14 Further enhance enabling services and commence a phased implementation of new technology for back-office functions.
4.15 Re-design day shift, shift patterns to enhance capacity.
4.16 Commence the implementation of the Estates Capital Programme.
4.17 Move towards a national firearms and explosives licensing model with a transition from majority police officer delivery to majority police staff delivery, creating strengthened frontline capacity, specialising the function and enhancing service delivery and public safety.
4.18 Deliver an accessible and responsive system for addressing complaints against the police.
4.19 Develop a total reward framework which is fair, transparent and which recognises achievement.
4.20 Commence procurement of the enabling technology platform for corporate and back office support to reduce reliance on manual processes and deliver innovation and automation.
4.21 Deliver rank ratio review findings and strip out some of the demands on supervisors allowing more focus on core duties and support to staff.
4.22 Evaluate and provide evidence-based assessment on our wellbeing support for colleagues.
4.23 Develop and roll out the next phase of leadership development.
4.24 Introduce technology to enhance our capabilities while enabling efficiency and improved colleague welfare. e.
4.25 Embed digital integration of the court scheduling application.
4.26 Continue investment in technology to enable automation of processes and reduction of manual activity.
4.27 Develop a proof-of-concept generative AI solution for use by officers and staff in execution of system activity, delivering increased productivity and enhanced ways of working.
4.28 Develop a proof-of-concept to enhance in-house capability to develop AI and other innovative data-based technologies.
4.29 Further develop our Performance Framework to include the impact of organisational culture.

Year three milestones
4.30 Complete further phased implementations of the new technology for back-office services.
4.31 Complete work to ensure officers are only cited to attend court when needed and available.
4.32 Complete the automation of data and records.
4.33 Further progress implementation of the Estates Masterplan to support wider operational transformation. Move towards the ‘hub and spoke’ model in urban areas with new deployment hubs supporting smaller policing locations while also enabling Custody, Productions and Operational Support to operate in cross divisional hubs. In rural areas, ensure that we endeavour to meet local needs with the establishment of cross divisional facilities and local sites that enable effective community engagement.