The Police Reform Journey

The creation of Police Scotland in 2013 represented major public sector reform and was an innovative and ambitious response to austerity to protect and improve services. £2 billion was saved for the public purse over the first decade.

In recent years, we have been responding to rising and increasingly complex community and individual needs.

Our Chief Constable has been clear that further opportunities for reform of policing exist and that Police Scotland must be fit for the challenges of today and tomorrow. Our criminal justice system needs reform if we are to ensure that victims receive the care and outcomes they deserve - Police Scotland will continue to collaborate positively with our partners to achieve this together. We will also play our part in supporting and driving further reform and improvement across the public sector to improve outcomes for individuals and communities.

In our 2030 Vision we have outlined our ambitions for the future of policing in Scotland, putting the delivery of safer communities, less crime, being victim focused and building a thriving police workforce at the heart of everything we do.

This plan documents the work we will do over the first three years of activity as we progress towards achieving our vision. At time of publication, we are midway through Year 1 of Phase 1. This plan therefore reflects the relevant commitments outlined in our 2024/25 Annual Police Plan.

By April 2027, we will have carried out significant organisational transformation at pace that will move us to a more sustainable and affordable policing model. This will ensure we can continue to tackle high threat, harm and risk in all of Scotland’s communities.

We will continue to work with our partners to take a joined-up approach. However, we are clear that there are some areas where we expect the way we work with partners to change. We will look to work with the NHS, local government and third sector partners to adopt a more focused approach to how we respond to mental-health related incidents and non-crime related vulnerability.

The culture of policing and the behaviours and standards of those who work within it are rightly under scrutiny right across the UK, including Police Scotland. We welcome this challenge and through our Policing Together programme we are working relentlessly to build a truly inclusive police service that inspires confidence in our communities. When we talk about keeping people safe, we want everyone in Scotland to know that we mean them.

The programme of change outlined in this plan is focused on delivering service transformation at pace, prioritising the frontline, reducing duplication in our back-office functions and creating capacity to deal with new and increasing threats.

We recognise there may be risks to the delivery of activities set out within this plan. As with any publicly funded body, delivery will be dependent on funding. Our risk and prioritisation procedures will support management and delivery of our commitments.

We will seek to modernise the Police Scotland workforce through the right investment in non-warranted support. We will focus on strengthening our frontline capacity while ensuring that we give those officers and staff the best possible support to do their jobs.

We will undertake effective workforce planning to identify and introduce the skills and experience we need for the future. We will carefully examine which roles can and should be done by police staff, creating opportunities for new positions that allow us to deliver services in a more efficient manner, enabling a wider range of people to access a career in policing and allowing more of our officers to return to frontline and operational policing roles.

We will review and redesign how we deliver community policing. This will include a focus on reshaping response policing and how we respond to calls from the public; what our community policing model looks like; modernising our approach to volunteering; how we work with partners on problem solving and prevention; looking at how we organise our Divisional Criminal Investigation teams, our specialist investigative functions and our public protection teams.

The significant shift in demand towards cyber and online crime due to the acceleration in technological changes has and will continue to create vulnerabilities that policing will need to react to quickly and by 2030 we can expect further increases in cyber-related demand and complexity. Almost all crime already has a digital footprint – and this footprint will grow, increasing the need for every policing function to harness technology and data. Cyber and online skills and resilience will be embedded into the organisation, providing our workforce with training to enhance the investigation of online crimes in all its forms.

It is important that the service maintains a focus on the human elements of policing. While digital forms of engagement are likely to become more advanced local relationships, visibility and connection to local priorities should remain central to policing. A more diverse population requires increasingly effective engagement if Police Scotland is to maintain public trust and confidence.

We know that change can be unsettling and we know that our workforce has experienced significant change already. We will engage, communicate and listen to the public and to our workforce as the journey to towards 2030 progresses.