Report Summary
This report provides members of the Forensic Services Committee with an overview of Project Weaver – Progress on Implementation.
To access the full document please open the PDF document above.
To view as accessible content please use the sections below. (Note that tables and some appendixes are not available as accessible content).
Meeting
The publication discussed was referenced in the meeting below
Forensics Services Committee - 1 February 2023
Date : 01 February 2023
Location : online
Laboratory Mobilisation and Transitional arrangements
A key part of the laboratory mobilisation has been the development of the scientific methods and their validation on the three main scientific instruments along with the appropriate documentation in our Quality Management System. Excellent progress has been made and it is anticipated that all will be completed and signed off in January 2023. In addition the remaining laboratory infrastructure work is fully in place including all Health and Safety aspects. This will enable the laboratory to be fully operational by the end of January 2023.This is a major achievement given the complexities of Toxicological methods.
In parallel with the scientific methods development specialists within the Digital Division within Police Scotland have successfully ensured that all scientific instrumentation is networked on the Police Scotland IT network. This has been subject to extensive dialogue and engagement between the two key equipment manufacturers and the key scientists. This has been pioneering work and a major achievement given the complexities and credit is due to all involved including the Digital Specialists and the Digital Project Lead in particular.
In addition the Digital Division have also ensured that the CaRRS case management system (used to support the delivery of Post Mortem Toxicology at the University of Glasgow) has been successfully migrated across to SPA and has been used from the date of transfer. In addition, there has been a successful data migration that preserves the data set used to provide statistical data to Scottish Government and other key stakeholders.
At the date of transfer no backlog of cases was inherited by SPA Forensic Services and to support the transition our outsourcing partners have continued to deliver cases to the requirements of COPFS. To provide further resilience for urgent and priority cases an agreement has been made between COPFS and NHS Grampian. This support will continue for the next few months whilst the new laboratory reaches optimum capacity. This has all been modelled and an agreement has been reached with COPFS and the Pathologists that the maximum TRT for cases during this period will be 8-9 weeks but that by mid-March this will be back to 5 weeks.
