Further detail

Annual Report and Accounts

The Authority’s unaudited Annual Report and Accounts has been completed and provided to our new external auditors, Grant Thornton. The unaudited document has been scrutinised by Members of the Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee and the independent external audit is ongoing.

This is a significant undertaking each year and I am grateful to the team across both Police Scotland and the Authority for the effort they have put into complete this work both on time and to a high standard. I am particularly pleased that the team has worked to improve the readability of the document compared with previous years.

Pre-Budget Scrutiny

The Scottish Parliament’s Criminal Justice Committee has invited the Authority to attend and give evidence on 13 September as part of the committee’s pre-budget scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s budget for 2024/25. As Accountable Officer for the policing budget I will attend this session along with representatives from Police Scotland.

Creation of the Police Negotiating Board for Scotland (PNBS)

In my March 2023 report I confirmed that consultation had concluded in relation to the legislation to implement PNBS. I also outlined the Authority recognised the proposed legislation would simply implement the intentions of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 with the key area of focus for the Authority being the development of a PNBS guide that sets out and agrees the ways of working for PNBS going forward.

On 7 June 2023, the Criminal Justice Committee considered the PNBS (Constitution, Arbitration and Qualifying Cases) Regulations 2023 and recommended its approval to the Scottish Parliament. This will be implemented from 17 August 2023.

Authority officials are in ongoing engagement with SG officials and other stakeholders to support the development of supporting procedures taking the opportunity to ensure increased clarity in ways of working, along with possible process improvements compared to current arrangements as PNBS is implemented.

The recruitment process for a new Independent Chair of the PNBS is ongoing with Authority Vice Chair Jane Ryder having been part of the recruitment panel.

Police Strategy Forum

At the end of June 2023, members of the SPA Corporate Team attended the annual Police Strategy Forum, an annual event bringing together Policing Systems from across the UK and beyond to share learning and practice.

As well as the networking and learning opportunities presented by the Forum, Scott Ross and Amanda Coulthard presented a plenary session on day two of the programme, focused on building public trust and confidence. The input gave delegates an overview of the work the authority is progressing on understanding public trust and confidence through its own independent public polling and work to understand drivers of confidence. Delegates also heard about the work of the authority in understanding and supporting public confidence around the use of new technologies in policing, including the Authority’s support to the Independent Advisory Group on Emerging technology and work on the model for oversight. Finally, delegates were given an overview of the Authority’s community confidence action research activity. The full slide deck used for the event is attached at Appendix A. This plenary input to the forum gave SPA Corporate Staff an opportunity to raise awareness of the work of the Authority and share practice and learning with other jurisdictions.

Association of Police and Crime Commissioners Chief Executives (APACE)

The annual general meeting of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioner Chief Executives (APACE), the network for chief executive officers for police and crime commissioners and oversight bodies, took place on Wednesday 12 July 2023. To support the agenda for that meeting the Authority’s Corporate team were asked to provide a briefing note sharing some of the positive practice we currently have underway, which included oversight of conduct issues, assessing performance, third party engagement and endorsement, public briefings, our approach to supporting local performance scrutiny, oversight of change and our work on community confidence including the seldom heard communities research.

Additionally, we were invited to present to the AGM on SPA practice around policing performance and, trust and confidence in policing. Attendees were very interested in our approach to benchmarking, and keen to engage with us on this. There was also significant interest in our public confidence activity, particularly around the SPA commissioned independent public polling and the research commissioned on seldom heard communities. The Corporate team are progressing follow up work from this input.

Knowledge Exchange – Policing Authority

On Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 July 2023, board member Tom Halpin and Authority staff member Amanda Coulthard attended a knowledge exchange session with colleagues from the Policing Authority in Dublin. This visit was focused on sharing practice and learning across a range of areas which are common to both organisations. During the visit we were able to hear from colleagues about how support for oversight is delivered locally and agree on areas where we will look to collaborate further.

As well as hearing about the work of the Authority, the visit also gave an opportunity to hear more about two interesting and relevant projects currently being delivered by An Garda Siochana. Firstly, a pilot project which will be delivered in Limerick starting in November 2023 focused on community access and support. This crisis intervention focused co-responder programme links well to the continued focus on vulnerability and mental health within policing in Scotland and is an area we are exploring further with colleagues within Police Scotland. Secondly the Greentown study, a youth diversion project for 18–24-year-olds delivered through an intensive family support model.

I want to note my thanks to the staff of the Policing Authority for hosting such an informative visit and look forward to continuing to work together to progress on key areas identified through the visit.

New SPA Website

The Authority’s Corporate team and Police Scotland’s ICT team are now in the final stages prior to launch of a new Authority website. The new site has been developed following significant input from users, key stakeholders and follow up testing. The site seeks to clearly explain the role and activities of the Authority and make more of our information available and accessible to a broader audience. Work is now underway with Scottish Government’s Digital Assurance Division to secure certification to launch. We anticipate launching the new site once certification has been achieved in the coming month.