Implications

Financial Implications

The Environmental Strategy contributes to cost control of utilities by reducing the consumption of major carbon emission sources such as gas and electricity. However, we recognise that these savings have been overtaken by the exceptional increase in tariff costs over the past two years. It is unclear when and if these costs will fall back in the foreseeable future. This makes the case for utility consumption even more compelling by increasing prospect of financial savings and decreasing payback times for projects.

External Funding
The Sustainability supports the Estates Dept in securing funding from the Greening the Public Sector Estate Development Scheme (GPSEDS). This competitive grant fund is available to qualifying public sector organisations and focuses on providing money for projects that demonstrate a “whole building approach” to sustainability. To date we have secured approximately £2.4m for the following work.

Conclusions
The inception of the Environmental Strategy has promoted the creation of a Sustainability Team which has been able to deliver on the key aims of the plan and increase the profile of environmental sustainability within the organisation. This in turn has allowed us to develop other relevant projects; evidenced by the range of work described in this paper. We will continue to deliver on supporting our colleagues in all Depts to reduce our environmental impact and improve on our carbon and cost efficiencies.

Legal implications

As stated at the beginning of this Paper, we are required by the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 to act in as sustainable a manner as possible. In addition to this general responsibility, we are also required to comply with the following:

Reputational Implications

Internal
Our staff and officers take an interest in the work of the Sustainability Team, and view performance from the perspective of their own work areas and buildings. We are contacted regularly by colleagues who wish to know what action we are taking on certain issues.

External
As a large public sector organisation and a community leader, we have a responsibility to ensure that we not only comply with legislation but work within the spirit of law to ensure that we make fundamentally positive changes to our organisational culture and therefore, our environmental impact.

Social Implications 

Improving our sustainability through carbon mitigation helps to ensure a more efficient and cost-effective service for the people of Scotland. By improving our climate change resilience through adaptation, we will ensure that we can continue to deliver on our aim of keeping people safe by making our buildings, people, and processes less vulnerable to the impacts of severe weather.

By reducing our consumption and cost of utilities, improving our resource use, built environment and fleet; we will assist in making Police Scotland an efficient and adaptable organisation.

Community Impact

As stated above our environmental sustainability work has positive implications for the communities across Scotland that we serve. This is either through improving efficiency and resilience of service but also in civic planning issues relating to adaptation and shared heat/energy projects.

Environmental Implications

The environmental implications of undertaking the work described in this report are significant in terms of legal compliance, cost reduction and service resilience.