Report Summary
The Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland made a joint written submission to the Scottish Parliament's Criminal Justice Committee ahead of its 2024/25 pre budget scrutiny. The evidence session was held in Parliament on 13 September 2023.
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Transformation of Public Services
Since the creation of a single national service, policing has already delivered the
financial and operational benefits of significant reform that the RSR now requires of the wider public sector.
The RSR states that it is “essential to drive reform across public services” and the Government supports “An enhanced focus on delivering efficiency savings across the public sector” through a variety of levers, including:
• Innovation;
• efficiency;
• improvement in procurement;
• collaboration; and
• Reducing the public sector workforce.
Policing in Scotland has successfully delivered one of the most significant Reform
programmes in the UK over the past 20 years by integrating eight separate police services and two supporting bodies into a single national police service delivering substantial cost savings and service improvements. As a result, over £200 million has been removed from the annual cost base compared to legacy arrangements including through significant reductions in chief officer, senior officer and staff numbers, as well as efficiencies and improved working practices.
Delivering necessary savings is an achievement and an enormous ongoing challenge. As the significant financial benefits from reform and transformation have already been realised through the creation of the single service, it is not possible for Police Scotland to deliver substantial savings for a second time through efficiency or restructuring.
Further significant cuts can only be achieved through a pay-freeze or by funding future pay awards via workforce reductions, alongside radical targeted action to reduce the overall non-pay cost base, i.e. significant reductions in the number of police buildings to save on utilities, non-domestic rates and maintenance costs.
The benefits of co-location of services are well evidenced. Through the work of the Blue Light Collaboration Programme we continue to work with Scottish Fire and Rescue Services (SFRS) and the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) to further explore additional opportunities for Blue Light Collaboration. We will continue to explore options for considering how Blue Light services could be more efficiently and effectively integrated and shared to achieve further cost savings and improve service delivery outcomes.
