Scotland’s crisis-stricken police force has warned of major ‘slash and burn’ cuts to tackle a funding black hole of nearly £20million.
The drive to save cash puts in jeopardy a commitment to roll out body-worn cameras, which Humza Yousaf said would go ahead.
Members of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) – the ‘civilian oversight’ quango for the force – said they did not trust top brass to balance the books by next year.
Scottish Tory justice spokesman Russell Findlay said: ‘Having already suffered severe and sustained cuts, this shocking “slash and burn” warning will cause worry and despair to frontline officers and communities across Scotland.
‘A dangerously complacent Humza Yousaf simply cannot dodge responsibility for the damage inflicted on our police service during 16 years of SNP misrule.
Officer numbers – already at a record low – are likely to drop even further, while some crimes won’t even be investigated, putting the public at increased risk.’
Police officials will be hauled before the SPA every month to be questioned about progress in making the necessary cutbacks – a sum that has risen from £18.9million to £19.2million.
At a public board meeting of the SPA in Glasgow yesterday, Deputy Chief Officer David Page – the most senior civilian staff member of the force – said: ‘To catch up on the £19.2million gap in seven months means we need to start making decisions now – and I’m talking about decisions on the “slash and burn” narrative – because this is linked to reform; it’s linked to transformation.’
He added: ‘We are still looking to try to protect the body-worn video programme but we are right up against that now in terms of where we are.
‘If we don’t see movement on some core choices [on cuts] we will bite very hard into that transformation programme and that’s the sort of slash and burn you are talking about.’ He added: ‘It used to be every pound is a prisoner, now it’s every penny is a prisoner in terms of what we’re trying to do.’
Mr Page said police ‘will hopefully manage the budget to a balanced position by the end of the [financial] year’.
Mr Yousaf recently told MSPs that his Government had increased the force’s budget and confirmed plans to roll out body-worn video cameras.
Deputy Chief Constable Malcolm Graham warned the SPA of a ‘gradual but noticeable decline’ in police performance.
Grant Macrae, chairman of the SPA’s resources committee, said the Authority had approved the police budget in March on an understanding that cuts could be made without endangering public safety.
By the end of April this year, overtime was ‘higher than budget’. Deputy Chief Constable Jane Connors said officer numbers, which dropped from 17,200 to a 15-year low of around 16,600, had led to more being spent on overtime and a decline in detection rates for some crimes.
The Government said it supports the body cameras roll-out but the allocation of resources for the devices ‘is a matter for the Chief Constable and SPA’.
