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Chapter 4 Managing the risks - the police service in Scotland

Summary

• Police services are primarily delivered by the eight police forces in Scotland, although this formal structure hides a more complex service delivery framework around three different levels - local, regional and national.
• A significant amount of effort is devoted to managing risks at a local level, mostly through working in partnership with other agencies.
• However, a range of approaches has recently been adopted for dealing with those risks that require more specialist resources than are normally available: forces acting individually through inter-force collaborations; chief officers acting in unison for co-ordination through ACPOS; and the creation of the SPSA through the co-operation of the tripartite partners.
• ACPOS understood the need to review capacity and capability across forces in Scotland as far back as 2005. Since then, however, progress in implementing recommendations has been slow and HMICS cannot provide assurance that risks are being effectively managed.

How policing is delivered in Scotland

4.1 Policing in Scotland is delivered primarily by the eight forces and the Scottish Police Services Authority ( SPSA). Forces provide the majority of their local services, such as community policing, response policing (answering calls for service) and investigating volume crime, through geographical units known as divisions, command units or command areas. The SPSA provides services covering forensic science, police training, information and communications technology and national databases, and maintains the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency ( SCDEA).

4.2 Generally, policing is devolved to the Scottish Government, although some matters such as counter-terrorism, drugs legislation and national security are reserved and remain under overall co-ordination at the UK level. In addition, other forces operate in Scotland as part of the UK Government provision, such as the Ministry of Defence Police, British Transport Police, and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. The Scottish Government also has arrangements with the Serious and Organised Crime Agency ( SOCA) to manage most of the risks associated with international criminal activity. This review has not included the UK level of policing since this is not a devolved matter.

4.3 The current force structures have been in place since 1975, however, the risk environment has changed substantially since this time, as highlighted in the previous section. Forces have therefore had to adopt a range of approaches to enable them to operate effectively in this changing environment. This has led to a number of layers of service delivery developing as different needs arise, rather than as part of a cohesive design.

4.4 Within the formal framework of the eight forces and the SPSA, we identified eight different levels of service delivery that can be grouped under the three headings of local, force/regional and national:

Local arrangements:

• Local policing services within divisions that directly support CPPs and SOA outcomes.
• Local policing within divisions that may contribute generally towards, but does not directly support, SOA outcomes.

Force/regional arrangements

• Force-level services, e.g. force communications centres, drug squads.
• Force-level arrangements with other partners, such as local authorities or the fire and ambulance services, to provide services or share buildings or other provisions.
• Multi-force or regional collaborations, e.g. in relation to firearms or major crime services.

National arrangements

• National arrangements delivered through the Scottish Police Services Authority, such as forensic science services or SCDEA.
• National arrangements co-ordinated by ACPOS, such as the Major Investigation Co-ordination and Development Unit ( MICDU), the Scottish Police Information and Co-ordinating Centre ( S-PICC) and counter-terrorism activity.
• National arrangements led by the Scottish Government - e.g. national emergencies and national crime prevention initiatives. Although not strictly service delivery the following also have a major influence: the Serious and Organised Crime Task Force, the Sex Offender Programme Board and the Scottish Strategic Steering Group (for the development of police performance management).

4.5 How risks are managed at these different levels is described in the following section.

Local arrangements

4.6 Through the statutory requirement to participate in community planning and the recent development of Single Outcome Agreements ( SOAs), police forces have to work closely with the 32 local Scottish councils. Forces have worked hard to align their divisions (or equivalents) so that they map on to local authority boundaries. However, some council areas are too small to support a viable division, while others are so large and complex (either through demography or geography) that they require more than one division. The breadth of variation is illustrated by the fact that two of the smaller forces each cover only one local authority area while the two largest forces cover 17 of the 32 local authority areas in Scotland between them.

Figure 3. Local delivery of policing services

Community planning partnership level with SOAs

* or part of division/command area or Fife or Dumfries and Galloway Constabularies

4.7 This range of scale has resulted in a variety of local structures, with some community planning partnerships ( CPPs) being served by more than one territorial policing division, and some policing divisions covering more than one CPP.

4.8 Although SOAs are relatively new, the time, the policy focus and the effort being spent on developing these arrangements suggest that they will quickly become more significant. This view was reflected in responses from the stakeholder survey. A key feature will increasingly be the ability of local authorities in particular to prioritise the allocation of resources across different services in order to achieve agreed outcomes.

4.9 For policing and other services this could see funding rise or fall locally, as decisions are made as to what the priority areas are and what combinations of services will be most effective. This is a very different form of funding arrangement from that to which police forces have been accustomed.

4.10 We noted that the strategic and business planning in some forces was shifting in focus to the CPP level, with the results then simply aggregated to produce force-level plans. Others reported that their force-level planning had been adjusted to take account of the greater influence of SOAs.

4.11 Police forces in Scotland have been committed to partnership working for many years, whether at local authority level, with criminal justice partners or with other emergency services. More recently, community planning has been strongly supported and promoted by forces and individual chief officers. The introduction of NIM has offered the police a means of helping local partners to assess and manage community safety and crime risks. ⁷

4.12 However, there are other functions and activities undertaken at divisional level that are not always or ever covered by CPPs and their SOAs. The pull of funding for the type of policing that most clearly contributes to SOA priorities may well have an impact on these or other core policing functions provided or undertaken at force level unless alternative funding streams or arrangements are put in place ( e.g. motorway policing, emergency planning and exercising, management of cases reported to the procurator fiscal).

Force/regional level arrangements

4.13 Currently, all eight forces have an almost entire range of support services. These range from single or linked force communications centres, through drugs squads and dog handlers, to back-office functions like human resources and finance departments.

4.14 Scotland's police forces already have a level of in-built asymmetry, with Strathclyde being roughly equivalent in scale (workforce and population) to all the rest put together. Some of the larger forces have increased the size of their territorial policing divisions (for greater alignment with local authorities and to provide economies of scale) to the extent that some of these divisions are now larger than the smaller forces.

4.15 Given the disparity in their sizes, most forces have entered into agreements to work together to manage some operational risks, as explained further below.

4.16 Some chief officers told us that they felt that the diversification of arrangements for providing specialist policing represents a stepping stone to a more simplified structure; others that the range of approaches adopted is a strength.

Collaborative arrangements to meet the need for specialist resources

4.17 There have always been some low activity specialisms ( e.g. underwater search, air support) that would be impractical and uneconomic for all eight forces to sustain individually. Consequently, there are already a small number of agreements, formal and informal, on how these specialist services can be shared between forces.

4.18 More recently, several forces have entered into various further formal and informal agreements, with different groups of forces delivering some specialist policing services either jointly or by a lead force. These collaborations are intended to address risks identified through the NIM process or by HMICS which have highlighted a lack of specialist capacity and capability in some forces ( e.g. firearms response cover, VIP protection, arrangements for handling confidential intelligence sources).

4.19 The need for some services to be provided collaboratively was also recognised by respondents to the in-service survey.

Graph 2. [Q20 In-service survey]

Some specialist and expert services would be better provided by police forces working together

4.20 There are a number of reasons behind this increase in collaborations:

• the increasing complexity and cost of some services such as major crime investigation;
• that because some risks, such as complicated homicide investigations, CBRN incidents, and armed hostage sieges are infrequent it is uneconomic for some forces to maintain the necessary levels of expertise;
• in some types of specialist police functions, the requirement for specific training and experience is more important than whether officers live and work locally;
• some demands extend beyond a force area, such as organised crime, serious fraud and internet child abuse; and
• some forces are better able than others to provide specialist policing.

4.21 The ability and willingness of police forces across Scotland to pull together in the face of a significant incident is a recognised strength. This is founded upon a combination of agreements relating to sharing resources in 'mutual aid', the professional ethos of policing generally, and the co-operative professional relationships between chief officers. However, we are concerned about the ad hoc nature of some of these collaborations. Currently, there is no overall, national assessment of the situation and therefore no judgement being made about what the cumulative benefits and risks of unco-ordinated collaboration are likely to be. Neither is it clear whether there are other options which might prove more effective and efficient.

4.22 The current organic approach to creating and implementing regional collaborative arrangements may offer a broad base from which to evolve best practice. However, decisions on collaboration should be based on agreed criteria and robust options appraisal, so that any need for specialist policing support is considered and assessed in totality at national level in order that police resources are used to best effect.

4.23 In essence, an internal market is developing between providers and receivers of some aspects of policing. Our concerns are not just that this process has been poorly underpinned because of weaknesses in information about need, costs and standards, but that in principle policing is too important to rely on 'market forces' to deliver an equitable, fair and sustainable service across Scotland.

4.24 In our view, collaborative arrangements are fundamental decisions that affect policing across Scotland and should not be made without a full and consistent approach to analysing national risks and needs.

National level and cross-border arrangements

4.25 There are a number of different national arrangements for providing or supporting policing services:

• Some national services, as previously described, are delivered through or maintained by the SPSA.
• Some national arrangements are delivered through agreements within ACPOS, e.g. counter-terrorism; response to chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear ( CBRN) incidents; and the activation, command and staffing of the Scottish Police Information and Co-ordinating Centre.
• Some co-ordination of services is led by the Scottish Government ( e.g. the Serious and Organised Crime Task Force).

4.26 Individual aspects of national risk have previously been identified from time to time by the Scottish Government through various fora. Though these have then been acted upon, often with partners, there is not yet a systematic means of considering all of these selected risks together and alongside other national policing risks. The groups concerned are usually led or co-ordinated by the Scottish Government as the senior member of the tripartite partnership at national level. They tend to deal with such matters as the threat from serious and organised crime, national crime prevention campaigns, and national emergency co-ordination.

4.27 Although not strictly concerned with direct service delivery, the following groups led by the Scottish Government also have a major influence: the Sex Offender Programme Board, the Scottish Strategic Steering Group (for the development of police performance management), and the National Criminal Justice Board. Not all of these are solely concerned with policing alone. For example, where crime investigation is part of the equation the Lord Advocate is represented because of his or her primacy in that function. The main bodies involved in such arrangements are depicted below (Figure 4).

Figure 4. National level - arrangements

Managing capacity and capability

4.28 The move to build a greater understanding of police capacity and capability across Scotland was first instigated by ACPOS following a letter from the then HMCIC, Andrew Brown CBEQPM, in September 2005. This followed related and previous work carried out by HMIC in England and Wales.

4.29ACPOS generated five workstreams in its review of capacity and capability which, at the time, were considered to be those where the gap between the level of risk and the capacity of the service to deal with that risk were greatest. These workstreams covered serious and organised crime, police use of firearms, maintaining public order, counter-terrorism and investigating major crime.

4.30 In many cases, the workstreams chosen already benefited from a high degree of codification supported by national manuals and guidance. It might be reasonable to assume therefore that, three years on, significant progress would have been made across all these areas. However, closer examination of three of them reveals the following:

• In relation to the police use of firearms, we have taken full cognisance of the current thematic inspection of this issue. Within this area, the key findings as detailed in case study 1 illustrate a current and significant gap in a high-risk area, despite a dedicated work stream being managed by ACPOS over a number of years to prevent this.
• In relation to investigating major crime, we recognise that ACPOS has recently established the MICDU as its principal response to this workstream. Again we are concerned that three years since the issue of capability and capacity was directed to ACPOS from the then HMCIC - Andrew Brown, the MICDU is only now just commencing its work. Further, a key source of this information, arising from the debriefs of major incidents over the intervening three years is significantly incomplete despite this being an ACPOS driven activity. This issue is detailed further at case study 2.
• In relation to organised crime the most recent assessment of the threat posed, when compared with the service's ability to respond (principally through the SCDEA) suggests that significant development is required. We are concerned that this is the current position despite ACPOS managing a specific work stream to counter this threat since 2005.

4.31 In addition to the above, we note the wider recent concerns over progress of our recommendations in relation to the national capability to counter fraud within Scotland. We also take note of the current joint inspection work in relation to public protection arrangements across Scotland.

4.32 We conclude that, with some exceptions, overall progress has been slow with notable gaps in significant areas such as risk assessment. When all of the above are considered, despite considerable effort, the breadth, depth and pace of work to ensure that policing across Scotland keeps ahead of the risks that it is facing, appears at best, uncertain.

4.33 There may be many reasons for this, not least the fact that ACPOS as an organisation has limited resources. As a result, the vast majority of the considerable amount of work which it undertakes is carried out by chief officers and their staff from individual forces, who have to balance the need to conduct ACPOS work with other demands from their own force.

4.34 This inevitably means that work cannot be conducted as quickly as it might be if there were dedicated staff working on it full-time. The issue of resourcing may have affected the opportunities for the five areas to be considered holistically in order to identify and exploit common threads ( e.g. opportunities to co-ordinate the logistics and mobilisation of national capacity, or for shared resourcing of an intelligence capability to serve more than one national need).

4.35 The progress made in firearms and major crime investigation is examined in the following case studies.

4.36 The review also examined progress made in respect of matters addressed by the serious and organised crime workstream. Here too we would argue that recent analysis shows the challenges to policing to be as great now, perhaps even more so, than they were three years ago. (Due to the sensitive and restricted nature of the evidence behind this conclusion, it cannot be reproduced in this report.)

4.37 As already stated, we accept that it can be difficult to co-ordinate activity across such structures as ACPOS, and that this is exacerbated when the problem being managed is also changing, at times, quite rapidly. Indeed we believe this further points to the need for the more focused, direct and dynamic response that we have proposed.

4.38 Overall, we do not believe that the gaps highlighted are the result of the inactivity or poor performance of any particular organisation or leadership. Rather, when linked with the lack of coherence of the overall programme, we suggest that these gaps illustrate the difficulties ACPOS faces in trying to pursue matters collectively, under existing arrangements and structures and where forces and their chief officers have differing views and local policing contexts.

4.39 Beyond the original five workstreams, new areas of risk such as public protection, asset confiscation ⁹ and internet crime are clear candidates for assessments of capacity and capability at both local and national level. So too are existing areas such as serious fraud, ¹⁰ financial forensic investigation, proactive intelligence analysis and exchange on unsolved sexual offences - all of which were suggested to us by one or more forces and stakeholders during this review.

Conclusion

4.40 The absence of data to support wider and longer-term decision-making is commented upon in several parts of this report. In terms of capacity and capability, it has two major implications for the review:

• HMICS cannot discharge its duty to provide Ministers with the best possible advice on how to deliver effective policing for Scotland.
• HMICS cannot give assurance that decisions, even incremental ones, on collaborative arrangements or services co-ordinated by ACPOS, are currently being made under the best possible conditions.

4.41 Given our concerns with progress on both collaborative arrangements and ACPOS-led capacity and capability-building, we conclude that different arrangements are required in order to assess and then manage how policing should respond to some of the highest risk areas. Our proposals for how this should be done are summarised in the last chapter of this report - the way forward.

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