How can Police Scotland make such savings if service is being run properly?
On reading Chris Marshall’s article in The Scotsman on Saturday regarding the “cash-strapped” police force, I became increasingly confused.
How can an organisation such as Police Scotland pride itself on achieving savings 70 per cent higher than its target! How can this be possible if the organisation is being properly run? As a service provider surely the organisation should be seeking to operate within its budget with a duty not to exceed it.
Presumably the budget is set by the Scottish Government based on identified need. This being the case, to then cut services to make savings which cannot meet that need is an outrageous state of affairs. Calum Steele of the Police Federation is absolutely correct to say that these savings should not be seen as a “badge of honour”.
We know that policing services are being cut because we rarely see police officers on our streets or patrolling our roads; we know services are being cut when police take days if not weeks to respond to our calls. The Scottish Government imposed a single police service on Scotland for political purposes and to gain greater control. The stated reasons for this move was to achieve financial savings in overall police budgets, therefore it was essential that Police Scotland was seen to achieve savings, the greater the better for this could be sold to the public as success.
We now know the real cost. Police Scotland have slashed services to a much greater extent than required, presumably under political pressure to do so in order that justice ministers can claim success. Indeed, the government spokesman mentioned iny our article claims to have “protected the police budget to deliver a boost of £100m by 2021”.
Unless I have missed something how is it possible to slash the budget beyond what is required by the business case for the single force and then consider that giving money back is actually a boost? It seems to me to be the economics of the madhouse.
If the business case for the single force identified savings that could accrue from the creation of it, then surely the job of senior officers and the Scottish Police Authority was to respond to their success by making the case to stop cutting levels any further. Presumably this would have meant that the squeeze on local policing would ease and communities would again receive better services.
We also know that local authorities are paying extra cash to Police Scotland to receive enhanced local policing; this extra cash across the country is sure to run into many millions of pounds. And this at the same time as Police Scotland are cutting services beyond what is required to achieve the political aim of reducing the budget.
This is a scandal that requires full investigation; local authorities and the public are being duped.
L. W. TURNBULL Edderston Road, Peebles