Police bid to cut fuel backf ires and costs £2m
SCOTLAND’S cash-strapped police force has blown nearly £2 million on fitting patrol cars with trackers in a bid to cut fuel costs – only to put the brakes on the project at the last minute.
The taxpayer-funded sum was paid to English firm Traffilog UK to supply and fit devices to measure mileage and fuel use in Police Scotland’s fleet of vehicles, which cost a reported £10 million per year to run. But the technology, which was meant to go live during the summer, was halted amid mounting problems, including how the force would store data compiled by the software.
News of the £1.8 million vehicle telematics project follows the revelation last week that Police Scotland is so starved of cash it is struggling to keep buildings, vehicles and equipment in operation.
David Hamilton, vice chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers said: ‘This has not been a good look. In truth it’s been a bit of a car crash of a project. It’s hard to tell if the savings we were told about would stand up to scrutiny.’
The system was meant to replace the practice of officers manually filling in mileage sheets after each journey and swiping electronic cards instead.
Telematics stores fuel data and has been heralded as a way for fleet operators to identify where and how fuel savings can be made.
Northamptonshire Police installed the technology in 2013 and the force said it began saving £13,000 and 2,000 gallons of fuel every week.
Mr Hamilton said: ‘There are issues around things that have come into force since the contract was signed, namely GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] rules over data.
‘Police Scotland have now had to pause deploying the technology.
‘The hardware has been put into the cars but the technology has not started being used yet. Questions have been
‘This is not a good look, it’s a car crash project’
asked about what data Police Scotland will get from the telematics and whether it will breach GDPR rules.’
One Lanarkshire-based officer said: ‘They’ve fitted all these tracker devices to patrol cars. But we’ve been told they are dropping it. It’s a waste of money for the taxpayer.’
Chief Constable Iain Livingstone said in June that the force faced challenges in complying with new GDPR rules – with issues arising from balancing privacy with fulfilling its duty to protect vulnerable people.
The Scottish Police Authority said that while the procurement contract was under its name, it was acting on behalf of Police Scotland.
Assistant Chief Constable Kenny MacDonald said: ‘The telematics system is being reprogrammed following ongoing consultation with our staff associations to ensure we are fully compliant with GDPR, which has led to a delay in the system going live.’
At a Holyrood committee last week, David Page, Deputy Chief Officer for Police Scotland, said the force was effectively ‘putting Band-Aids’ on to deal with problems with its buildings, vehicles and computer systems.