No minutes for key meetings, says police watchdog
SCOTLAND’s police watchdog has admitted no proper record was kept of key meetings, fuelling a secrecy row.
The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) was accused of ‘fly-bynight’ practices over the failure to keep official minutes.
Board members met to discuss an abortive plan to bring back Chief Constable Phil Gormley from gardening leave amid bullying allegations, which he denies. But no SPA officials took minutes of the meetings.
They wrote up a record later based on ex-SPA chief executive John Foley’s notes.
Another meeting where a ‘golden goodbye’ of around £100,000 for Mr Foley was discussed was also unminuted.
The revelations follow a row over a government failure to make a proper record of Justice Secretary Michael Matheson’s meeting with former SPA chairman Andrew Flanagan when the minister blocked Mr Gormley’s return to work. Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: ‘This fly-by-night approach is simply unacceptable. The SPA has systematically failed to adhere to simple governance procedures.’
Writing to the public audit committee, SPA chairman Professor Susan Deacon – who took over from Mr Flanagan in December – said the board met on October 31 ‘to review the Chief Constable’s leave arrangements’. However ‘no final decision was made on the matter, and the then chair took an action to have a discussion with the Chief Constable’.
Another meeting took place on November 7, but ‘there was no specific agenda item listed in relation to this topic, and the discussion took place under any other business’. She added: ‘No SPA executive support staff attended to minute either of these meetings. Draft minutes were therefore produced by officers with no first-hand knowledge of the discussions and were based on the then chief executive’s notes.’
On a June meeting regarding Mr Foley she said there is ‘no formal written record or minute of that discussion’.