Scottish police chiefs suggest councils follow their merger lead

22 May 13
Senior officers in Scotland’s newly centralised national police force have angered council leaders by suggesting that the police merger could form a template for getting rid of many local authorities.

By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 22 May 2013

Senior officers in Scotland’s newly centralised national police force have angered council leaders by suggesting that the police merger could form a template for getting rid of many local authorities.

Scotland’s eight regional police forces were formed into a single national body on April 1. A paper to be presented to the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents' annual conference will argue that the merger should initiate a debate on similar reforms across the Scottish public sector.

In a radio interview this morning, the author of the paper, association president David O’Connor, said: ‘Part of the debate … was that if eight police forces was too many – and we accepted and fully supported that point – then perhaps we need to look at other public sector organisations – the 32 local authorities, the 14 health boards, the six sheriffdoms and others.’

Ministers expect the police merger, and a parallel reform in the fire & rescue service, to save £1.7bn over the next 15 years by eradicating duplication while retaining frontline numbers. The new national chief constable, Stephen House, has predicted the loss of up to 3,000 civilian posts, and latest figures suggest that some 1,600 support jobs could disappear in the current year.

O’Connor said: ‘This whole journey of reform, we believe, needs to carry on, and if we’re going to maximise the benefits we need to do that right across the public sector.’

The paper notes that the new force has 14 local divisions, which, O’Connor said, were delivering ‘local engagement and scrutiny at a local level’. By contrast, Scotland has 32 local authorities, a configuration that dates back to reorganisation in the early 1990s and pre-dates devolution.

But the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities responded sharply, calling O’Connor’s analysis ‘absurd’ and ‘simplistic’ and suggesting that it missed the point of the new Community Planning Partnerships, which encouraged pooling of efforts. 

The Scottish Government has also pressed for more shared services and joint working among councils and other public sector bodies, but Finance Secretary John Swinney has explicitly ruled out a fresh round of local government reorganisation in the foreseeable future.

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