Highlands top cop warns ‘something has to give’
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The Highlands’ top police officer has said force numbers in the north are lower than needed, against warnings of a potential cut of 2000 officers nationally over the next four years.
Holyrood’s Criminal Justice Committee heard about the potential cutbacks earlier this week before Highland MSP and Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross tackled Humza Yousaf on the subject of police budgets at First Minister’s Questions yesterday.
Separately, Chief Superintendent Rob Shepherd, Police Scotland divisional commander for the Highlands and Islands, told the Inverness Courier earlier this week in an exclusive interview: “More demand, less resource – something has to give.”
The Police Scotland submission to the parliamentary committee stated: “Our current capital allocation is among the lowest in UK policing.
“This is significantly short of the funding required to improve conditions and equipment for the wellbeing of officers and staff.”
Off the back of that, Mr Ross accused Mr Yousaf of leaving budgets so stretched that police officer redundancies are on the table.
“On Humza Yousaf’s watch officer numbers in Scotland are at their lowest level in 14 years,” he said. “They started to slip when he was justice secretary, they’re in freefall now he’s First Minister.
“Without further funding from the government, Police Scotland warned yesterday that 2000 officers could be let go within five years and 600 could be off our streets by April.
“The thin blue line will be barely visible at this rate.
“By cutting officer numbers, the First Minister is making Scotland’s communities less safe.”
Mr Yousaf argued that the government had actually increased funding to Police Scotland. Hitting back, he said: “I’m pleased that after last week Douglas Ross seems to have accepted the point that the Scottish Government has increased the budget for Police Scotland by 6.3 per cent – by an additional £80 million.”
Prior to that exchange in the Holyrood chamber Ch Supt Shepherd told the Courier: “There is no police commander who would say they wouldn’t like more [officers]. What I can say is that in 2020 we did a strategic workforce review and the Highlands and Islands had 616 officers, it’s now got 585.
“And at that time it was proposed – and at a reasonably senior level it was agreed – that we needed 26 more, so 642.”.
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But he added demand had gone up significantly since then, rising 25 per cent since last year.
“And so there will be areas where we will see our visibility reduce and our results – our detection rates, how well we solve crimes – we will see reductions, that’s unavoidable.”
Ch Supt Shepherd also previously told Highland councillors that the force in the future would, out of necessity, be “doing everything less”.
However he clarified to the Courier that he did not, in fact, mean “everything”.
Acknowledging there would be “difficult choices” to be made, he added: “We would always be able to focus on answering emergency calls.
“We would always focus on looking after the most vulnerable in society, be that in a mental health crisis or if they’re missing, or if they’ve been abused, assaulted, or similar – these are all life-saving interventions and we will always, always prioritise those.”
He said while he understood people liked seeing bobbies on the beat, the fact of the matter was that many places in the north are low-crime areas.
