Chair's Update 24 November

CHILDREN IN CUSTODY

On 15 November 2022, the Authority and Police Scotland hosted a roundtable session with a range of key partners to discuss how we can work together to reduce the number of children held in police custody. I am grateful to Michelle Miller for moderating the event. Her experience and insights from her pervious roles as Chief Social Work Officer and Head of Safer and Stronger Communities for the City of Edinburgh Council were valuable.

Amongst the attendees at the event were local authorities from across the country, the Children and Young Peoples Commissioner, the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice, Social Work Scotland, Who Cares Scotland, Barnardos and the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.

There was overwhelming agreement that holding a child or young person in police custody was not an appropriate setting. Throughout the day, delegates focused on the overarching objective of identifying how, by working in partnership, children could be taken to alternative and more appropriate places of safety while still allowing police officers and partner organisations to undertake their duties.

I want to thank all our partners who attended the event for their valuable and constructive action-focused discussion. Police Scotland and Authority’s team are now in the process off collating and summarising the outputs of the meeting, and sharing with our partners. Importantly, the next phase will be to agree actions to be taken to translate the findings into deliverable outcomes, improving the provision of places of safety for Scotland’s children.

COMMUNITY CONFIDENCE ACTION RESEARCH

On Wednesday 2 November 2022 I chaired the latest meeting of the Community Confidence Steering Group. The Steering Group is overseeing the project being undertaking with Police Scotland to better understand the link between confidence in policing and areas of socio-economic presence. The work we have initiated in Letham in Perth to explore this is progressing well. The community survey inviting input from anyone who lives in the area closes on Tuesday 15 November 2022. The project team are also working with Perth and Kinross Council to develop a survey aimed at inviting the views of those under 16 who live in Letham.

The Steering Group has also agreed the next two project areas for this work: Methil West in Fife and Irvine Fullarton in North Ayrshire. Engagement with the divisional commanders is already underway and we expect to engage with the Local Authorities and community organisations at the end of the year and into early 2023.

REGIONAL ENGAGEMENT MEETINGS

Upon taking post as Chair, I committed to developing the Authority’s relationship with local government and scrutiny conveners. A dedicated local authority engagement plan sets out how we seek to achieve this. The Authority and Police Scotland have hosted the latest round of regional meetings with scrutiny conveners and officials representing the North, West and East of the country. I co-chaired each of these along with the relevant area ACC. These recent meetings provided a great introduction to policing issues for many of the newly elected councillors. They were all well received and I am pleased with how they are evolving. As expected, there is an operational focus to the discussion which is supported by the ACC and divisional presence.

LOCAL POLICING ENGAGEMENT – EDINBURGH CITY

On Tuesday 1 November 2022 I had the opportunity to visit Chief Superintendent Sean Scott, Divisional Commander of Edinburgh City at St Leonards Police Station. We discussed policing workloads and staffing levels and the pressures on the division.

APCC & NPCC PARTNERSHIP SUMMIT

The Chief Executive, Tom Halpin and I attended the APCC and NPCC Partnership Summit in London at the beginning of November. This is the first the Authority has attended since becoming associate members of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners this year (APCC). The summit presented a good opportunity to learn more about practice in other jurisdictions and identify areas of learning for oversight of policing in Scotland; allowing connections to be made with commissioners in key comparator areas.

The summit theme of ‘cutting crime, building confidence’ aligns with the public interest focus on the Authority. Over the two day event we heard presentations on data and evidence in relation to crime levels, demand, satisfaction and confidence from a range of Commissioners and Police officers on culture, public confidence, fraud and outcomes. Conference delegates also had the opportunity to participate in a range of breakout sessions covering leadership, people trafficking, race, violence against women, anti-social behaviour and policing of protests.

Tom attended the summit in his development role focused on cross-jurisdictional engagement within the UK and learning across policing and oversight. This allowed key contacts to be made with commissioners, and facilitated time with British Transport Police to learn more about their stakeholder engagement pilot work.

MENTAL HEALTH IN POLICING

The Authority will be co-hosting with Police Scotland a conference looking at mental health demand and policing on Friday 9 December 2022 in Edinburgh. This is an important event that seeks to bring together partners to discuss the challenges faced by policing and by those experiencing mental health. It also builds on the important dialogue started at the Criminal Justice Committee’s roundtable on mental health in policing, held in May of this year.

SCPOSA ENGAGEMENT FORUM

Fiona McQueen, Chris Brown and I met on Thursday 3 November 2022 at Tulliallan with the officer bearers of the Scottish Chief Police Officers Staff Association (SCPOSA). This was a positive and constructive meeting and I am grateful to the association for their regular input and feedback on key issues.

DEPUTY CHIEF CONSTABLE RECRUITMENT

The closing date for applications for our DCC vacancy was Monday 7 November 2022. I am very pleased with the standard of applications. The Selection Panel will be interviewing candidates on Thursday 1 and Friday 2 December 2022 and we expect to be in a position to recommend an appointable candidate to the Board the first week in December.