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In parallel the City Council in Dundee is a Pathfinder working with Tayside Police to develop new reporting procedures and channels of accountability to the City Council for policing in our city. This is to ensure that there is continuing local accountability for policing once the new national force comes into effect next year.
Yesterday, I attended two meetings about Policing which focused on that twin track agenda of preparing for the end of Tayside Police and the beginning of the Single Police Force for Scotland.
In the morning I was at Forfar for a meeting of the Tayside Joint Police Board and in the early evening I attended a special meeting of the Policy and Resources Committee in Dundee, where we examined a report from Chief Superintendent Hamish MacPherson about the next steps in developing Councillor engagement in planning and monitoring policing in Dundee.
Both committees received performance reports about crime levels and policing responses. At the Police Board in Forfar, I asked Chief Inspector Justine Curran about about Police Officers having to be removed from front line policing duties to undertake back office activities formerly undertaken by non uniformed Police staff. In the reports we had received it was clear that non uniformed Police staff in Tayside had been reduced by 23% since 2009. I pointed out that my constituents were concerned that a visible Police presence was maintained on the streets. The Chief pointed out that the reduction in non uninformed police staff had been partly achieved by merging three separate administrative teams into one. She did however admit that some back filling had been undertaken by Police Officers being switched to working in the police control centre. Significantly, I also noticed in the reports that a growing proportion of public calls to the 0300 111 2222 non-emergency police number had taken longer to answer than the target time of 40 seconds. This phenomenon of 'backroom bobbies' is a worrying development as is the failure to answer the phone quickly and efficiently.
At the Dundee meeting we had reports about levels of crime and detection rates as recorded in the first half of the 2012/13 year. I asked a question about the future comparative statistics that would be provided in these reports in Dundee. Comparative figures would help us ensure that investment and police performance in our city is up to scratch. I hoped that working within the new national Police Service of Scotland, it would be possible to compare the policing performance in Dundee with other cities in Scotland such as Edinburgh and Glasgow as well as Perth and Kinross and Angus. I was told that this sort of issue was yet to be decided by the emergent Police Service of Scotland but would be borne in mind.
