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Key findings
1 Policing has a strong focus on partnership working and demonstrates good internal working relationships.
2 Police Scotland is proactively leading initiatives to improve multi‑agency working and deliver better outcomes for communities across the country. This includes delivering efficiencies in the criminal justice system.
3 Partnership working with the Scottish Government and local government is positive. However, inconsistencies in how policing’s national initiatives are implemented at a local level, along with high turnover of senior divisional officers, at times hinder the effectiveness of partnership working and local service delivery.
34. Interviews highlighted that working relationships have improved within policing over time, with relationships based on support and collaboration.
- The recent changes in Police Scotland’s strategic leadership portfolios (paragraph 17) have brought closer alignment of operational and organisational priorities. This helps enhance internal working relationships.
35. There are some examples of policing taking a system-wide approach for the planning and prioritisation of the resources across policing on an ongoing basis.
- The budget working group, involving members from across policing, is a positive step forward to help identify the priorities for policing as a whole. A similar approach could be used to direct resources across policing to where they can have the best impact.
- To enhance coordination, Forensic Services are now invited to Police Scotland’s estates priority group.
- Recognising the reliance of Forensic Services on Police Scotland for emissions-intensive resources such as fleet and estates, the two bodies are progressing a joint environmental strategy to support their sustainability objectives.
36. Partnerships is one of the Scottish Government’s Strategic Police Priorities and policing sets out clear commitments to partnership working across strategic plans.
- Outcome 3 of the Strategic Police Plan is that the ‘public, communities and partners are engaged, involved and have confidence in policing’.
- Police Scotland states in its 2030 Vision that it will ‘work with partners to ensure vulnerable people are able to access appropriate care at the right time’.
- The SPA has set an outcome for ‘effective collaboration with partners’ in its Corporate Strategy 2023–26.
- Forensic Services has its own strategic outcome to ‘work collaboratively with partners to serve the needs of the public and criminal justice in Scotland’.
37. Police Scotland is leading collaborative initiatives with partners to achieve increased effectiveness and efficiency, better outcomes for communities across the country and value for money. The SPA and Forensic Services seek to be complementary to Police Scotland in engagement and partnership work.
- Police Scotland has worked with justice partners to pilot a summary case management system, reducing unnecessary witness citations (Case study 1, page 30).
- Following a HMICS inspection (2023), Police Scotland, the SPA and the Scottish Government set up a cross-sector Partnership Delivery Group to coordinate a multi-agency response aimed at improving outcomes for people in mental health distress (Case study 2, page 31).
- Police Scotland, the SPA, the Scottish Ambulance Service and he Scottish Fire and Rescue Service are exploring opportunities for collaboration to improve outcomes for people across Scotland. These partners currently have 19 co-location properties with the intention of reducing the size of their estates and providing joined up local services.
- Police Scotland is working closely with the National Crime Agency and other UK and international police forces to address serious and organised crime threats in a number of areas, including the supply of controlled drugs, firearms, human trafficking, child sexual abuse and cybercrime.
- Police Scotland is sharing operational expertise (such as in major event management) with national and international justice partners.
38. Police Scotland is currently reviewing its existing partnerships to identify principles of stakeholder engagement to inform and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic engagement. This will inform the next iteration of the three-year business plan.
39. Governance arrangements between Scottish Government and policing are clear and effective in maintaining the operational independence of the Chief Constable. Working relationships are positive and there is regular engagement with Police Scotland and the SPA.
40. Partnership working with local government is positive but could at times be more effective.
- Police Scotland has a statutory duty to develop local police plans for each local authority area and in turn local authorities have a role in the governance and scrutiny of policing at a local level.
- In 2023, the SPA, Police Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) put a strategic partnership agreement in place to strengthen collaboration between policing and local government.
- COSLA and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (Solace) are positive about partnership working with Police Scotland. However, during fieldwork, they highlighted some inconsistencies in how policing’s national initiatives are implemented at the local level and high turnover of senior divisional officers at times hinders the effectiveness of partnership working and service delivery at the local level.
Case study 1. Criminal justice partnerships
Police Scotland is collaborating with multiple partners and coordinating improvement projects to deliver efficiencies in the criminal justice system.
Police Scotland acknowledges that the way in which the criminal justice system operates can lead to police time being wasted with significant costs implications. For example, the Chief Constable estimated overtime costs for officer citations, including cancelled leave and rest days, was £3 million in 2024.
The 2030 Vision sets out a commitment to work with partners in the criminal justice system to drive reform and deliver improvement.
Between 2022 and 2024, Police Scotland worked with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service on a pilot of the Summary Case Management (SCM approach where key evidence is disclosed to parties prior to their court appearance.
The pilot aimed to increase the proportion of cases resolved at the initial stage, decrease the number of witness citations and reduce the number of scheduled trials where no evidence is presented. The final evaluation of SCM pilot published in September 2024 was positive. It found:
- an estimated 530 summary trials did not need to have a court date fixed
- an estimated reduction of 18,000 witnesses cited over the course of the pilot, 11,000 of which were police officers
- increased confidence in the criminal justice system through early engagement with complainants
- reduced trauma, inconvenience and delay from an increase in early resolution of cases.
A national roll-out of SCM to all courts across Scotland began in February 2025 and has contributed to a 23 per cent reduction in average monthly police witness citations in 2025/26 (April to October) compared to 2024/25. National roll-out is expected to conclude by the end of 2025/26.
Central to SCM is the early disclosure of key evidence. Technological improvements are reducing the time for digital evidence to be gathered and shared with criminal justice partners:
- The new Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC) system enables Police Scotland to capture and view digital video evidence in an accessible format, identify persons involved and charge them, where appropriate, in a timely manner. By the end of 2024/25 almost 20,000 evidence files were utilised. Implementation was completed nationally in September 2025.
- Between March and November 2025, 4,852 body-worn video devices were issued to officers. These have captured over 237,000 recordings. Over 14,000 media files related to more than 5,700 incidents, were exported to DESC in this period. The national rollout of body-worn video is expected to be completed in May 2026.
In the past, reporting on the benefits and impact of change has been poor (paragraph 30). As roll-out continues, coordinating monitoring and impact reporting will be important to demonstrate improvement for this strategic outcome
Source: Police Scotland, Audit Scotland, HMICS
Case study 2. Mental health partnerships
Policing is taking a partnership approach to improving mental health pathways. With a system-wide focus on delivering the right care by the right person to improve outcomes for vulnerable people, Police Scotland also aims to build front-line capacity and allow more focus on core duties as part of the next stage of reform. Demonstrating impact remains a challenge.
In February 2025, the Partnership Delivery Group (PDG) set out a framework for how agencies will work together to ensure the right outcomes for people in distress. This was informed by local workshops to understand the relationships between policing, mental health services and acute NHS services, and to identify good practice.
The Partnership Delivery Group is co-chaired by the Scottish overnment and SPA. Membership includes Police Scotland, NHS 24, COSLA, British Transport Police, SAMH (Scottish Action for Mental Health), Scottish Ambulance Service, Voluntary Health Scotland, VOX (Voices of Experience). Progress is reported to the SPA Policing Performance Committee and the Scottish Government and COSLA’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy Leadership Board.
Alongside the framework, the PDG agreed a collaborative commitments plan (2025–28). It identifies actions to improve the cross-sector response to distress and the outcomes for people under five themes:
- communication
- improved transfer of mental health care
- building capacity and capability
- strengthening community-based provisions
- data, evidence, benchmarking and improvement.
Work is in progress under each of these themes however demonstrating impact continues to be a challenge for policing:
- The first six-month progress report (September 2025) lists ongoing work and identifies existing high-level metrics, providing a baseline for referrals to the Mental Health Pathway, Distress Brief Intervention and NHS 24 Mental Health Hub. However, there are currently no measures to demonstrate impact on police resourcing or outcomes for people.
- Data dashboards are being developed to resolve data capture issues, and a performance framework is due by the beginning of 2026/27.
Membership of the PDG is evolving to ensure the right partners are involved, with social work, Integrated Joint Boards (IJBs) and acute NHS services identified as gaps in current membership.
Challenges remain integrating work into Community Planning Partnerships, IJBs as well as chief officer groups. Work is ongoing between SPA and COSLA to look at the best way to implement national initiatives, balancing consistency of approach across the country with the flexibility to meet local needs.
Source: Police Scotland, Audit Scotland, HMICS