Status of all recommendations

Medium-term financial planning - 

In the next six months policing should complete its update of the Medium-Term Financial Plan (MTFP), aligned to current strategic priorities and outcomes.

Over the course of the MTFP policing should keep it under review and refresh it when required.

The MTFP should support prioritisation of service delivery and demonstrate a financially sustainable model for policing. In doing so, it should clearly set out the scale of service demand, the cost pressures and the options to address these.

Workforce planning - 

Policing should make demonstrable progress with workforce planning. As a minimum, in the next 12 months:

• Police Scotland should update its strategic workforce plan to include the capacity and skills required to deliver its strategic outcomes and manage future service demands. Scenario planning is to be part of this.

• Forensic Services should monitor and publicly report progress against the objectives set out in its strategic workforce plan. Demand forecasting and scenario planning should be kept under review to better understand the workforce size, capacity and skills required in the future.

• Policing should demonstrate clear alignment between workforce plans and the MTFP (Recommendation 4).

• Police Scotland should put enhanced arrangements in place to better manage workforce absence and those on modified duties so that workforce resilience and wellbeing is improved and available resources are used effectively.

Transformation - 

Policing should implement its transformation and estate modernisation activity at pace to deliver the next phase of police reform. In the next six months policing should:

• complete and implement the new framework for reporting on the benefits and impact of change. In doing so, it should establish timescales, costs and organisational benefits for all its transformation activity and clearly report on the impact of change

• embed effective governance and management arrangements to enable the prioritisation of improvement actions – including transformation and estate modernisation activity – across policing.

Continuous improvement - 

In the next six months policing should work together to establish a coordinated approach to drive continuous improvement and embed the principles of Best Value in all it does. This must build on the self-assessment results and the recommendations made by this audit. As part of this:

• Police Scotland and Forensic Services should set out how they will use their Best Value self-assessment results to support plans for improvement.

• Policing should develop arrangements which effectively share and facilitate organisational learning and support professional development for officers and staff.

Police Scotland should publish a clear policy on drug harm reduction, ensuring it is accessible to officers, staff and partner agencies to support a consistent and co-ordinated approach.

Police Scotland should take a more active role in identifying and sharing learning and good practice to promote consistency across divisions, and update intranet pages to ensure officers and staff receive timely updates on important developments to support their work in drug harm reduction.

Police Scotland should define its role and purpose in supporting the public health approach to drug harm prevention, and provide guidance to police officers on how to balance this with enforcement responsibilities.

Police Scotland should establish a mechanism to review and evaluate the effectiveness and benefits of its involvement in Alcohol and Drug Partnerships – and share findings with officers and staff.