SIR Stephen House set up his own company in the final weeks of his job as Chief Constable of Police Scotland.
House formed Sarantium Solutions in October when he was heading towards the exit door of the single force.
He also appears to be cutting some of his ties with Scotland by putting his home in Helensburgh on the market.
House was chief constable of Strathclyde Police before getting the £208,000 top job at Police Scotland in 2012.
However, his reign was marred by a series of controversies on armed policing, stop and search, the M9 tragedy and spying on journalists’ sources.
He initially planned to retire in 2016 but the rows resulted in him bringing forward his leaving date to December last year.
It was reported recently that he cancelled 33 appointments in the last two months in the job.
These engagements included a Scottish Police Authority board meeting, a promotion parade and strategy and finance meetings.
He was recorded as “working from home” in October.
According to Companies House, Sarantium Solutions was incorporated on October 22.
House is listed as the sole director and a co-shareholder with his wife.
A policing source said House would be “well placed” to offer advisory and consultancy services through the firm.
House is also expected to be in-demand for after dinner speaking and is scheduled to give a talk at a Royal Scots club lunch in March.
The address provided for the firm is the £1.3m terraced property the couple bought in Westminster in October 2012 – weeks after he was appointed to lead the single force.
It is not known what is behind the name of the new company, as the only contemporary reference is the novel Sailing to Sarantium, written by Guy Gavriel Kay.
The novel is set in a fantasy kingdom and centres on tensions between rival factions.
House also appears to be close to securing a sale for the Helensburgh home he lived in during his career in Scotland.
The “spacious detached Victorian mansion”, which has southerly views of the river Clyde, is under offer and described as an “attractive purchase”.
Announcing his early departure last year, House said: "From building confidence in victims coming forward to report crimes, to ending the postcode provision of specialist services, to improving our ability to respond to major incidents and events – I am proud of the hard work and commitment to the public, police officers and staff deliver each and every day."
John Finnie, the justice spokesperson for the Scottish Greens and a former police officer, said: "The public would rightly expect a senior public servant like a chief constable to devote all their energies to the important task for which they are extremely well remunerated rather than be distracted by future commercial self interests."
Niven Rennie, the president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, said: “Stephen House has been a chief officer for over a dozen years. He has been a chief constable for around nine years and was of course chief constable of the single force. He has a lot of change management skills and also has counter-terrorism knowledge. I would have thought these skills would be of huge interest.”
House could not be reached.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel