Scotland's police chief signals ends to force centralisation

The new chief - he replaced Sir Stephen just eight months ago - admitted that some local good practice had been "lost in transition" but said he would "release the thinking" of chief inspectors and superintendents, some of whom are now running areas as big as some of the old forces.

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His remarks - the first of their kind - come after several years of complaints from councillors, especially in the north and north-east, of what became known as the "Strathclydisation" of Police Scotland.

Force insiders always rejected the expression - which referred to Sir Stephen's previous stint as chief constable of Scotland's biggest regional force rather than any particular change to make all of Scottish policing like that of the west of the country.

Some in Police Scotland have always argued that the new force needed tight "grip" in its early years and that such policies would always have loosened.

Gormley, who has previously led tiny Norfolk Constabulary and played a senior role in England's National Crime Agency, now says the service has moved from what he calls "transition" to "transformation". This is bringing a new focus on local policing for local needs.

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He admits the sheer regional diversity has been his biggest surprise since coming to Scotland this January.

Speaking to the Sunday Herald, he said: "It may sound naive, but genuinely the variety of the policing environment and the level of self sufficiency in those communities was a learning experience. Some of the views of the people in Orkney is that Edinburgh is about as relevant as Westminster.

"We need to understand and build community policing that resonates in those communities. We have done some really good things some of the capabilities we have got are world class, such as national murder investigations, and that they were some of the attractions of this job for me.

"There has been a fairly tight central control over that. The challenge over the next few years is to understand what we need to retain a very tight grip on centrally but also how to allow local police officers, staff and commanders, who really do understand what is going on their communities to develop.

"I have been told that officers feel in certain parts of the country that the local good practice - the innovation that were relevant for where they live - has got lost in some of the transition."

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Mr Gormley stressed there would be "non-negotiable" central control on key areas such as as counter-terrorism and murder investigation. But he suggested local policing issues, such as anti-social behaviour, could be left to local commanders.

Key to this is a scaling down on a performance framework for local commanders, what most people would call targets. He said: "We need to develop an an approach to performance when what they do they are driving motivation is to do the right thing. I am not saying this was the case. I have seen it elsewhere but where you have a very heavy performance management process, you end up hitting the target and missing the point.

"The object comes to hit a target we have invented for ourselves. I am not saying we don;'t need to be highly professional and we need good information but I want officers to use their discretion and connect with the sense of vocation that made the vast majority of them to join I want them to develop solutions to the problems with which they are confronted."

Speaking about his own Spartan office in a former castle, he said: "I cannot possibly develop local solutions from an ivory tower at Tulliallan or anywhere else."