POLICE Scotland has formally ranked funding uncertainties for the nation's ageing public space CCTV as a "high risk".
Chief Constable Sir Stephen House warned earlier this week the system, two-thirds of which is still analogue, needs a "big input of capital to be updated".
His force has already signalled it is unwilling to continue footing the entire bill for the camera network in the north-east while paying less than 10 per cent in the old Strathclyde area.
However, amid concerns over exactly who should meet the costs, Police Scotland has lodged issues with CCTV on to its corporate risk register.
The official document says: "There is a risk that public space CCTV may become unfit for purpose or fail because of an ageing infrastructure, unconfirmed funding streams and disparate management mechanisms."
The Scottish Government first described the system as being in crisis in 2009 and has since published a strategy urging councils and the police to work together to come to a solution. It is understood to be facilitating such contacts. However, Labour has already accused the SNP of failing to do enough. The party's justice spokesman Graeme Pearson, who pioneered the first public CCTV system in the UK when a local police commander in Airdrie, said: "The government has happily spent the last seven years enjoying the successes provided by their presence but failing to make any strategic plans for its future.
"We have a mixed bag of schemes, short of finance and support with no cabinet secretary showing any leadership in terms of the way forward."
He added that the complex arrangements in place made it very hard to work out which systems represented value for money.
Asked this week who should pay for the system, Sir Stephen said: "That is something for the Government to run a discussion on. In some parts of Scotland there is quite heavy funding from the police authority, in others, not so much."
The risk register will go before a subcommittee of the force's oversight board, the Scottish Police Authority, next week. Other new issues flagged up include continued concern over the knock-on effects of this summer's Commonwealth Games on policing.
The risk is that "abstractions needed to allow Officers to take time accrued during the Games off are not effectively or efficiently managed" but the register suggests this will fall and that the number of rest days being claimed back is already reducing.
The force has also registered a new risk that it will not, as hoped, raise any extra funding through the so-called "gangster tax". Sir Stephen has long argued that some money raised under Proceeds of Crime legislation should go to pay for policing.
This is opposed by, among others, Mr Pearson, as potentially creating inappropriate incentives for officers to pursue criminals for their money.
"There is a risk that the funding for third party initiatives required from POCA (Proceeds of Crime Act) for 2014-15 is not achieved," according to the register.
"The current risk score will remain static until feedback is received from the Scottish Government regarding the level of POCA funding that will be made available."
The Herald understands that income from income from POCA, which is obtained by the Crown Office and handed over to the Government, has not yet reached a threshold under which officials will agree to hand some over to police.
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