House: single police force will not start from position of 'ultimate strength'

Friday 8 March 2013

The new single police force will not start from a position of "ultimate strength" and could take around 18 months to reach a coordinated system, Chief Constable Stephen House has said.

The public has "to be realistic" about the force's capabilities when it goes live on April 1 with the challenges of integrating eight diverging systems under a tight budget with "limited" IT staff, Mr House said.

During an SPA meeting in Edinburgh, he asked the Scottish Police Authority for permission to create a £55,000 "forward command base" in Stirling.The Police Scotland HQ in Tulliallan, Fife is an inadequate nerve-centre for major national incidents such as terrorism, serious crime or severe weather, according to Mr House.Central Scotland Police's HQ in Randolphfield, Stirling is a better choice because of its central location and good transport links. It was "third or fourth" choice to be the police HQ in the first place, behind Glasgow and Edinburgh, Mr House said.All were vetoed in favour of the "politically acceptable" Tulliallan, already home to the Scottish Police College and considered a "more neutral site".But remote Tulliallan is awkward for meetings, with many of Mr House's appointments turning up late, while its historic status means it cannot be adapted to meet operational needs.Tulliallan will be the Police Scotland HQ but Mr House would spend an equal amount of time in Stirling and use it for some meetings.The cost of the command base is "relatively modest" and could be met through an underspend in money earmarked for work on Tulliallan."I don't want to give the impression that we are moving into a 21st-century control room with visibility across the whole of Scotland. We have to be realistic here," he said."But we will have a picture across the two largest force areas and population centres within the first 10 days, which is more than we have now, and we are already in discussion about how we add on as fast as possible links to other control systems. So it's the best option we have."When asked whether the challenges represent an acceptable risk, Mr House said: "It's a fait accompli, so the risk is the risk. We're not starting from a position of ultimate strength so when it comes to assessing risk, we are not adding risk. We are reducing risk immediately by having a single organisation that will focus on co-ordinating across the eight existing forces."As the ICT catches up with our operational desire to move to single system, the risk will diminish and the benefits will increase. But we are in the hands of the ICT people who are limited in numbers at this time."I understand life would be safer if it was a perfect system but we're not inheriting a perfect system. We're inheriting legacy systems that all work perfectly adequately but service eight different organisations. My view is it decreases, not increases, risk. But there is always risk."We know where we are headed. We're not looking at five years but certainly looking at a year-and-a-half before we get to where we want to get to."The Scottish Police Authority will now ask the Scottish Government for approval to create the command base in Randolphfield.

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House: single police force will not start from position of 'ultimate strength'

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