JUSTICE Secretary Michael Matheson has personally raised concerns with Police Scotland about the single force's fleet of luxury cars for senior officers and staff.
Matheson queried the size of the vehicle pool directly with chief constable Stephen House amid fears the force is struggling to balance its budget.
Police Scotland has made deep cuts since being formed and House has warned of an £11m funding gap in the current financial year.
He said recently that "extreme measures" would need to be made to balance the books.
In a bid to save up to £18million a year, the force unveiled plans to close and merge police stations as part of wide-ranging estates strategy.
Susan Mitchell, the corporate services director at Police Scotland, told the watchdog the Scottish Police Authority that "every property we have is under consideration".
However, despite the budget austerity, 31 senior officers and staff have private use of a fleet of cars worth more than £850,000.
BMWs, Land Rovers and Audis are allocated to the officers and directors, while their partners are also insured to drive the vehicles.
The perk is deemed necessary as the individuals are said to travel the country at short notice and require a car.
The Sunday Herald understands Matheson, who replaced Kenny Macaskill on the justice brief, met House face to face to discuss the service and is said to have expressed concern about the fleet.
An insider said of the chief constable's reaction: "He didn't like it."
One of the senior staff members who has access to a car is Susan Mitchell, who fronted the plan to axe police stations.
A policing source said Matheson was taking a "tougher line" with House than MacAskill, who was perceived to be soft on the chief constable.
On Wednesday, after being asked by Tory MSP John Scott about low morale in the police service, Matheson said he had discussed this issue with House "in the past half hour".
He added: "Police Scotland and the chief constable have been clear with me that they are determined to address the issue."
The cash-strapped force had previously come under fire over the creation of a new police chief post in the middle of the budget crisis.
Police Scotland had an extra assistant chief constable role created at a cost of around £120,000 a year.
Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Alison McInnes MSP said: "Taxpayers will want Police Scotland to prioritise policing over top-end cars. The sight of senior officers driving around in BMWs and Audis would be pretty galling now that multiple station closures have been flagged up."
Gerry Crawley, a regional organiser at the trade union Unison, said: "€ŽThe priority for Police Scotland must be jobs, not cars. If Unison support staff can take a bus or a train to work or drive their own car, then it is surely not too much to ask a senior manager to do the same when the cuts to policing are so severe."
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: "In year one of Police Scotland, £68 million had to be saved from our budget, in year two it was a further £64 million. We achieved those savings. In year three we need to find £54 million and as such all areas of the budget are being reviewed including the provision of vehicles."
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 hereComments are closed on this article