Steve House, chief constable of Strathclyde Police, told The Herald he would “rule nothing out” and believes savings could be made by sharing or amalgamating a range of services including procurement, catering and cleaning, vehicle maintenance, legal and media services, medical treatment of prisoners, training and audit roles.

He said the force would also be open to working with the voluntary sector and sharing control rooms and procurement with other emergency services. He also suggested police subdivisional commanders could head community safety for councils.

“We already work with charities like Crimestoppers and Women’s Aid and if there was a situation where they were more effective at providing a service, maybe some sort of follow-up service for the victims of domestic abuse, so rather than us paying cops to go round and do it we could consider paying someone from the voluntary sector, then we would do it,” he said.

“It is about providing the best service for the public. At this early stage we are open to anything if it’s going to improve the service to the public. There is a need to get like-minded people together, and, bearing in mind the time constraints, speed dating is what may be needed.”

His comments follow Sir John Arbuthnott’s long-awaited report on restructuring services for eight councils in the west of Scotland, which includes proposals to merge health and social care for one-third of the country’s population.

The report says action is vital, with budgets likely to be cut by up to 15% over the next four years. It calls for joint transport, waste management and property ownership to be introduced, and some education services to be provided across council boundaries.

“We would be open to discussion with any other agency in terms of sharing those services,” said Mr House.

“The next step needs to be ‘speed dating’. The concept is that you have a whole load of chief executives and chief constables sitting around thinking, ‘right, what we are going to do to increase efficiency is join up our property acquisition, or occupational health’, but the question is which ones?”

Mr House, whose own force faces a budget deficit of £16m next year and £30m the year after, said “painful decisions” were being made and that sharing services would mitigate some of the budget cuts.

He said: “We have our own auditing department and occupational health department and our own property services unit. It has been built up over the years. If we were designing a police force from scratch we wouldn’t build that in. We would want them but we would get them from somewhere else.”

The chief constable last week said support staff directors were looking at a 20% budget cut over the next two years, and proposed a 25% reduction in the force overtime budget. Divisional commanders face a 2% cut by 2011.

Councillor Paul Rooney, convener of Strathclyde Police Authority, said: “In the current climate, options for pooling resources across the public sector need to be given serious consideration.

“However, any opportunities or savings identified need to be strategic and beneficial to the overall service.”