THE power struggle at the top of Scottish policing between Chief Constable Sir Stephen House and Vic Emery, head of the oversight body of the new single force, has been won by the police chief.
Full details will emerge today in papers for next week's meeting of the Scottish Police Authority in Lockerbie and there may also be a letter from Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to the Holyrood Justice Committee on the resolution to what has been dubbed a "turf war".
But it is understood the outcome of the agreement reached between the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland is that all duplicated functions, such as information technology and human resources, will be merged within the force and taken away from the SPA.
Control of the forensic service will remain with the SPA because of the need to keep that outwith police control, but Mr Emery, former Clyde shipyard boss, appears to have lost the rest of the power struggle with Sir Stephen.
The SPA is set to become what most believe it was always intended to be, a body scrutinising the performance of Police Scotland, rather than one carrying out significant functions of its own.
Gerry Crawley, the Unison official in charge of civilian staff in the police, said: "We always believed there should not be any duplication between the SPA and Police Scotland, which would ensure that more support staff are kept within the service."
A senior Government source confirmed the deal but stressed this was an agreement reached between the force and the authority, not a resolution imposed by ministers who had not felt it necessary to use their powers of direction to bring it about.
It first became clear last week the SPA's role as a counterpoint to the police force, with its hands on key levers such as IT and appointment of civilian staff, was unravel ling when chief executive Andrea Quinn and two senior directors in charge of strategy and finance announced their departures.
At the time the SPA dismissed this as "people putting two and two together and getting five".
But political pressure was building and this week Holyrood's Justice Committee held an evidence session involving the new Chief Officer of the unified Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Alasdair Hay, chairman of the board Pat Watters and union representatives.
Justice convener Christine Grahame said: "This whole unseemly turf war didn't happen with the Fire and Rescue Service. These two things – the resignations last week and the appearance by those involved in the fire service, which was a breath of fresh air – must have helped concentrate minds."
Labour member Graeme Pearson, a former senior police officer who served as director general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcements Agency, said the resolution of power struggle now had saved the new police force years of friction, pointing to the experience of the creation of the Scottish Police Services Authority.
He said what had been portrayed as creative tension was a mess similar to that which festered for years after the creation of the Scottish Police Services Authority.
He said: "At long last officials have come together and many of the major governance issues have now been reallocated so that Police Scotland will be in charge of human resources, finance and corporate services etc.
"The SPA will do what it was designed to do: Utilise governance and accountability by watching the way the service delivers according to the strategy."
An SPA spokesman said the papers for the next SPA meeting on June 26 will be published today and will include the revised ICT strategy.
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