Police officers are filling in for redundant or retired civilian support staff on a daily basis, Chief Constable Sir Stephen House has said.
Sir Stephen said there is no official policy to replace the hundreds of staff leaving under Police Scotland's cost-cutting drive with frontline officers, but confirmed that it does happen.
Speaking at Holyrood's Public Audit Committee, he said: "To be clear, we do not have a policy or strategy at this moment in time to backfill support staff who leave with police officers. For accuracy, of course it happens on a daily ongoing basis, but it's not part of a plan to do that at this moment in time."
The Scottish Police Authority (SPA), the force's civilian oversight body, said the Scottish Government's commitment to retaining 1000 extra police officers with no compulsory redundancies will make necessary police cost-cutting "hugely challenging".
But Sir Stephen said he is confident the £1.1 billion of savings requested by the Government by 2026 can be achieved and confirmed they are focusing heavily on "non-people" solutions.
Police have received 2000 applications for voluntary redundancy from their 7500 police staff roll, with 330 from control rooms, SPA chairman Vic Emery said.
Most of the control-room staff have been told they cannot leave until new digital control rooms have been built, the location and configuration of which has still to be agreed, he said.
Mr Emery said: "There has been 2000 expressions of interest for voluntary redundancy, 330 from control-room staff. We can't let them go at the moment because we have an operational need to keep them until we get an IT system in place that will facilitate that."
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