Strathclyde Police calls for independent review of SPSA

A Strathclyde Police paper has called for an independent review of the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA) work, despite the improvements to service the authority’s forensic services has allowed.

The paper discussed at a Strathclyde Police Authority meeting last week, focuses on two of SPSA’s core business areas – forensic services and information and communication technologies (ICT).

The force expressed concerns in these areas, calling for an independent review of both SPSA and some major elements of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS).

In the paper submitted to Strathclyde Police Authority, Chief Constable Stephen House, concludes that “the current way of doing business is not working and failing to deliver… urgent action should be taken to move this forward”.

The report states: “There is no apparent concerted effort by SPSA to increase throughput to reduce constant backlogs. Force representatives on the working group are not satisfied that SPSA Forensic Services Glasgow is managing long-term demand and consider there is a critical risk to the force in terms of general examination of productions,”

The SPSA claims that the paper being presented at the authority meeting presents a biased picture, appearing to show failures of the SPSA by omitting the progress it has made since the handover in 2007.

“In the immediate future, SPSA is clear that its first priority is ensuring all the forces have the technical support they need to do their day job. If that requires us to divert resources, or find some additional resources, on a temporary basis we will seek to do so,” a spokesperson stated.

“SPSA inherited some considerable issues and challenges from the forces, including Strathclyde.

We know some of those issues rest fairly and squarely with us to sort out. There are also related, perhaps broader, issues that need to be tackled by ACPOS, the forces and SPSA together.”

Introduced in April 2007, the SPSA provides services to all Scottish police forces and the wider criminal justice system in a common and corporate manner. Accompanying this, the creation of the SPSA Forensic Services pulled together existing forensic and fingerprint capability and scene examination officers, providing for the first time a fully-integrated Scottish national service from “crime scene through to court”.

At the time that these responsibilities changed hands, SPSA Forensic Services inherited a backlog of cases that had built up due to limited police resources.

The SPSA has managed to significantly reduce this backlog, but Strathclyde Police Authority believes the authority has not done enough.

The SPSA admitted that there is always room for improvement, but pointed to evidence which it says shows that forensic service delivery and productivity has improved significantly when compared to that inherited from Strathclyde Police and other forces in 2007. The SPSA claims the paper submitted to Strathclyde Police Authority fails to note that:

•In drug analysis, SPSA inherited a backlog of 2,000 cases from Strathclyde Police, today it is 880.
•In general and DNA cases, SPSA inherited a backlog of 2,171 cases, the current backlog is 1,052.
•In fingerprints, the backlog in April 2007 was approximately 1,000 cases. This has now fallen to 150 cases.
•In fingerprint ‘mark enhancements’, SPSA has reduced Strathclyde’s backlog from 1,300 cases in April 2008 to about 330 cases currently.

Pat Shearer, chief constable of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and President of ACPOS, said: “ACPOS welcomes the continued commitment from the SPSA to address the complexity and challenge of providing both local and national forensic and ICT support services to the differing needs of the eight forces of Scotland.

“We have come a long way and made considerable progress on many issues. We have further to go and by working constructively with the SPSA and with individual forces, we will take for