ONE major and unforeseen side-effect of the collapse in recruiting by the major forces has been that the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan Castle has been running at greatly reduced capacity, writes James Freeman.
The situation has become so serious that a number of instructors have been returned to their own forces to resume normal duties. The Herald understands that at one stage the college, now widely accepted as being the finest police training facility in the UK and possibly in Europe, was running at a quarter capacity and is currently half empty.
A redevelopment of the college was started by Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, home affairs Minister during Tory rule, and is going ahead at a cost of #15m. A #4.4m accommodation block was opened only two years ago and a new commandant is currently being sought to replace the incumbent, Mr Hugh Watson, who is retiring.
Strathclyde Police, covering half the Scottish population, supplies the majority of the recruits with the bulk of the remainder coming from Lothian and Borders Police. But, faced with the serious budget cut imposed by last year's financial settlement, Strathclyde had little choice but to freeze recruiting or face the alternative of actually reducing street policing.
Since that was not a realistic option the result was that Tulliallan will, by the time the new financial year starts and recruiting resumes in August, have gone eight months without any intake from Strathclyde or from Lothian and Borders. The college is funded jointly of the Scottish Forces and the Scottish Office. Further cuts in funding of the major forces would cast a shadow over its continuation in its present form.
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