 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the fourth meeting of the Justice Subcommittee on Policing in 2017. Apologies have been received from Stuart Stephenson and Margaret Mitchell. I welcome Mary Evans to the meeting today. Agenda item one is a decision on taking business in private. Are the committee content to take items three and four in private? This is consideration of the evidence heard at today's meeting and the discussion on our forward work programme. pan amCA'w sam. Y nifer o agendau i niw wedi clearfeydd y Feeləll writersgol fif Úrniad castlegw bladder reported. A ai fydd gweld trith luiau i sicrhau rannu'l Lanterum iPhoneません? Ergyr gingerw器 yn dda, mae Llywodraeth i'reches i gyflaug drive dda, someod布ig bidaig ddechrau Cymru conflictslau gydahipau dda,ion, dim yn ddigwydd. Diolch yn ddigwydd cyfre? of time where we are a bit constrained on a Thursday lunch time so I intend to move straight to questions. Can I refer members to paper 1, which is a note by the clerk, and paper 2, which is a private paper? Perhaps I start by asking you, Mr Penman, if you could expand a bit on the work that has been undertaken to progress the C3IR project to completion, and whether you will be satisfied once it is completed that it will be the optimum model for call handling? Yes, if I can. Clearly we put our report out 18 months ago, which was a highly critical report in terms of call handling for Police Scotland, and we made 30 recommendations that we thought would drive improvement and also provide the stability required for the next stages of transformation and the moving calls from other centres into the new virtual service centre. We have been working alongside Police Scotland extensively since that time. We have done, I think, around 60 visits, some of which were unannounced to work alongside them, and we have also been working very closely with their project team. I think that what we have is quite a high degree of confidence that Police Scotland has picked up on our recommendations and that their project and programme planning have driven significant improvements as well. On that basis, we are quite confident that that has progressed to the final stages of their project and that that should be delivered safely. What we are also aware of, and one of our recommendations, was for Police Scotland to have a gateway review. Over and above our own assurance was to have some other independent assurance to come in and check to see if the project was ready for delivery. Although that report has not been published yet, I can tell you that it was a positive report. It was given a green status, which meant that it had confidence that the programme would be delivered. I wonder if you could give me a bit more detail about something that is in the updated report. Under leadership in government, there is a paragraph that says that there is now clarity between the management of C3IR change programme and the management of business as usual within the division. Could you explain to me in a bit of detail exactly what that means? What we had at the time was a project that was being delivered by a project team, and at the same time a management within Police Scotland who were delivering the hearing now of that. We were concerned at the time of our report that the hearing now was about the change, and there was a disconnect between the two parts of Police Scotland. What we were keen to do was to make sure that the business and the usual side and the project side were working much more closely around that. The project team were able to identify and make the change happen, and the business and the usual side were able to start to take that and make it work. As we have gone through the review, the whole project management of the change is far better governed than it was before. Basically, the commander who runs the business as usual side of things is also heavily involved in delivering the programme. What you have is a much better integration of the changes being delivered by the people who are responsible for the day-to-day business. You are content that things are progressing smoothly now? Yes, absolutely. The division commander of C3 is heavily involved in the change programme, so the two parts have been brought together. What we effectively had was a disconnect where we had a project team trying to deliver a project, and the management running business as usual. Our point was that, as the change is progressing, it gets fed into the business as usual part of it, and it has to be much closer integrated. We have certainly seen that through our visits in our work with Police Scotland. Can I ask you now a bit about failure demand? Could you perhaps give us a bit of detail on the work that has been undertaken by Police Scotland to reduce failure demand and what part that has played in the overall reduction of both 999 and 101 calls? What you have seen in the figures is that the call volumes have dropped from the time of first of the review to where we are just now. One of our recommendations was for Police Scotland to better understand the demand. For us, failure demand is a technical term using call handling, but it is basically where people would phone in to report a call that was not then progressed. They would then phone back in again, if you like, so they had frequent callers and things coming through. We would be asked Police Scotland to do a number of things. One of the things was the simple identify who were those people who were phoning in repeatedly, and quite a lot of that actually were people like Crown Office and other agencies who were using the 101 system to phone in, so they were identified and that was streamlined and that has taken some demand away from that as well. Police Scotland also identified some of their more frequent callers and have been able to manage that better too. The bit we feel Police Scotland still needs to do more on is to look at the demand from when the call is taken to the point when the call has been resolved and the police officers have attended it locally. There is real efficiency now, I think, within the service centre and the area control rooms to take the calls, to record them and to pass them out to operational officers. The bit we think is still needs to be looked at is effectively how quickly are these officers being able to attend these calls and what resources are available to them to do that. What happens is that the call that could be dealt with really efficiently answered within the target time passed out to the local police officers, but if the local police officers do not attend that call within the timescale that they expected, the person will then phone back in again. The full demand for us still needs to be more evidence around is that local policing part of it? Just before I move on and bring in other members, can I perhaps ask you about partnership working? We have had Police Scotland in here before. An issue has been the way police on the streets deal with adults with vulnerabilities or difficulties. I wonder in the issue of call handling, what degree of partnership working is there with the call handlers and other, whether it is the health NHS or other support workers, to make sure that they get the right support when their handling calls and they have enough information to be able to deal with the calls effectively? That is a really good point. One of the things for us within our call handling report was to make sure that Police Scotland had the ability to deal with vulnerable callers and prioritise their calls on vulnerability. Police Scotland has done a lot of work in terms of their call handlers now to allow them to be able to make more informed assessments of people's vulnerability, so that side of it is working quite well. I know that it has involved a degree of partnership with other agencies working alongside them. Although it is not in place yet, I know that Police Scotland is actively looking at how can we bring additional support into the service centre to deal with people who might be vulnerable or have mental health problems. I know that there are discussions taking place, where they are at the moment, I am not sure, but I know that Police Scotland is certainly very interested in how can we get support within the service centre or perhaps other agencies who can deal with it that they can pass it on to. That is within the service centre. I know that Police Scotland has been working very hard at the front line with operation officers in terms of trying to get other agencies and other partners to support them. There has been some work done around triaging of mental health calls in some of the cities. I know that that is very much in Police Scotland's agenda. Can I ask you, Mr Penman, if you are satisfied that C3 will have the necessary resources and staff going forward to ensure that it is a first-class handling centre? That is a very good question. One of the key issues that we found in 2015 was around making sure that Police Scotland had adequate staffing levels. That is one of our criteria around what would be a stable system moving forward. Again, Police Scotland has embraced that. It has brought in an independent consultancy who has experience in call handling and police call handling elsewhere in the UK. It has developed a model or a tool that can work on the basis of the number of calls that come into the service centre and how long they take to answer and model that into something that tells them how many staff they need at a specific point in time. They have had that tool in and it has been tested and they have worked out what staffing levels they need to have at those critical points. They have developed it into some reporting that has been shared with the Scottish Police Authority. The Scottish Police Authority has also had a look at this and have been clear what Police Scotland's assumptions were and have effectively approved those staffing levels. We have also looked at them and we are content with the planning assumptions that they have. Since our report was published, Police Scotland has made a number of significant changes. For example, in January, it moved a call handling from Dundee into the central bill. The model was used to get the staffing levels right at that time. What we are seeing in the virtual service centre just now is call performance of around 97-98 per cent, which would tend to indicate that when people are phoning, the calls have been answered within time, which tends to be a good indication that there is sufficient staff on at that time. There is a long answer to your question, which is that Police Scotland has a science and a tool that it can now use and that will help to get the optimum staffing levels at that time. We also know that, as we are moving towards the change programme, they are keeping their staff levels quite high to give them that support that they need just to make sure that when the calls have been transferred down and there is a new change, that they can cope with that demand as well. I take it by your answer. Do you have the resources to cover all that? Yes, but Police Scotland is putting the resources in place. One of our checks on the assurance is to make sure that, if Police Scotland says that it has 400 staff in place at call handling at that critical point, that it can evidence to us that it has. That was certainly the work that we did for Dundee, where we checked to see the staffing levels that it had in place at the time of that critical change. Can I also ask you, Mr Penman, if you could expand on what you mean by greater innovation within C3 and how that could improve the current service? I see where that is in the context of where I said it. There is a general part for me for encouraging Police Scotland generally to be innovative and find new ways of working that would help them to manage their demand now to create capacity for the front line. For me, there is a specific reference in the report that you have picked to get the context. On what page it is on? It is in there, yes. For me, the general encouragement would be for Police Scotland to be innovative around our approaches. That would be things like bringing in mental health professionals into a service centre environment that could help to deal with vulnerability. It would be about bringing in new technology that would allow people to communicate with the service centre through online means or social media that would take demand away from phone lines. Just generally encourage an environment among staff where people can come forward with ideas and actually look out to see what is best practice in call handling. It is on-going monitoring and being proactive about that. Again, I think that Police Scotland will be releasing its 2026 strategy on Monday, which we welcome. I understand that one of the key features of the strategy will be innovation. For me, that is just that general power about looking to be what is best practice, how can they roll that out. Importantly, listening to their staff, because often the staff in the front line can be the most innovative and they understand ways of doing things. The whole point for me around innovation is to make the service centre call handling as good as it can be, but also for Police Scotland to try and manage some of their demand back, to try and create some capacity for front-line officers to deal with the new threats and the service centre is going to be a key part of that. Thank you, convener. Good afternoon, panel. Mr Penman, I thank you for your various reports. I think that, to a lot of people, they may wonder about the committee looking at the issue of call handling, but to put it in perspective from some of the background that we have, it is the case that it remains that the majority of people's contact with the police is by telephone. The figures are quite staggering, really. Five and a half million emergency calls and over two and a half million. Now, clearly, with those numbers, some things are going to go wrong and, very, very sadly, some of them may be important, but I sense that you are very upbeat about the way Police Scotland has approached the issues around call handling. Yes, and again, that is in the backdrop, though, of having probably written one of the most critical reports that the HMIC has ever done in terms of call handling, but rather than just writing the report, we took a conscious decision to work alongside Police Scotland. Today, I have a team in working in call handling just to make sure that we are getting the assurances that we need. In fairness to Police Scotland, they have embraced the improvement plan and they have made a real commitment in their leadership and their staff to drive those improvements forward. Our update report was to say that, in terms of the recommendations that we have made, considerable improvement has been made in terms of call handling, but I think that you make a very valid and very mature point around call handling and just inherent risks that exist within call handling. As I mentioned in my report, I think that there is always going to be a level of inherent risk within the operation of Police call handling. That is not just in Scotland—for me, that is in any United Kingdom or worldwide—because what you have is a system that is relying heavily upon human interaction. That is a call-taker who is picking up the call in his oven to make real-time assessments quite often in difficult, challenging circumstances on the information that they have, and a caller who might be vulnerable or might be distressed or under the influence of alcohol and drugs. When you put that mix into Police call handling—and that is just the nature of it among the three and a half million calls that were there back in 2015—you just cannot wholly eliminate that risk. What our report sought to do and what Police Scotland sought to do is to try and reduce the risk and to mitigate it and to minimise it as much as possible. For me, that was about ensuring that the call handling is appropriately staffed, which is the point that the committee has raised today. You have to make sure that it is properly staffed to meet the demand that is there. You have to make sure that the staff are well-trained and the staff are supervised and supported. You have to make sure that the ICT systems are stable and can assist to call-takers. Again, Police Scotland has done a lot of hard work around ICT. It has delivered a national command and control system now. It has strengthened its CRM, its contact relationship management software. It records all the calls and has built a new network for call handling. There is a lot of work being done there. There has to be robust processes in place within the environment. One of the most important things for me is that there has to be a learning culture within the organisation where the staff are prepared to highlight notable incidents or near misses and that there can be continuous improvement. As I said, those are the things that Police Scotland needs to have in place, and we have been checking on to make sure that that risk can be mitigated. As you say, things will go wrong from time to time, and that is just the reality of the volume of calls and the risk that are within the service centre. An important thing for me is that Police Scotland can learn from that and where something requires to be investigated so that it can go to be investigated—the perk. It can independently investigate these incidents and that any learning that comes from that can be identified. Can I ask them in relation to the risks that are being assessed and the mechanisms in the place presumable are intended to ameliorate the risks that can be ameliorated? That is not a static thing, though. Is there an on-going risk assessment? You talk about the future and emerging challenges, and to what extent, for instance, would the future upgrades play a part in that? I mean, I suppose that there are risks against the different categories as you identify that, so there is a potential risk that the ICT systems might not be stable at the point that you bring in new ICT systems. Again, we were critical of Police Scotland in 2015 for systems not being properly tested and things being rolled out. Since that time, very robust assurance processes have been put in place where individuals are testing things, they are actually signing off to say that they have been tested and they are evidenced. In terms of the new command control system, Police Scotland brought an outside force in from England to come and do some quality assurance beforehand. The individual risk around things such as ICT systems are being ameliorated by looking at what the risk is and then making sure that they are in place. When a new system was rolled out, Police Scotland brought in additional ICT staff to be available and they had people who described the floor walkers who were walking in that environment supporting the staff who were there. That is a good example where there is a specific risk around ICT change and Police Scotland put a number of measures in it at that time to make sure that it will be in place. I know that when Dundee moved into the central belt, there was a lot of support put in for staff in Dundee, and I know that exactly the same thing will be happening when Aberdeen calls are transferred as well. Can I ask you about the state of readiness? As key milestones appear in the stabilisation programme, are you—can you comment on that, please? Yes, again, we have been doing a lot of work with Police Scotland around asking them what are all the things that they have to demonstrate are in place and they have a detailed plan that they have shared with us, such as staffing levels, ICT processes in place, key things that have to be there. They have a plan that shows when they should be there and we are working with them around that. What we are doing is doing some independent testing of that to make sure that not only is it signed off but that it is actually happening. We are also doing a piece of work just now of staff in who are listening to calls that have been transferred from the north into the virtual service centre, because I want to provide some independent assurance that those calls that are coming in are actually being dealt with well and that they have been properly recorded and there are no issues around things like, as we have heard before, geography and accents and places and things, so there is a high level of assurance being provided around some of that as well. I would also go back to the gateway review that I had mentioned earlier. As well as us doing this, we also encouraged Police Scotland and the authority to commission a gateway review. People who are professional who can come in and look at a change programme, say that they have come in and the report has not yet been made public, but I can say that they gave it a green. That is about, you know, they assess the readiness for service to make a transition and their view is that they have confidence in successful delivery around time, cost and quality and they consider it that it is highly likely and that they have no major outstanding issues. So again, a high degree of confidence around the readiness for Police Scotland to move forward into that next stage of change. Having said all of that, we will still be involved right up until the last moment around assurance from that in the Scottish Police Authority who have also brought in really quite robust assurance processes. They have set up a sub-committee just to deal with call handling. They will also want to be assured and Police Scotland will demonstrate their readiness to them prior to the final decision being taken. Compared with what was in place 2015, there is a lot of process and a lot of people signing off to see things already. I was really just touching on some of the points that you had made. You talked about the transfer from Dundee, how there were the extra staff in place there and how you were in checking how all of that was going. It was really just to get your thoughts, I mean, are you confident then that when the transfer from the Aberdeen calls takes place and Inverness in the summertime as well that all that will run smoothly and confident that it will be effective when it is up and running? There is also the risk of making these assurances and being a hostage to fortune around that. I mean, I think that from me it is going back probably to the point. It is about we can assure ourselves around the systems and processes and make sure probably from the learning that we picked up from 2015 and the things that ideally would have been done, it is making sure that they are being done now. So, on that basis, I think that we have a degree of confidence that the transfers will take place well. There is independent gateway assurance that I have mentioned a couple of times around that as well. I have also been briefed. I spent two hours last week with the divisional commander who was going through in quite some detail about how he proposes to make that change. The particular time of day that they have taken, the particular hour of the evening when it is going to be done, has all been worked out around the most optimal time to do all of that. Again, when Aberdeen calls, they are going to have Aberdeen fully staffed and they will have the central belt fully staffed and they will have an ability to be able to unwind it if things do not go to plan and there are any issues around technology. So, there are a lot of safeguards that have been put in place around that. Again, I think that Police Scotland is in a far better place now than they were in the level of professionalism that is being done around project assurance and programme management that is much, much higher than it was before. Okay, thank you. Liam. Just following on from that, I appreciate that you do not want to offer up any hostages to fortune but clearly in your update report. There were continued, I think, concerns raised particularly around the uncertainty for staff. The future roles were not clear that actually there was an unwillingness to sanction transfers within Police Scotland to other roles. From what you said about the gateway review and your own work subsequently, are you reassured that management is now on top of those issues, that the staff morale is in a much better place, that there is a greater degree of certainty around what is going to happen and safeguards that are in behind that? Yes, well Aberdeen. Just to talk about how Police Scotland has worked hard on their staff engagement, again, first of me is probably an opportunity publicly just to pay tribute to the staff in the service centre. A lot of them have been working under great uncertainty over their futures for many, many months now, in fact, years around that, and they have committed to providing a really good service. Police Scotland has always been aware of the need to keep staff informed, but there have been difficulties, I suppose, around getting certainty about when the project will deliver. Because they have done the robust project management, they are now able to say to staff with some certainty when those dates will take place. We are aware that they have consulted with staff, particularly in the north, which is probably the last to be affected, what that would mean for them. I think that there is probably staff at least that are aware now that there is a high probability that that will all work out for them and they will be able to leave the organisation that is planned. What we have been quite keen to make sure, though, is that, if there are any delays, those staff do not have any detriment in terms of any early redundancy or voluntary redundancy packages. I know that that has been held in place as well, but I do not have the time to offer perhaps just a little bit of background around the engagement that Police Scotland has had with their staff. Yes. In the update report, we emphasised that the leadership of C3, there has been quite a lot of change in it, but there has been definitely a renewed focus on engaging staff and more productive relationships with the staff associations. There has been a very strong focus on engagement throughout the period, particularly the last 18 months. I think that communication is a very subjective thing that I suspect that if you ask staff whether there is enough of it, they will probably never agree that it is 100 per cent where they would like it to be, but the effort put in by both the project team and businesses usual management and communicating and engaging with staff has been significant, particularly in light of the criticism that we levelled at it in the original report. That has grown significantly. The paragraphs that you are referencing, particularly where we talk about staff in Aberdeen, were probably anxious when deadlines were extended. Again, as Mr Penman said, I think that the SRO quite rightly reviewed the timescales, but for staff in Aberdeen, that was another perceived delay for them. I think that now they probably feel more confident after we have seen various milestones delivering on time, that that actually will take place, but for those staff, it has been difficult. It has been a very difficult two and a half years to be told that they were going to be closed, the limitations of potential redeployment opportunities, the fact that there would be voluntary redundancy and early retirement on offer for some staff that they want to stay with the organisation. Because Police Scotland has had to maintain staffing levels in the north to maintain that service until these transfers took place, some staff have wanted to move on and have been unable to do so. All of those things do affect morale, but there are risks that we have continued to highlight to C3 management and they have taken on board. I think that Inverness is a different issue where staff there felt relatively secure that their jobs were going to remain, albeit in a different type of function, but laterally they felt very unsure of exactly what those jobs would look like, what the greetings would be, what the supervision and shift arrangements would be, and as we mentioned in the report, Police Scotland have tried as much as they can to accelerate the production of the business case for what is going to happen in Inverness and give those staff certainty. We maintain a focus on those staff in the north and their welfare with Police Scotland to make sure that they are mitigating those risks as much as possible through communication and engagement. Is the feedback that you make about communications perhaps always better? Is there a recognition among the staff that you are talking to that that improvement has taken place? Against the backdrop that you have described both in Aberdeen, at a lesser extent, and in Inverness, has that impact on morale translated itself into effects in terms of performance, in terms of absences from work or whatever, or is it manifesting itself in terms of people making clear concerns to yourselves about how they feel? I think that there hasn't been an impact on performance because, as Mr Penman says, those staff are incredibly dedicated to the function that they perform and I suspect it would really have to be extreme before that would be affected. Their absence levels have been very good and really quite stable. They do have a couple of longer-term absences that always affect figures but, in terms of their absence figures, we have been impressed that they have managed to maintain it and see through themselves that, again, the divisional commander has a real focus on absences both in terms of supporting staff as well as trying to manage the levels down and they have put a real focus in in the last year on absence management to support staff through that. We have not noticed any negative effects. We have had very limited communication directly from staff with concerns but we always maintain contact with the staff associations, particularly unison, to ensure that we are on top of what their concerns are, what their members are feeding back to them. Although the situation is difficult and we acknowledge that, they do acknowledge the efforts that the divisional commander and his team have made in terms of engaging these staff and trying to make it. Again, even physical visibility up in those locations was not great before, much improved now, so that they are seeing the leadership, they will sit down and talk to people about the issues that they are having. Just finally, in terms of the overalans, you were talking about how the operation will continue to function in Aberdeen and if there is any need to draw back into Aberdeen, that will be available. Is there a time frame for how long that is likely to last? That is effectively just for the hours in terms of almost a shift to allow that change to make sure that it is bedded in and that there is nothing operational that might come in and challenge that was unexpected. That, if you like, was just to provide the resilience at the point of handover. So it is not likely to last? It is not. I was just trying to demonstrate that at the point of having a significant change that Police Scotland has identified the risks and has mitigated them by having additional staff and ability at a number of stages to be able to move things around if they need to do that from there. If I could just pick up on the point of morale as well. Again, call handling is a really difficult environment for staff. It is probably the most scrutinised area of policing that there has been ever in certain terms of our time, because we would be at Whitley almost with them all the time. The thing for me is that it would be helpful just to recognise the improvement that has been made in call handling by Police Scotland, because there is something for staff who are in there every day doing, I think, a very good job in very difficult circumstances. There is just something there about this constant feeling that, in some way, police call handling is not working effectively or the headlines that appear in papers around crisis-ridden call handling or issues around particular service centres. I think that that definitely has an impact on morale for staff who probably will see improvements and will feel that things are actually better than they were and will also hopefully feel that they are doing a good service. That is something for me, again, realising that there is always going to be a risk and things will always happen. It is difficult to accept that, but I recognise that improvement has been made and that there is no crisis in police call handling. That is an interesting point, because I think that a lot of the concerns that were flagged up were being flagged up by those operating within the system who had concerns that either they were not getting the support that the resources were not in place to allow them to manage the risk, as John Finnie was saying. Over three million calls are handled and there is risk there, and concerns were being flagged up by staff themselves. I have only really been addressed as a result of them blowing the whistle. In terms of looking forward, are there mechanisms now for early identification of those problems that perhaps would avoid a situation where, when things do not go according to the plan, they do not need to be emblazoned all over the front page of papers or picked up in this committee, for example, that there are internal processes for dealing with those far more effectively than has been the case in the past? Yes, absolutely. The first point that you raised is absolutely valid. Back in August 2015, we were speaking to focus groups of staff who were queuing up at our door, who wanted to speak to us, who wanted to tell us their experiences. We do not have that any more. People who are speaking to them are telling us about the improvements that have been made and how things are a lot better. That is a key indicator, but the point that you make is absolutely valid. One of our recommendations was about a notable instance. It was about, basically, Police Scotland developing a culture within its service centre, and across all of Police Scotland, where staff who think that things might not have been done as well or who have any concerns around the process or procedure or staffing levels, really anything that they think, because the staff in the front line will pick that up first. They have a means to flag it up to supervisors for it to be recorded and dealt with in a notable instance process that, again, was subject to quite a lot of media coverage recently, around 95 instances, and Laura had done some work on us around that. It is a really important process to have in Police Scotland should be applauded for taking it on board and for doing it. It identifies things that we are near misses, and that can cause some concern for rightly so for the public and others, but it is still really important that they are recorded and picked up on and that the improvement can be driven. I know for a fact that, when anything is raised, the divisional commander personally takes ownership of that and sees it through to drive that improvement. It is a key question, and it also needs the ability to create a culture in the organisation where staff feel supported and supervisors can come down and speak to them directly. There is a long answer to your question, which is that staff are in a much better place now than they were, but the processes are in place for them to raise issues of concern. What I would like to see is that being rolled out across Police Scotland as a culture generally in every area of Police Scotland. Just before I ask my question, I want to say that I fully agree that we need to emphasise the positive work that is being done as well as continually evaluating concerns. In continuation of some of the points that John Finnie raised earlier, I wondered if you could elaborate exactly how the instability of ICT systems within C3 was having an impact on effective call handling. Furthermore, what steps have been taken to improve matters? I know that you mentioned the CRM previously, but perhaps you can elaborate on others. Whether further upgrades to the ICT systems within C3 will be required going forward? No, I think that that is an excellent question. One of our concerns was around ICT stability. Again, I know that I am sounding very positive today, but it is evidence-based because we have done a lot of work. The director of ICT and his team have made call handling a priority and I have put a lot of time and resource into that. One of the problems back in 2015 was that it was a time when Police Scotland was coming together. You had eight legacy police forces effectively coming to one. You had eight legacy ICT systems that really did not speak to each other to any great extent. In some cases, some of that was not particularly well documented. What you had was things that were working within their own environment but were not particularly well documented or even understood potentially. When things went wrong in those environments, it took a long time to try and work out what the problem might have been. There is an element of that within Police Scotland. We had concerns around the stability of the network to connect the main three centres, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Since our time early involvement, Police Scotland has invested in a dedicated network. There is a lot of bandwidth and resilience to join those centres up, so there is a lot of improvements being done in relation to that. There were eight legacy command and control systems, none of which spoke to each other at the start of Police Scotland. Since our report, Police Scotland has successfully delivered a national command and control system. It still does not take in yet Aberdeen but will shortly. It does not yet take in Inverness but will shortly. However, the vast majority of calls now are held in a single command and control system. What that means is that, for the first time anywhere in Scotland, they can see which incidents are happening. As a national force, they have the ability to manage those resources anywhere and properly deal with them. That is a real significant achievement and one that Police Scotland would expect to have in a national service. That has also been rolled out as a significant benefit to the national force. The last one was the contact relationship management software, which is a bit of a mouthful. However, the effect of what it does is that when somebody phones in, the system can check their phone number and it goes back and brings back the call history. So the person who is taking the call can actually see what the previous calls were, and that is really helpful in terms of assessing risk or just dealing with the call. That was rolled out as a national system. It did not work well. It was stalling often. It was causing staff to abandon it on some occasions and not use it. Police Scotland, again, has done a lot of work with the supplier of that system and it now has a stable, refreshed CRM system that is working well. We have spoken to staff and had that assurance from them. Probably three tangible examples for me about where Police Scotland have looked at their technology and brought that together. I think that your final point and your question was, does more need to be done around the technology and is there more investment needed? My own view would be that Police Scotland's approach was to try to bring everything together into the new national service centre and the three centre model with the technologies that they had available to them at that time that were tested. That is effectively what they have done. The plan was always to then look to see what is call handling look like in the future, what are the new ways that can be done, where is the innovation that can take place to do all that, and that was going to be done through an ICT-enabled change. Because of the issues that Police Scotland have had with I6 that the committee will be aware of, which was about the national crime recording system, that will make Police Scotland have to have some difficult decisions around where their investment will go. Some of the ICT investment for the future of call handling has been shelved currently. What we would hope for, probably in the back of Police Scotland's 2026 future strategy that I said will be released on Monday, that should set what is Police Scotland going to look like going forward, that part of that will be to say how can the service centre take new technologies to help to be more effective and be more efficient and take some demand away. I think that there are still great opportunities for new technology to be rolled out in the service centre. An evaluation process needs to take place on that once 2026 is... I think that for me, good would look like to use a horrible expression, would be Police Scotland understanding what do they want from their service centre in the new policing of Scotland as the future goes on. I suspect that that should be something that has a really strong customer focus. When people are phoning Police Scotland to get a really good customer experience and it's actually dealt with really well, some of it might be about getting their call dealt with on the phone and not dispatching police officers, because that would mean that you can start to create some demand for officers to do other things in their communities. That will require a bit more of investment. I think that there's more to be done about allowing people to report incidents and crimes in different ways online. It's not news done by all sorts of sectors, so there could be opportunities to do some of that. There could be things about having managed call appointments where people can actually book appointments for police officers to go and see them at a time that suits them. It's been done to some extent in the country, but that would require an investment moving forward. To answer your question, once Police Scotland will know where they are, I think that the customer and contact part will be a big part of the strategy. They then have to work out what they need to invest in that and, as you say, evaluate the benefits from that thereafter. One more question. In relation to recommendation 16, I just wondered if you could comment on how the system of numbered notebooks works in practice. Is there any need for the information that is written down in the course of taking a call to be retained? For example, should the information that is written into notebooks while operators be typed up and kept electronically, or is that happening at present? That relates to the expression of views with scribble pads. I think that was the accepted version. We were critical of Police Scotland back in 2015 because what you had was various practices where staff would jot down notes on pieces of paper or put them on to a Word document or something like that. Our professional view was that staff need to have the ability to have something to write on when the call comes in. As I said earlier on, oftentimes people will phone in who are distressed or who are vulnerable. You do not get my name, my address or my call. You will get people who could just be shouting out a registration number or shouting something out. There is a need to our mind for staff to have the ability to be able to write something down so that it is captured at that time. However, the guidance is very clear from Police Scotland that it is only to help them to catch that at the time. What needs to be done is for that call to be properly put on to the national systems in proper evidence. It is just a scribble pad for taking notes at that time. What we were keen to do was to provide some discipline over that process. Effectively, what we asked was for Police Scotland to issue these as notebooks. There was one system to record the scribbles as opposed to having lots of different things. A process in place where staff were encouraged at the end of their call to go through the scribble pad to make sure that the things that they have written down and scribbled have been dealt with and then just to mark a line through that scribble pad so that they know that that was done. When the books are finished, they then get kept and they are subject to audit. We also have a regime in place that we have checked where supervisors in Police Scotland will come and will check that the pages have been scored out and the things have been recorded. For us, it was just a safeguard to take place. Everything that is in there must be put on to the system. Now the CRM system is working properly. That is achievable, would be our take. It is purely just there as a backup for staff just to be able to write something down in extremis. That is reassuring that those procedures and systems are in place and that diligent record keeping is taking place. Can I just ask you, Mr Cameron, that further work will need to be done to assess the impact of the new risk and vulnerability training package that has been rolled out? Do you have any update on a timetable to do that? I mean, what we are actually doing just now is we have an officer who is an inspector rather than an officer who has come up from England to do some work from us just now and he is actually listening to some of these calls and what he is picking up because I met with him last week is that he is now seeing evidence of the call takers going through a process of vulnerability assessment on what they have done just now. So we are actually starting to see the evidence of that coming through. Police Scotland have wholeheartedly taken approach around trying to manage vulnerability. Again, I understand that in the 2026 strategy, as I said, more of that will come publicly on Monday, is a commitment from Police Scotland to move to a model called Thrive, which we had made reference of. We think that it will take place within the call centre, because that is the first time that people call, but we also see Thrive being a model that will be rolled out right across the whole force now, where it will be in front line officers who will use the same techniques. What it effectively does, it helps officers and call takers to identify who are the people who are most vulnerable, who are the greatest threat lies and it helps them to prioritise. We are waiting to see what Police Scotland intend to do as part of their new strategy. We think that it could be much bigger than what we have envisaged within the service centre and we are really welcome to do that. What we will do is once we see what the plans are in the detail behind that, we will look to get in behind to inspect and evaluate that later at the time, so I am not sure of a timescale yet, because I have not yet seen the detail behind the full plans. Are you assured that once all the training is complete that there will be a level of consistency across all the call handers? I understand that no two calls are the same, the way people approach the calls will never be the same, but are you assured that there will be a level of consistency across the service? That is what Police Scotland has to be able to deliver, and that is done through training and processes that are there. Again, that will not be there yet, because they are still rolling that out. The checks and balances for me is that we will encourage Police Scotland to bring in their own quality assurance mechanisms. As well as that is coming in and inspecting, we would expect supervisors to listen into calls in real time. When calls are coming in among their staff, we would expect supervisors to listen to those calls and among their team that they manage for them to be assured that there is a consistency in where there is development and needs for people to be encouraged and trained. We are also keen that Police Scotland will do their own independent quality assurance, so not the manager or not even nestled environment, somebody elsewhere—I think that is going to be set up in Aberdeenach because it is an independent quality assurance unit—where they will have the ability to listen to calls anywhere in the country and do the same thing to make sure that there is consistency around that. That is absolutely what has to be strived for. The training has to support it, but there has to be some checks that Police Scotland will do internally. We will be looking for feedback from that quality assurance process to be fed back to the Scottish Police Authority, so they have visibility that that quality standard has started to be met or if it is not, how is it going to be met? Okay, that is very helpful. Do members have any other questions? I may have missed this in your report. Forgive me if I have. Can you give us an idea of the average waiting time for calls when people call in? Is there any statistics to prove that? The reality is that, as I understand it, the triple nine calls have to be answered within 10 seconds, and the current figures for them are 97 per cent. The average time to answer is four seconds from there, but 97 per cent of the calls are also answered within the 10 seconds that are required. Summarising, 97 per cent of calls are answered within 10 seconds, but the average call handling time is four seconds for emergency. In terms of the one-on-one calls and non-emergency calls, the target is, I think, 40 seconds, and 98 per cent of those are answered within 40 seconds, and the average call time to answer is five seconds currently. Those are quite, in terms of probably other people's experience of other agencies and the commercial practice. It probably does demonstrate, even including the non-emergency, that the call handling times are there. We are really encouraged by the greater service, but there needs to be more than the greater service, and we are quite keen that Police Scotland develops a balanced performance framework that would also pick up things like repeat calls so that people are not getting a service or phoning back. If somebody is not getting a service on the phone back eight times or calls being answered, it almost validates the figures that have been answered quickly so that it is a good service, but it might not be because they are having to phone eight times to get the service in need. Thank you. Just briefly, while emphasising the point that you made earlier about call handlers doing a fine job in the majority, there are two issues that constituents raised with you. One was the point that you raised at the beginning about the time gap between the call and officers attending. The other was around the unfortunately era that I represent and there are certain trends of crime that are recurring, and some of my constituents get frustrated when they phone up either 101 or 999, and they state the type of crime it is, and they are asked to almost legitimise it and prove that when they are making that call. I wondered around recommendation 13, when you talk about training and awareness, whether in your experience there is a sense that call handlers are being informed about where particular trends of crime are happening in the country in order to help to expedite. It is not something that we picked up on as part of our assurances. We were keen that Police Scotland was able to provide real-time information to their staff, and they have put screens up in the service centre that can brief staff around that. Police Scotland also has briefings for their staff, particularly the control room staff, before the start to talk about some of those things. I think that there might be a maturity in Police Scotland as it starts to develop, because, again, to use the expression of what would look like, what would look like the service centre being aware of particular crime trends in particular areas, and Police Scotland having a view about what types of calls will be attended and what areas are dependent on what priority they have been given at that time. I suppose that that is a challenge for Police Scotland to be able to do that. What is important, though, is that constituents and others can feed back to Police Scotland around their experience in call handling and create a virtuous circle where Police Scotland can pick up on that and make that improvement. I think that the point that you made earlier about call history could be of assistance. I think that you made a valid point, because the nature of Scotland is that one size does not fit all some things that have an impact on, some communities will have less of an impact on others, particularly in terms of minor crime. It is getting the service centre and having the ability to be able to deal with that was behind your question, so that they get the response that the local policing team and the local commanders with communities have agreed that that local area would get. There is a need for the service centre to understand that and be able to support that front line policing. Very much welcome. You said that, as you were speaking, it occurred to me that not only can individuals move houses, therefore the association between individuals and numbers needs to be handled very carefully, but trends can change over a period as well. What you would not want to see, presumably, is a system that is locked into a particular perspective on certain post codes having issues of some variety. There is a change, and yet that kind of history is logged in very difficult, therefore, to shift. You would need some reassurance that it is a real-time updating of this information that remains as accurate and relevant as possible. I think that that is exactly right. For me, it is probably the maturity thing, but Police Scotland has made considerable improvements from where they were to where they are now. They know where they are going and there is a strong focus on customer service and things moving forward. The CRM call history is only a guide and I think staff are aware. It is just something there to inform staff to help make a threat assessment. If the call history shows things like domestic abuse or whatever within there, the call handle has got heads up. Even if the call at that time might not be about domestic abuse, there is a history in the household and things, and that can help inform the vulnerability, which is really important. I think that what I am probably moving to the future, if you have local policing teams who are delivering a policing service with local priorities that have been agreed at a really local level, it would be good for the service centre to be aware of that when the calls come in so that they can support what is being delivered in the front line, I think, is my point. That is probably a little bit further away. We will literally have a couple of minutes left, Mr Penman. We have covered a huge amount of areas today. I am not sure if there is anything that we have not covered that you want to bring to our attention before I bring this session to a close. No, I think that in my usual fast-paced delivery, I hope that I have managed to get most of the things that I have done. I apologise for that, and I always enjoy reading the official report, which makes more sense. I think that that is what I actually said. For me, it is just that recognition that we are here. HMIC, we come along, we produce critical reports, but our intention is to add value. We set a path, I think, in terms of improvements. There was a similar with Stop and Search yesterday as well, where another critical report. What we are seeing is that Police Scotland has undertaken our report seriously. It is working very hard to deliver that improvement, and I think that it is important for me to be able to come back. As long as it is evidenced, which it is in this case, to be able to come back and report to yourselves that improvements have been made. In call handling, as I said, the thing for me, and again, the history of fortune, is relevant. As Mr Finnie said, there will always be a degree of risk in call handling, and things will happen. That will continue to happen. Again, it is about how that risk is mitigated. For me, it is about how others respond to that when that comes through. For me, when these things do happen, it is important that the pork and other people can investigate things independently, and we can learn from that. It is great for me to get a chance to come along and provide an update to yourselves. I know that you have an interest in that, so thank you for that opportunity. No, thank you very much for coming along. It has been a very useful session, and I am sure that it is something that we will return to. We are now going to move into private session. The next sub-committee meeting will be on Thursday, 16 March, when we will take evidence from the Auditor General for Scotland on our 2015-16 audit of the Scottish Police Authority. I now suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to leave the room.