 Gw rahonydd hello yn bryds Interesting to the Eighth Meeting of the Justice Subcommittee in policing on policing in 2017. Apologies have been received from Mary Fee. Y First Agenda item is a Decision on whether to take item 3 in private, which is consideration of the evidence heard at today's round table evidence session. Are we all agreed? Thank you. Item 2, the next item of business is the round table evidence session on the role of local policing commanders and I welcome all the witnesses to the round table. Before moving straight to questions, I think that it would be quite useful if we just went round the table and introduced ourselves, and if we start with me Margaret Mitchell, vice-conviner of the policing subcommittee. Rody Irvine, dyfysiwn o'r comandau Lannachyr. Ben Macpherson, MSP for Edinburgh Northern and Leith. Good afternoon, folks. I'm David McIntosh, I'm a local area commander for Angus and Teyside. I'm also the chair of the Violence Against Women partnership in Angus and vice-chair of the Integrated Children Services Group in Angus. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Gavin Russell, chief inspector Q division. Until March, I was the local area commander for Coatbridge, Airdrie, Cymbranol and Colcith. I just recently moved to a service delivery job still within Q division. I'm William MacArthur, the MSP for Orkney. Stuart Stevenson, MSP for Bamshire and Buchan Coast. Afternoon, Derek Wrightson, director of communities, Bumfrees and Galloway Council. Rona Mackay, MSP for Strathkelvin and Bearsden. I'm Jane Fyler, head of improvement in the HR at Argyllun Bute Council. I have a role in the performance regime scrutiny committee that hears the police performance information. John, would you like to introduce yourself since? Fisgar Mac, good afternoon, John Finne, MSP, Highlands and Islands. Okay, we wouldn't like to leave you as we often. We'll start with the relatively straightforward questions. Perhaps, and I thank everyone who gave a written submission that was very helpful for the subcommittee. Perhaps if we could start by asking you to expand on the different roles and responsibilities of local police commanders and local area commanders just to start, who would like to set the ball rolling? I'll start. Defining the role of divisional commander. I'm a divisional commander, as I said, of Lanarkshire division. To give a bit of an idea of what that involves, Lanarkshire division has roughly 1,450 police officers, about 50 police staff. We cover the local authority areas of north and south Lanarkshire population of roughly 700,000 people. In terms of my role, there's me as the divisional commander. There's one chief superintendent. We've got three superintendents covering operations. That superintendent is responsible for operational policing. A partnerships superintendent who is responsible for maintaining and maximising the contact with partners, groups and local authorities. Despite the fact that many of the groups I sit on myself, we have a superintendent to drive the partnership relationship. One support superintendent who looks after probably more our internal business and a detective superintendent who's responsible for reactive crime investigation and also public protection. In terms of the split of the division, we have four area commands. Each area command has an area commander. Gavin was formally one of the area commanders within Lanarkshire division. He now works in the headquarters area. Each area commander covers a geographical area. Anyone else would like to add to it? There will be variations within every fourth. The divisional structure is very much the same. I would refer you back to for some more detail on that to my submission. Paul Anderson is our chief superintendent. He's the local policing commander. He covers three local authority areas in Tayside, Perthlyn, Cunroth, Dundee City and Angus. The set-up with the superintendents and chief inspectors is very similar. My role is the local area commander in Angus. If you like day-to-day policing responsibility is given to me. The chief superintendent will set the parameters to which I work, but I'm very much thereafter left to go on with it. A lot of work to do with partners, local community and staff. I've probably split my time between partnership work. I've invested interest in staying in Angus. My kids go to school in Angus. Those sort of relationships will certainly help. The earlier part of this year, to build on that, to get some of that information that comes in, we changed our policing model. We have locality inspectors in charge of areas that are linked into the local authority. There are locality inspectors that are dedicated for that. There are also dedicated community sergeants and dedicated community officers to build those relationships. I'm very much looking for their input. We've assisted our local policing plan. It was something that we developed through consultation. If you like, the change in our deployment model is for the community views, but also what officers were saying. If you like, I manage that. The operations on the day-to-day business are obviously staffing issues and partnership issues, which keeps me very busy. It's good to say that it's a strategic land commander and then at area level it gets down to the nitty-gritty Liam. You've pointed to the importance of relationship and I think that's self-evidently the case. One of the things that we've heard is that in some areas there's a rate of churn in terms of personnel in particular roles. Is that something that you're conscious of? Is it a problem that's maybe more regionalised rather than across the pieces a reflection of the creation of Police Scotland and things taking time to settle down? I mean, I think that if those relationships are to be formed, there needs to be some level of continuity and is that something that's a priority within Police Scotland? I always tend to ask Gavin to answer this since he's just been moved. One of the reasons we had this rag table is I never go to Coatridge and see the same person twice, so perhaps your view would be helpful. Absolutely, Mrs Mitchell. I'm quite happy to answer that. From a coo division perspective, Mr Irvine has been in post for 18 months during my time as the air commander at Coatbridge, which was just under three years, appointed in June 2014, leaving in March this year. There have been three divisional commanders. I was the only air commander during that three-year period. The reason I moved on was quite simply personal development. Three years in post, probably one of the longest serving air commander, certainly in coo division during that time, but certainly my own reasons were personal development for no other reason. Was there anything else behind it? Is there a downside to that, though? We're looking at continuity and it also helps if you know in depth. It takes a little while to get up to speed to, I would imagine, the new post. I mean, David mentioned the fact of his local links to his own area, that he works in and I, born and bred in Erdre, so being appointed to be the local air commander back in June 2014, as a local air commander for the town I grew up in, my family still lived there, etc. It was a very proud moment for me and certainly gave me the advantage of knowing the geography, which is always helpful. But yes, it does take time to get to know those local active members, your partners, and build up those relationships. I do think that it's very difficult to quantify what is the right time. I would say probably six months minimum to get to know the relevant partners and build those early relationships and those relationships clearly build through time and probably become less informal when that level of trust is, in confidence, built up in each other. But then, it's two years too long, what is the tenure of post? If you put tenure of post on a local air commander's position, there will always be variable factors coming into that welfare reasons where that person might have to move on from the post personal development, because if you're saying to someone, if you become an air commander, you must stay in post for two years. However, if you go and work at the Scottish Crime Campus, you may only have to remain in post for 18 months and then potentially get promotion. So there are those variable factors. There's a balance, but three commanders, different divisional commanders in three years. Before I've been roddy in, I think Derek, you were going to give your perspective. Yeah, thanks very much. Certainly from a local authority perspective, we recognise that it's absolutely vital that if we're going to establish joint working and truly deliver local services responsive to local needs, that relationships are going to be key to that. Continuity is vital. Clearly, there's a balance. I agree entirely. There is a balance between the professional development of officers that applies to all public servants and therefore we've got to strike that balance, but certainly I'm freezing the gun away as pleased to see that we now have stability and that's bringing continuity and there is no doubt in our mind that when we didn't have that, it was detrimental to the joint working and ultimately the public services that we were trying to provide. Okay, and roddy, the three commanders that they have. If I can just talk about Gavin's position, so I had to strike a balance because Gavin proactively approached me seeking the move and I had to give consideration to that balance because I knew that there would be an impact of the change. I had to make sure that the replacement was the right replacement and the chief inspector who's replaced Gavin was someone who had been a response inspector at Cumbernauld, had the local knowledge to a degree, had some of the relationships and had Gavin approached me perhaps after having been in post for a year or six months and saying, you know, I'd like career development, I might have had a different response but I did feel in fairness to Gavin. He'd worked these socks off for three years and I had to balance the career development versus stability. In terms myself, it's the divisional commander role. I think it's been an interesting journey and I think if there's one thing that Police Scotland is in my experience it's a learning organisation. So in terms of there was a period of significant change at the beginning in terms of my own journey when we became Police Scotland I was an area commander in Easton Bantonshire there was a strong desire to share best practice I was asked to go up and be operation superintendent in Tayside so I hope I like to think I took some of my knowledge from Greater Glasgow up there and when I came back down from Tayside to Lanarkshire I like to think that brought some of the Tayside knowledge down. Can I ask how long you've spent in each post? I was an area commander for just over a year I was the operation superintendent for two years in Tayside and I've now as Gavin said I've been down in the current role for over a year and in terms of the culture I think Police Scotland was a massive change and it came with a lot of change and I now certainly that when I had the conversation about going to Lanarkshire I was briefed you know that working you will measure your time at Lanarkshire in years not months do you understand that when you take up this job and I do understand that and that's nothing against Lanarkshire that's all Lanarkshire is a great place and a great division and I'm proud to be there but what I would say is that the culture has changed we've been through I think the period of such rapid change we're now in a a period of stability more than we were we've learned we've taken account of the feedback we've had the feedback we've gone through the pain of a lot of the feedback around rapidly changing people and you know Gavin alluded to the fact that there will always be variations so that there can be illness there can be promotion, retirement personal circumstances, career development I think it would be impossible to actually say you're signing up to this for X number of years but in my own head I know that my role in Lanarkshire will end up being measured in years not months I was going to perhaps bring Jane in here because one of the things is how do partner organisations react to this in your role in HR in our Guiland view that would be a useful insight in terms of the term of change in a lot of the public services recently you know there has been quite a bit of change and we have had some change in policing as well in our Guiland but but I think the nature of the type of service, the type of area that we have and the services that we have to deliver we've got 23 inhabited islands we've got people across six different towns in various little remote rural communities we all have to work together in partnership to make sure that public service is delivered therefore the partnership relationships are already strong so when you have a degree of churn with any of the partner agencies as long as the partnership surrounding it is strong then that change can be accommodated and supported because the ground the ground rules for that partnership working are set and there's an expectation that whoever moves into that post will be supported into the partnership working so the priorities are very clear and we have all of our plans aligned as you would expect through our outcome improvement plans but it's not just about the plans it's about the behaviours it's about the strength and interrelationships and that joint commitment across services to be a bit flexible but to be able to jointly do what what we need to do for the people of our Guiland but so I think whilst you do have people retiring and being promoted we're not going to be able to control that but we can set a very clear environment that sets standards for people who are new and coming into that partnership in a new role and supporting them so I suppose the only problem would be if there was a lot of partners changed and you know if one or two have changed you can quote with it if there was a huge change to much of the learning card I think you wanted contact I would agree with both both points there but I think having the right people in the right place and then those relationships are key because as well as all the change within sort of the Police Scotland local and national and then within the partner agencies that helps you moving forward and I know everybody across Scotland will be looking at local outcome movement plans this now and locality plans and how does that fit in, what does that mean so if the relationships are strong you can do that and if I can give an example from Angus recently Child Protection Committee Adult Protection Committee and the Violence Against Women Partnership and suicide prevention like elsewhere in the country are coming under Winbanner so that's again just a future proof of it about looking forward how is that going to be better and achieved you know how can we give support to the vulnerable in our community and so tying that all together and we couldn't have done that without strong relationships and also I wouldn't be able to influence it from a policing point of view or a local point of view from violence against women if I wasn't involved in that I think you're going to get agreement on that so there has to be a time period on it and there has to be that consistency and if folks start sharing the objectives and priorities like Jane was saying there from Argyll and Bute that's the way to go forward that's such a vast area with so many different John Finnie I represent a very large area and the police start from a very strong position because they enjoy quite rightly a lot of public support so I really want to move on slightly if I may convener to the issue about local policing issues because people get that the benefit of Police Scotland is co-ordination around organised crime, terrorism the more strategic level but of course people still are concerned about litter, dogfoulling, graffiti and it is about that balance about being able to respond to that and I know there are arrangements with local authorities are you able to comment on where the priorities would lie there because you know very few people are ever in touch with me about organised crime or terrorism but clearly it affects all communities but a lot of people are in touch about litter and graffiti and things like that Roddy I think I certainly feel as a divisional commander and I would like to think that my area commanders I've created an environment where my area commanders have the local flexibility to address local issues so in terms of myself I have I go to I'm not at the moment because of the electoral situations but traditionally I would go to a surgery with councillors from north and south Lanarkshire to do that on a weekly basis and we just part of it for me is to gauge the health of the relationship make sure that the councillors are able to have a voice to speak to me about how things are going well and also I'm a big believer in relationships not transactions we shouldn't be just executing transactions over and over again we should be building relationships trust the kind of thing where you pick up a phone you don't write a letter type thing and there's probably I think the way policing is at its best when we do a mix of what people want and what people need so traditionally when we consult we're quite often told about disorder volume it could be dogfowling it could be vandalism it could be the quality of life things which have a major impact on people's lives I remember I lived in a housing estate where there was a play park in the middle of it and local youths were using it to drink and be sick and kids were going out the next day and there was all these wonderful facilities and they were covered in sick and that has an impact so we take that very seriously and on top of that we probably have to very seldom when we consult in public perhaps domestic abuse is a priority because these are not the things that people are discussing openly and as a result that's where we have to almost put a layer of professional knowledge on top and I think I think now again I go back to this I don't think we're the same police Scotland we were a few years ago I think we're a different police Scotland in terms of that local flexibility in a variety of ways just this week we changed our operating model within Lanarkshire and we changed that we changed that based on demand analysis we changed it based on speaking to our cops to work out what was impacting on their morale etc and with local consultation and when I say local consultation I mean the stuff that's coming through area commanders through area inspectors to me from constant conversations with the public partners local elected members and also from what I hear in the surgery and what was quite interesting was we did an awful lot of technical work we did an awful lot of having conversations with our own people and other people and I built up a strong case for why our current operating model wasn't optimal and why I wanted to move to this new proposal and I found it a very easy sell I went to the exec and I said I want to propose a change in operating model it will meet our geographical demand it will meet our temporal demand it will meet what the public are telling us they want and I was told words similar if I summarise to well you know what's going on in your division you're speaking to your people in your division you do that and another example might be a lot of the local police plans the three year plans are due to be refreshed early in the year the loyp we actually in consultation with our partners the local outcome improvement plans were due to be published in October and it didn't make any sense to us to publish our local police plan early in the year and I don't know trying to cram it into the overall so we said to Police Scotland if you like can we delay our local outcome improvement plan and we said yeah if it makes sense locally you do that so I would like to think that the area commander locally would be reacting to the public's concerns and also being quite open about the fact that there are national constraints and also there are police professional knowledge pieces of work that we have to tackle even if it's not bubbling to the surface in community meetings just to pick up on that point you said that you think you're a different organisation you've got the flex but it was an easy sell to the executive so why wasn't it before what's changed I think in the early days of Police Scotland I think there had to be a certain amount of command and control type leadership there to make the last thing we could afford to do was for Police Scotland not to work so the priority was to make it work but we're through that now and we've also learned I think we were unaware of some of the unintended consequences of the way we were operating in the early days plus we had no experience halfway through 2013 we didn't know we couldn't go back two years and years and years of a national policing service in Scotland we can now we have the evidence and we've learned and I think we've all kind of grown a little bit in that understanding I think people would probably say that that was Scottish Parliament too and I'm going to take the panel Derek Thanks very much I just to build on that point from John Finnie I certainly would acknowledge that we've just elected 1200 councillors in Scotland and I think they'll tell us first hand in the last few weeks when they've been canvassing the issues that certainly matter strategically terrorism, violence, public protection the matters on the doorstep probably can be summarised litter, dogfiling and parking and quite clearly their important local priorities and their long-term concerns I think what we're certainly clear about in discussions recently with Police Scotland is that we need to have a joint response that's both of a speedy response and a quality response that demonstrates to the public that these matters are being taken seriously because they do matter to people and all our surveys demonstrate that they come up quite high in ranking of public concerns so what we're embarking upon just now is very much an award model through our elected members at award level very much engaging with the public, with Police Scotland colleagues, with a view to ensuring the council resources in terms of community safety we can take a far more joined up approach which balances the need for both enforcement which is clearly a tool where appropriate needs to be used but also education because ultimately the litter that we see across Scotland is wholly unacceptable it's not being put there by public agencies it's being put there unfortunately by the public and therefore the enforcement has its place but education is vital so the more we can engage with communities provide that educational approach but also a strong response I think we will get public confidence that we are balancing the strategic long-term concerns that matter to people with the very local issues as I say in terms of dogfowling litter parking certainly rank very highly in towns and cities across Scotland If you'd like to come in Jane and then I'll bring David I'll bring in the witnesses wherever I can before members because that's the priority to hear from you Thanks I think just coming back to the kind of unique circumstances we have on our Gail and Bute in our local policing plan it sets out really clearly, it's really clearly how you take those national priorities right the way down to the local issues and the local needs and yes it covers education and yes it covers enforcement but also covers about 80 per cent of the activities that are carried out by Police Scotland in our Gail and Bute are not about crime they're about responding to crisis they're about responding to community needs they're about responding to some of the issues like mental health issues so where you've got people in crisis in our police vehicles in our Gail and Bute they have things like defibrillators and they have things like the local commander went out to mull the other week and was expecting local police officer to meet them but the local police officer couldn't meet him off the ferry because he was a way help in somebody with a crisis to do with the lambing so it's that being part of the community is really important but it's also the educational aspect of it working in our schools in all of our remote communities to let the young people know what the priority issues are so we can take things like the risk of drug enforcement or serious linked to serious and organised crime right from the young people in schools up to the national priorities and make it relevant so yes dogfouling, yes litter yes parking are issues but actually we can help to tackle the bigger things by taking a local view on the national issues and that's again through really good communication and really good joined up planning I suppose that's the demand policing that we've been hearing about and how that takes up so much time Thank you, I probably use it for the committee to know Angus is very much a rural area very much a place of places so knowing what the local issues are and how you get that information that's an on-going process that isn't a consultation once every six months and the deployment model that we have in place supports that, there are as many people don't stay in any of the seven main towns as they stay in Forfer for example and how do you get that visibility of your message and officers and of the partnership out there so that's why we have dedicated inspectors dedicated sergeants, dedicated cops who are also involved in partnership arenas, I have an officer in my community safety hub that chairs a financial harm so a group that covers all of Angus and we have banks, post offices and villain societies who will phone us up every week and say do you know there is a vulnerable person here with draw money out of their account and I can maybe share some of that information later on but the local issues are vitally important because if you ask somebody from Forfer they stay in Forfer, they don't stay in Angus so I can relate very much to some of the stuff from Argyll and Bute so geography becomes an issue of work in a city environment so how do you do it so it's on a daily basis that we're speaking to our communities when our officers also attend the community surgeries that we put a report ahead of that the best evidence of how that will go will be some of the councillors and members hearing how they feel that that engagement is because these are real issues but to go back to one earlier on this year and you'll have seen it in the paper there were five individuals from Liverpool who got the best part of 80 to 100 years for stealing a cash machine in Cernusti now that was local crime and local issues that was affecting our growth in Cernusti these individuals who were travelling and that was national resources that dealt with that previously so it's right it's getting that balance and being part of that partnership and that conversation towards what the locality plans will be underneath the loypes when it comes through and having been in a facility to be able to support that it's good stuff I think you covered a really important bit with the communication getting however that works if it's through banks and that's intelligence gathering too Roddy and then Stuart you're definitely coming in after this I think as well I'll probably repeat the phrase of learning organisation and we've already started learning from our 2026 consultation so we used to talk about our approach to local policing now we're talking about our approaches to local policing and we're recognising that there's I think we used to talk about urban and rural and I think there's more to it than that and we've recognised so we're now talking about urban, rural and remote and actually I spoke to the commander of Argyllyn but about some of these remote island communities and the same thing came up where we were talking about this vehicle that seemed to have a ladder, a hose, a stretcher, a defibrillator a set of handcuffs and I was just left with this vision of a thunderbird type thing out there and that's good learning for me because in Lanarkshire we're typically thought of as an urban division but the south of south Lanarkshire really is very rural and actually one of our big priorities came out around rural crime and that won an excellence award for our approach to rural crime but I wouldn't necessarily say we're remote in the same way and face some of the challenges that probably Argyllyn but and maybe some of the areas in the north so it's recognising that and I think we are learning all the time Gavin's been waiting for you Gavin It's just really to I suppose address the view from me as an area commander in my relationship with Roddy and it's my commander and how that then links up nationally I certainly never felt in any way hamstrung as an area commander by national priorities I certainly had to make sure that I was enforcing and driving the national priorities and linking them in with our local priorities but in no way did I feel hamstrung at all by national or the commander I absolutely have an absolute responsibility to drive local priorities but actually for me the really important thing was to drive the really local priorities that Mr Finnie is talking about so for example in the area that was absolutely parking and it wasn't an issue I had anywhere else to the great degree I had it in Airdrie but Airdrie town centre and round about mountains hospital we were continually getting complaints from members of the community and that's an on-going process it's in no way solved we've done a lot of work with roads a lot of work with Scottish Fire and Rescue trying to demonstrate to people we cannot get a fire truck down this street and we've done a lot of engagement with the local media etc it's just to reinforce that I absolutely felt a total autonomy to run my area as I saw fit and if my priority at that particular day was parking then it was parking our divisional commander talked about local flexibility that's fine our two area commanders have talked about the need to do things in a way locally that responds to local needs that's all self-evident what I'm interested in probing is with that diversity of response which is appropriate to local needs how do we deliver consistency of outcomes you know are we all being as well in the different areas and I'm thinking of area commanders perhaps rather than divisional and in particular given there's quite a lot of area commanders how are you learning from each other how does that work is there further development to take place from what you can learn from each other because we've heard of a learning organisation that poses quite a lot on how you measure outcomes I'm not trying to do that without specifically addressing outcomes so to speak but Mr Irvine spoke about a learning organisation certainly we are improving from a local perspective we have four sub-divisions there's four area commanders and co-divisions we certainly learn from each other in best practice and what we're doing in each of our areas as a management team we'll sit round the table once a month formally for our tasking senior management team and that is an absolute opportunity for us to share the practice that we're doing in our own areas do forgive me I'm more thinking of how you in Lanarkshire are learning from just for the sake of argument someone in Orkney the way I would link into that is certainly not directly from Orkney my link into that would be through Roddy and through the commanders he attends west commanders meeting he attends the force commanders meeting so that's an opportunity for that sharing of best practice but actually no specifically David and I have no link is the area commander so just therefore to turn to a divisional commander the learning at senior levels is essentially therefore at divisional commander level exchange of information be it formal or informal because it's often round the water cooler that you hear the most interesting stories and it's probably worthwhile bringing in the rank of superintendent who isn't represented here so for example when I was the operator I suppose the flipside of what we talked about with the rapid change one of the benefits of the rapid change if there was some was rapid learning so before Police Scotland we would never have sat in a situation where the three of us had worked together I left Glasgow as I said went up to Tayside worked with David and actually there was a particular situation in Dundee where a certain area was experiencing a chronic problem and I'd seen exactly the same chronic problem and we'd put together an action plan in Glasgow which tackled the problem we always talk about this when we meet up because we're both quite proud of what we did there and we built that action plan and it had similar success in Dundee so there is an informal network of learning but one area perhaps if we talk about the superintendent is our representative on the national domestic abuse forum and that's where the operation superintendents who have responsibility within divisions for the effective tackling of domestic abuse come together with third sector assist women's aid and they have a forum whereby they hold a divisional forum and they gather up their issues and their learning then they take it to the national forum where the operation superintendents with representation from partners third sector would come together to share that learning and I suppose one thing as well is that there have been significant sticking on the subject of domestic abuse for example there have been significant benefits another area of learning is we have for domestic abuse we have what we call MATAC which is multi agency tasking and co-ordinating and what we used to do with MARAC was based on the risk posed to the victims and we would come together in our division we would have the highest risk domestic abuse victims we would say with partners how are we going to make these people safe we actually realised that potentially we were missing a trick because a good way to keep victims safe is to get in about the perpetrators so MATAC is about focusing on the most profound offenders and what was happening before Police Scotland was to identify a victim of domestic abuse we will go into our vulnerable persons database and we will look at their previous relationships we will then proactively approach those partners and we will be uncovering domestic abuse that we would not have known about what we are finding with some of these prolific offenders is that they are offending in various areas around the country so when we have our MATAC which again is chaired by our operation superintendent the national domestic abuse task force comes to that and can be tasked by us so where for example you get an offender who has offended in various divisional areas or there are various victims in divisional areas the national domestic abuse task force will take that on and they will take that on as a package of work because they are the people best equipped now they are learning that we have taken from the national domestic abuse task force because they have to come back in I was the chair of MATAC when I was in Tayside because I was the operation superintendent and when they come back and they feed back about the work that they have done because what we are doing with these offenders is we are just saying we are going to destroy your ability to behave this way so we don't just look at them for domestic abuse, we look at them for disqualified driving, drugs financial offending and what we say is you are hurting people, we are going to try and lock you up for whatever we can the learning I took when I was in Tayside, sharing that going into the division the learning I took from Tayside into Lanarkshire and the learning that we continue to get from the national domestic abuse task force and that is just one example but there is roads policing examples Can I give you a specific example I think all of us or a lot of us saw the programme last night in trafficking is rife in Scotland and people are being trafficked two, three, four times and yet that documentary seemed to be unearthing things that nobody was aware of what went wrong probably I am aware of the documentary and I am aware that a lot of the cases that were covered were sort of from the Glasgow area and I am probably most informed about the situation in Lanarkshire but MATAC should be working according to you if it is MATACs for domestic abuse Just domestic abuse and there is not the same similar kind of approach for these other big issues like money laundering like trafficking, like Not necessarily, I mean money laundering money laundering I would say Police Scotland has a far better approach to money laundering than previous legacy arrangements because what you tended to find with serious organised criminals they were potentially committing their crime in one force area they were laundering their money in a different force area and they were living and spending it in another area and to tackle crime like that these different organisations had to come together now we have one organisation which can deal with that with regard to the people trafficking that is absolutely I would say that is front and centre of our thinking certainly I can speak on Lanarkshire recently we had a very major large scale operation specifically to tackle a situation we'd been getting intelligence that we thought there was maybe human trafficking, human exploitation we did a major operation there there was people were remanded as a result of it from there the actual doing the operation on the day was the small part it was following up with regard to the intelligence picture after that and we are continuing to do that we actually identified from that we were concerned that there was potentially 15 Romanian people who had been trafficked and we went out and we saw them and we sat down with them when we spoke to them and one thing that we're very conscious of is if you sit down and say have you been trafficked then they probably won't say it whereby you can speak to them sit, build trust, certain indications which the presence or absence of will indicate so for example we said can you do us a favour can you go and get your passports for us now if they are being exploited it's highly unlikely they'll be able to lay their hands on their passports however these people were able to lay their hands on their passports so we did digging on that occasion we were of the opinion that they hadn't been trafficked that's not... I suppose what I'm saying is that's a whole lot of intelligence there that you think should have been spread to other parts of Scotland so that programme didn't reveal all these cases in Glasgow and going on to other parts of Scotland does anyone else want to come in on that? Gavin I suppose just to expand on Roddy's point Mrs Mitchell I mean I was going to give just that local example of where human trafficking has been a priority in our area and it is something we're aware of and I've no doubt that my colleagues in David's area and elsewhere in the country have been carrying out similar operations without giving too much away we will have other future operations planned in relation to that in the Lanarkshire area and talking from my own experience in Adriancote bridge and there's been at least the operations that I can think of in the last six months are so specifically targeting human trafficking in my area so what is a priority for us and it is something that... Have these come to court? Have they been sentenced? Have they been charged? Not to my knowledge Mrs Mitchell I mean primarily What would be the hold up then? The driver for us certainly is to safeguard people and to make sure those people are safe in those criminality which clearly there is in the background and I saw part of that programme myself last night and there's clearly organised crime sitting behind it both organised crime in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe and I've absolutely no doubt that my colleagues at the Scottish Crime Campus are linking in with their colleagues across Europe in relation to that. I suppose the problem is though we're not aware of any convictions not from the ethers of national or local policing and just to use that example surely that must be a concern John, you wanted to come in I'm aware Ben and Rona have to come in too but I didn't know if it was at that point particularly Rona or Ben? I'm conscious the police officers have been very open with us and there are certain areas where I'm sure it's inappropriate to comment it was to pick up more in the interagency of members of the last justice committee and we did do work in this and I remember hearing from a local authority worker in Edinburgh and it was getting everyone to understand the potential signs so I was just wondering if any of our community representatives would talk how that filters down then is there education because it is about the signs and symptoms that there may have been trafficking and that would be evidence Anything that you could add to either Jane or Derek from your point, is it something that's crossed your radar to our local information any sign at all multi-occupancy, some strange going people know what they're supposed to be Certainly we wouldn't be in the position to give a lot of detail but certainly to reassure the committee that there is joint working on this issue in Dumfries and Galloway and you'll appreciate particularly given our location and two borders both in terms of Scotland-Ningwin border as well as the Northern Ireland border is an important issue and reassure the member that there is joint working in place in relation to this issue because it's quite controversial and the issue of concern and certainly could provide more details in a written form if that was helpful Derek, perhaps a tiny wee thing is this just about conviction or is it about protecting people where it may not be possible to get convictions primarily absolutely about protection yes and where it's about conviction it's about protecting people using conviction as a device Jane Again, not in any particular detail but certainly the work that we do the multi-agency work that we're involved in as well as the local authority through the serious and organised crime groups, through the counter-terrorism group as well you know where there's just like intelligence about our activity, it raises awareness and our work with the police through the it's back to relationships actually so when you're looking at issues people are aware of issues around domestic abuse people are aware of issues around serious the potential for serious and organised crime and are making those connections raising awareness in the communities raising awareness through schools as well it means that where there are where we have officers out in the community whether they're working in health and social care whether they're working in trading standards whether they're working in community community policing community action community protection stuff then if they know the signs to look out for they can raise awareness and the strong relationships that we have across the partnerships mean that they can pick up the phone it's not about memos, it's not about reporting to a committee it's picking up a phone saying I'm a bit concerned about this person that's just moved into this particular area or that's just registered with us for antenatal care or who has just come on our radar with children who the teacher is a little bit concerned about so the awareness of something like people trafficking while we don't have specific evidence from Argyll and Bute or I'm not aware of in Argyll and Bute it's about that awareness and making sure that people have their radar switched on and know the avenue to pick up and know to talk to their partners I think I understand that perfectly protection but there must be prevention too and if this is someone's being trafficked two, three, four times then arguably your movie getting on top of it once you're tipping them off, they're moving on but it's still going on there some way or surely this has to be brought to the forefront and an example made so that it deters others so there's a deterrent as well the prevention obviously being the very best solution rather than protection which is after the effect there is a national work plan although I can't go into too much detail I suppose to build on Jane's point there the multi-agency approach is very important the community planning partnership having conversations with fire colleagues who do home visits and who traditionally going back a number of years I think we understand all that and you've emphasised that Roddy move on to getting a concrete that's going to deter people but move on, Ben, you had a question Thank you, I was touching on some of the points that were raised earlier I can only speak from an urban perspective because of the area that I represent but certainly in both North Edinburgh and Leith very strong and stable relationships with local commanders and inspectors and part of the strength of Edinburgh's locality model but also the fact that we have absolutely allocated community police officers that can then go in and build relationships and that's actually been strengthened within the area that I represent and across the city and I just wondered if you wanted to touch on further about the importance of community representation and that ability to go out into the community as well as build relationships with elected members like myself so that we can feed information but to really reach out to organised entities like community councils or local institutions but to really get into the community and speak to individuals face to face We moved to the new operating model that I mentioned, one of the key components was feedback that I would probably say that worst our community policing model had been correct when it had been implemented a while ago things had moved on and one of the pieces of feedback that we got was that community police officers were regularly changing being taking away to deal with response so we've moved to a model whereby there will be a dedicated ring ffenced group of community police officers we've been putting out on traditional media, social media their names I think there's a psychological importance to being there because I am being open and what we were finding sometimes was attending a community meeting and taking feedback and taking those issues away and it was a different officer attending the next time and they maybe weren't as cited as they could be on the issues that had been raised if it's the same person over and over just personal pride will kick in once you build up the relationships with the local community and they tell you they're having problems if you have relationships there it is important to you and then your professional pride kicks in I'll do something about that for you and then you personally go back you are personally motivated to come back with a positive solution because you've got to look these people in the eyes and we have certainly, speaking in the Lanarkshire we've moved our model whereby our new model will be far more geared towards that than the model we had previously Thanks Mr Mitchell, I mean that it's certainly a big frustration for me to be a commander around my ability to deliver effective community policing because there's absolutely no doubt that the old model that we had wasn't allowing my community police officers who a lot of them in truth were community police officers in name only and weren't, because of the call demand and the way the resources were deployed weren't being allowed to do that community focus work and certainly as Roddy says we've moved to I now have commanders now have dedicated absolutely truly dedicated community police officers and a big part of their work and only launched on Tuesday certainly over the next couple of weeks is to get out there and get themselves known in the community and tell people I am your community police officer whether that's getting into the schools the youth groups the health centres wherever it needs to be and I've seen some stuff on our Twitter feeding the last couple of days a couple of our local problem solving team officers and that's what they're there to do they're there to solve local problems and across the division there's now 10 sergeants and 80 constables fulfilling that role and they will be left alone to do that that is what we have signed up as a senior management team to allow them to do David in the community that I can a police and I say kids go into school they feel very much part of it and people recognise me as my kids dad as well as the area commander and reassurance to the community to partners but also to officers and families that you actually know what the issues are so community officers is one aspect of that but it's also how you go about your daily business how you engage with people how you go to the meetings and when you have that information and you have people involved tell folks this is what you have done this is the benefit the 2026 consultation that's going out recently as well as the 10 year plan that's about the differences we can make now for our communities in Scotland so that's really important so vitally important to have a mechanism that somebody can say that is the person in my area all my community officers stay in the area that they're working as well it's the same model that the bosses got as well in Q division but it's moving on from there so what is then going to be the next issue that you're going to deal with whether it's the parking what is the important issue and again we're coming back it's that relationship and if you don't have folks that can do that you're not going to have that whole picture of the information when earlier on people were saying where do we learn how to learn as an area commander I learn every day off my staff of the members of the public when we go to scrutiny and audits and if you go into the police college we all have continuous professional development type sort of days I go to days with the Scottish Institute for Business Leaders where you learn from folks from industry all of that is important and if you're not out engaging but importantly you have to do something with that information when you have it and that's key for me and Derek? The perspective from Dumfries and Galloway if you'd asked us that question three years ago would certainly have been a one of serious concern because quite clearly the concern coupled with the removal of the control room locally was that the accessibility and the visibility of Police Scotland was certainly seen to have deteriorated quite badly and it was a real concern to the people of Dumfries and Galloway the good news that we can we can certainly indicate today as there's been a change of emphasis in the last six months for the better and there is a clear feedback from our public and from our elected members that we now have a community policing model that is ensuring as one of the officers has said that actually has dedicated resources it's not a token title that actually doesn't follow through there is now dedicated resources and certainly our commander is very proud of that change and rightly so so it was just to reaffirm that the concerns are well made and it is something that thankfully the learning organisation has come through on and therefore the public who matter most in this are now starting to see that difference being made I'm going to bring Jane in and then Liam because I know you're short of time Thanks just in relation to that to the community policing I think one of the things that we've seen since the advent of Police Scotland is the clarity when we're now because we're now responsible for the scrutiny of police activity so we can see the activity at a local community council level where the elected members can interact directly with the police who are on the ground there and then we've got our local area committees with the community planning partners involved in that as well so that's another structure with particular targets particular outputs and an impact from both community groups and from elected members into the direction of the policing in that particular part of Argyll and Bute and then we come up to the performance review that the commander comes once a quarter and is there to answer to the performance of overall policing in Argyll and Bute and in that respect that's where some of the more strategic issues strategic in terms of the area can be raised and can be addressed and the local flexibility that the commander has to address those issues built on the evidence, built on the measuring of the outcomes built on the feedback and interaction with communities right up through that structure really brings a visibility to the activities of police and it aligns them really visibly with the priorities of the communities enables elected members to input in that kind of democratic way and then can be communicated back out again to the communities overall and for us just to the last point is that we had a real issue about the closing of police stations because visibility of buildings meant safety to some of our communities now that's a real challenge when you're dealing with reduced resources and a lot of the buildings in our areas are not fit for purpose so a change in priority a change in resource and a change in the balancing of resourcing that the local commander was able to put in place meant that there was still visibility of police officers around about the communities that just went in buildings and that really worked it was a good response to a democratic concern Liam Just following up that point specifically I mean I think well it's been encouraging some of the reassurances we've heard I think in terms of recent decisions taken around police counters or police stations or indeed the withdrawal of traffic ward and services for example in relation to parking I think those were pretty poorly handled and I would hope the lessons have been learnt from that it's more around resources that I was going to ask because in the sense that the financial position of Police Scotland then is a little secret that is made of it I'm aware in Orkney for example a very small force has been carrying a proportionally high number of vacancies for some time now and in a sense if you look at the crime rates if you look at clear-up rates and all the rest of it it would be easy to see how from some part distant that would not be a priority but without a critical mass actually policing an area providing that community presence around an archipelago of 20 inhabited islands and all the rest of it is exceptionally difficult and therefore I just wonder how the case in terms of the resources that then the area commander is able to deploy in the way that he and the partner see fit has arrived at because as far as I'm concerned there is a bit of a risk that there's not been much of a shift since the creation of Police Scotland and where the resources were before Ben might have a view on this in terms of policing in Edinburgh compared to the resources for policing in the Greater Glasgow area but from an Orkney perspective I have concerns about where that resource deployment is and what area commanders have at their disposal to meet the needs but I think we all I think would agree are working better now than perhaps they were a year ago certainly they were sort of three four years ago Who wants to tackle that and go to have you David I can say I can't speak about Orkney unfortunately but I can speak with some assurance on Angus I would not want to go into too much of what my previous deployment model was in Angus but looking at how my real difference is in inspector numbers whereas we had an inspector that was solely based previously to the team if you like and that was them responding to calls there was no ownership for a local issue so I have got less inspectors now I'm more comfortable with where we are so over the last couple of years I've actually if you look at the resources in Angus I've got more police constables than I had before and I can honestly say that the resources which wouldn't have been there for me in Tayside and I make the example of the armed arrest at Arboroth of the individuals I make the example of the flooding I only realised then that I had the airwave servers for the whole of north of Scotland in my basement which was flooding which was interesting but the ability to be able to call on resources not only police officers but fire service from all around the country was vital important so a financial deductions task force up at Bonfest in Cymru there's folks coming up to support me at MoFest at the end of this month so as well as looking at local resources and comparing where you were it's not the same as we were previously I know you'll accept that but I have had access to more of these the kind of departments and more of the resources that can bolster it and you have the flexibility to move folks but you have to pick your priorities of what you're dealing with and where your original specialist resources is there but actually what are the levels of vacancy that you're carrying at any particular time I mean there are always vacancies when people are going to move on or go back but it's not high it's also my job to make sure that if there is a vacancy that I'm looking for somebody else to fill it and you have support from our superintendent of support who looks over that to find out the Scottish Police College but also for the officers that are there, there's an importance in me if I haven't been given the autonomy operationally to deal with my area what is a priority is going to be what are our community telling so if you look at crime in Angus I'm quite gone to say it is down crime across all groups is going to down so that's a good thing and prevention is key we've been chasing the response for a while and that is important if somebody, how do you change a young person's life, it could be education that type of thing but we're very good at detecting crime so if somebody gets a conviction for something they might not get that good job opportunity or get to go and see Mickey Mouse on holiday so it's targeting some of my resources to prevention so although you can have if somebody said to me do you want to have more they would I would say absolutely but it's actually what you're doing with them is the key issue you can have models of policing a moving forward an example I give you a really good conversation with one of my elected members recently and they're saying your violent crime is going down but if you look to that bit there it looks if it goes one over and it's not one over what it is is we've had an increase in online extortions in relation to young people and adults and so that's where it is so if you're looking again forward about where your demand's going to be so our demand moving forward might not be the police officers on the beat always going to be needed but what is the demand to the risk post to our young people in 2026 it looks a bit of like that so the demand for police officers is constantly changing so to think actually are we happy now with what we've got, well we might be but where are we going forward the answer your question about there or did I? I think there's probably specific issues in terms of recruitment and retention in certain areas and I appreciate the islands probably present more challenging, my Ireland butte may have a similar experience whereas Angus is perhaps less of a challenge in that respect but I think there is an issue that the success that's been had in keeping those crime rates down the detection levels high the engagement communities at the level that you would expect for a smaller force can only be achieved when you have a certain number of bodies to carry out the different roles that are involved in that if I can with opportunity just for the benefit of the committee detection rates are one aspect but that's not the key thing if somebody asks me about performance it's about the quality and the standard my officers are doing things beforehand I'm not process driven at all but I like having things in place because then people know where they are so people know whether they're engaging in the community so it's the standard and the detection rate as Rory was saying earlier and it's an indication of what's going on but that's the key bit it's the work in between of what we're doing and what our priorities and the standard and the quality of what folks are going to deliver that's certainly my driver Gavin and Jane or is it Jane and then Gavin just quickly on recruitment clearly in remote areas it is tricky the council, NHS a lot of our partners and the police in particular do have trouble recruiting and when you're in a remote area you can say it has a fairly significant impact but if you want to work in the police or if you want to work in social work or if you want to be a GP or a nurse community nurse in a remote area you're going to be living and working in the same community so that brings its own challenges and you have to be a particular kind of person so our local commander is leading a group in our community planning partnership to look across at public sector recruitment working with developing Scotland's young workforce working with the Ergyll and Bute developing Scotland's young workforce the schools, the head teachers and trying to create that impression of and share the reality of what it's like to live in an area like that because it is a lifestyle choice young people may want to go away and come back again but we have to be able to create the professional routes into jobs in the public sector that are challenging but are hugely rewarding as well it's a real challenge but I think by working together again coming back to my theme of partnership working together we can crack it but there's a lot for us to sell about living and working in remote areas but we have to be real about it and I think having the opportunity to get people who are living and working there to talk to the kids and talk to the young people and also create a bit of a bit of audio-visual content like you guys have done like in Orkney has happened selling the place is somewhere that is absolutely fantastic and you do get to as a police officer drive around in the van with Adifa Blair and others Gavin Just to get back to Mr MacArthur's point I clearly can't comment in Orkney that during my three years as area commander in the Monklands area certainly there were times when we had resource challenges not because of vacancies but simply like any workforce through long-term absence acconiments etc etc so there were challenges in specific areas maybe one shift was particularly challenged over a two or three week period but certainly you know with regards to vacancies part of my role now as an HR function and across the division we have very very small numbers of vacancies across 1440 staff approximately we have very limited vacancies and as David mentioned a constant backfill of young or maybe not so young officers certainly young and service officers coming through to us from a Scottish Police College so they'll always be welcomed but you know the national resource thing I think it's acknowledged that we all get the benefit of the national resource season yes we all play our part I mean I'll play my part locally and I'll give officers over to South Lanarkshire for example to possibly for a high risk missing person enquiry but in the same hand I would expect to be reciprocated if and when I had a similar challenge and likewise the national resources come through we had a murder not that long ago and it was managed by the major investigation team from the east who come through because the major investigation team from the west were engaged elsewhere so again just to reinforce that point about you know absolute we've all benefited from that national resource but clearly we do have to play our part at times so there's several major modern investigations and you just spread too thin well the one the one I'm talking about where the midst east come through to work was actually because the midst west were working in our area as well so you know the reason we were wholly unfortunate and we had two major investigations on going within the division at the same time but that thankfully for everyone and no less for the community is very rare my question has been answered many times I just wanted to say to Roddy and very encouraged by the model you're using for domestic abuse I think that sounds you know really forward thinking David? Yeah just another bit sort of kind of locally we're on a real side kind of drive this now to try and recruit extra special constables because we have some real hard to reach Angus I mean you can travel for 40-45 minutes north of Cremiwyr and you're still in Angus and we have a large migrant workforce that come into work so that is a drive in our local community kind of sergeants and inspectors that we have in place for the same model we're giving them some responsibility so we have some recruitment events on going this now and we're looking to considerably increase that and that kind of buys in at the same sort of locality you can have places a career or they just want to be involved in a local community issues and we're looking to encourage that again support them with proper training and in the hard to reach areas they are going to have to be advanced drivers especially they are going to have to be aware how to do lots of different types of enquiries so we're looking to harness that Jane mentioned outcomes how do you measure a successful outcome now all depend on the issue I'm going to put the trafficking up there again because that raised important issues about prevention and protection getting that balance right so can I have some views on that Gavin I mean my you know David mentioned earlier about performance targets and figures and we've been through that over the last few years but in real simple terms my is the community feedback what are the community tellers are the community please with the job we're doing that would be my biggest outcome if that was the feedback we were getting when my officers go to tenants and residents association meeting when they go to the community council meeting when my air inspectors go to the local area team meetings and so on and so forth as we go up the strategic community planning ladder getting positive feedback from the community then that's telling me we're doing the right thing even though there might be something major going on in the background that hasn't quite been being tackled because you're talking to representatives in community councils you're talking to going to a surgery where people are selecting to an extent just how much I think that getting back to specific of the human trafficking programme last night I think that was probably an eye opener a lot of people in Scotland that that's actually going on under our nosies but our nosies as in us as members of the public but human trafficking has been there for us for several years there's a lot of work going on in relation to education of officers on how to identify human trafficking I'd be quite confident to say that Police Scotland do treat it as a priority and there has been and will be a lot of work going on going on in the future and hopefully the example that Roddy gave of the major operation that we had in Lanarkshire division that there will be express some concern about convictions hopefully there will be convictions at the end of that and they'll be publicised and that will be reassuring to the community across Scotland that Police Scotland are taking that seriously and tackling the problem Before we bring Roddy if you're looking at communities you're obviously looking at housing that was a big factor yesterday a big key to the whole thing was that in your radar anywhere? Certainly is particularly challenging Dumfries and Galloway obviously a rural area and a bit like we're describing they're very remote areas and therefore not concentration of people living in the remote areas in terms of housing the additional challenge for us is that obviously we as a councillor not a landlord we have registered social landlord so therefore it's that joint working that it comes back to so certainly I can reassure the members that that's something we need to learn lessons from but certainly we have a lot of joint working in place in relation to these issues so we need to make sure these are tested these are challenged and rigorously scrutinised and that's a key role nationally as well as locally and if we give maybe Roddy and then Jane the last word outcome on that particularly and maybe how you interact with the Crown and Coffinary Fiscal Service it's been a particular interest to this committee and it must take up a lot of time both nationally and locally just to talk about the outcomes very briefly I think the local outcome improvement plans will contribute significantly in the new nature of the analysis driven targeted approach I think it's a very good question about outcomes because I think it is absolutely key because the numbers don't tell the whole story we're very fortunate at Lanarkshire our detective chief inspector in the public protection unit is formerly of the national rape task force and she introduced this concept of where we saw concerning behaviours I'll repeat myself just briefly to make this point where we saw the concerning behaviours around a domestic abuser who was exhibiting behaviours that did not indicate first time offending We've got domestic abuse I think but we've got that pretty well down but how do you transfer that to the trafficking then? Sorry I didn't realise you were It was trafficking I said particularly how do you measure an outcome there because domestic abuse we seem to be on top of as Rona said then you've already outlined you've cracked that but me, while trafficking is going on there and we're not addressing it It's a challenging question how do we look at the outcomes what we have to do in the first instance I think is we have to identify the scale of the problem one of the problems that we have to use domestic abuse for example just to touch on that is we reckon that we're only getting reporting around a quarter there so a good outcome there is we identify more and more and that outcome would be I would say to develop the true picture I know that our colleagues Do we need more awareness of what are signs of trafficking? Is there such a thing that you can say if it's multi-occupancy or there's coming and going are there things like that that the public can be more aware of? Yes I think so It's definitely a multi-agency approach because in terms of the footfall in a property the footfall in a property is to inspire its local authority colleagues its schools social work knowing what the signs are and I think the first outcome would be to identify the scale of the problem really understand that and communicate that and if you'd like it I'd speak about the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service From a Lanarkshire perspective we have two officers embedded with the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service our detective superintendent has regular meetings to identify and iron out any potential problems or difficulties that we're having I now have a regular meeting with the most senior procurator fiscal for our area and what we're talking about there is we have an agenda that we go through some of its business efficiency which is important, it's not about saving money but it's about maximising our resources energy is going to the end product the outcome but it's also discussing sometimes the priorities in the area so if we are concerned about so we had a significant amount of meetings we did this major operation in respect of human exploitation, human trafficking recently and the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal were front and centre we had loads of meetings because we also wanted them to be cited on it because they had the resources to deal with it so that we could all produce the most effective response we also wanted them to have the background so that when they received pieces of paper with case reporting they knew what the background was and we do that quite regularly and the outcome from that the two specific officers and that meeting and everything that went on was the outcome is we've got people currently with regard to that operation who are remanded what they're doing I would like to think in the longer term in regard of that specific operation I would hope that they would get sentences commensurate with what they were doing and a lot of that is to do with that relationship building and that proactive interaction with the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service Last word, June The partnership approach is absolutely vital to it and we can use the model of domestic abuse but a lot of it's about getting it on to the radar of the likes of the elected members and the senior officers who are responsible for driving forward a particular agenda because as soon as we have trafficking people trafficking on the agenda as an outcome that's related to our local policing plan then the elected members are going to be sitting round the table saying what are you doing Mr Commander or Mrs Commander about that and how many, perhaps the statistics will increase so it may well be that one of the initial targets is increase the number of people who feel comfortable in reporting that they're concerned about somebody having been trafficked or that they themselves have been trafficked and making sure that we've got the information and advice ready for people to share amongst the different partner agencies so we all know when to act and what to do I think that it's been useful in just highlighting that much more awareness of this issue and the signs of it have to be there I think that this has been a very worthwhile round table can I thank you very much everyone who's taken the time to come to the committee and give evidence I think that there's a lot of positives there's also challenges there that we've identified today so I hope that this has been a positive and constructive round table so with that can I move on to the next item which is a session in private suspend briefly to allow members of the gallery to leave just go yeah