 Fesgurma huluduniais falchur. Fawr iawn, everyone, and welcome. This is the fifth meeting of the justice subcommittee on policing in 2018. We have no apologies. Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private, which is about the subcommittee's work programme. Are we all agreed? Agenda item 2 is Police Scotland's custody provision. It is an evidence session on that. I refer members to paper 1, which is a note from the clerk and paper 2, which is a private paper. I would like to welcome Chief Superintendent Gary McEwen, the criminal justice services division of Police Scotland, Callum Steele, the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and Lucille Ingalls, chair of the Police Staff Scotland branch of Unison Scotland. You are all very welcome. I will move straight to questions. Margaret, do you have the first question? Good afternoon, everyone. I thank you for your written submissions, but looking at those written submissions, there is quite a variation in the estimate of the number of vacancies within the custody division, so could I have the assessment from each of you as to how many you think it actually is? Thanks, convener. I think that, in fairness, the assessment is different depending on your starting point and how you measure it. I certainly also, for the fifth of March, when I replied to the convener of the committee by correspondence, the position was exactly, as we understood it, as was laid out in correspondence. Of course, if the starting point for the basis of counting is assumed to be different across the three representatives that are before you just now, you are always going to get a different answer. Other than what I have laid out in the correspondence that I provided to the convener on the fifth of March, that is, as the Scottish Police Federation understands it. Would you, just for the record, say how many that is? It is certainly more than the 18 that was cited. I appreciate that you will take your direction from the convener, but if you allow me to remind myself through the correspondence that I have here, I will come back to you with that. I think that it was 45, wasn't it? I think that it may have been 45. It might have been more. Yes? Yes, 45. 45. Thank you. The others? Unfortunately, I do not have an overall total. I am deputising for Michelle McHarty, however, I would say that most places are down by one or two in the smaller areas, but there is a lot of vacancies, certainly. So you would not have a number really that you could? No, I am sorry, I would not know it, but I can certainly get you it. I am quite clear on the numbers. It is Callum's right, it is a moment in time, so post April 2017, at the time of submission, which was, I think, January or February 18, there were 18 vacancies. Those 18 vacancies, 12 of them have now been filled, six are still in the process of under recruitment and there are an additional two vacancies on top of that where people retire, so we now have eight vacancies at this present time across my custody and criminal justice division. Prior to April 2017, through vacancy management, the force took the decision to delete a number of posts across the whole of the organisation that had previously been vacant for a period of time, and the posts that were deleted from my division at that time was 50. So how many should there be in total? There should or should not. There is not a definitive number about what there should be, because we are forever trying to improve and rationalise our estate. So as it stands right here right now, there is eight vacancies. And how many roughly do you have? Sorry, hundreds of staff yet. There is a submission within the SPF that understands that 118 pco vacancies across the country have simply been deleted. Would you like to comment on that? That is the point that I was trying to make earlier. Pre-April 2017, there were 50 posts deleted through vacancy management because the posts had been vacant for a period of time, but that was April 2017, so in excess of a year ago. It seems an awful lot, 118. Why would that be? It was not 118, it was 50. So would that be your assessment then, Mr Stewe? Again, through your shaft convener, the position as articulated in the correspondence was, as we understood at that moment in time, I appreciate Mr McEwen's careful use of language in calling it vacancy management. This comes down to the fact that the reason the posts were left vacant is because there was not the money to fill them. That is probably the fundamental problem, is that those who are working in the criminal justice area, particularly in Custody and across all areas of the service, are under phenomenal pressure and are working exceptionally hard. I would not expect anyone of Mr McEwen's seniority to come to the Justice Committee and say that the police service is under funding any particular part of it, but vacancy management is another word for there was not the money to recruit the people that were required to undertake the job, which I am sure Lucille to my right would be able to confirm it. Yeah, that's right. I think that it's quite concerning that we have this kind of variation. Could you outline the process then for calculating the Custody and Vacancy Scots? I think that you said, Mr Stewe, that it varies, depends how you do it. So what is the official process perhaps, Mr McEwen? So from April 2017, so over a year ago now, the force executive took the decision that any posts or any individuals that left my division from that point onwards would be back filled, we would recruit externally. So that is what we have been doing. So I am working from a position that has been well established now for an excess of a year. And as I said earlier, in the January or February submission, we had 18 vacancies, but a fair proportion of them have now been filled and we are now working towards filling the remainder. So if 60 police officers are backfilling, is that really a temporary solution and these are equivalent to 60 vacancies in reality? It is a temporary solution, so agreement was reached. So again, as I described at the last occasion I was here, is that what happened previously—now I am going back since Police Scotland came into existence—was that there was a monetary amount of recruitment of PCSOs because they were going to be embarking upon a period of organisational change. So as someone left the organisation between 2013 up until April 2017, there was a monetary amount of recruitment. What we found, and certainly unison colleagues were the first to voice their concerns, is that the backfilling arrangements were very high-risk because one day, as I think I described last time, Mr Finlay might come in and be the police officer. The next time it might be Mr Macpherson then, Mr MacArthur, so there was no real continuity. What we found was that the police staff experts were regularly having to rebreathe verbally and advise the cops that were coming in of changes in practice. The executive took the decision in November of last year, which was to move 62 police officers into the structure to enable us to move towards full organisational change. What that permanent 62 officer would provide is that continuity rather than a disparate approach. I have seen and certainly my staff and my colleagues say that the professional continuity has certainly been increased as a consequence of that. Your submission is what we have heard today. It is really as clear as mud to say that it lacks transparency as an understatement. I suggest that, as a result of this meeting, you take back those comments to Police Scotland and see if we can get a definitive way of establishing what is the optimum number that would be ideal within certain boundaries. How many we actually have, how it is calculated and the effect of backfilling, which is something that we have looked at since the inception of Police Scotland as being detrimental to the delivery of the service. Perhaps you can elaborate on how backfilling and those 60 officers doing the backfilling at present is impacting on demand and delivery of service. I will say something here. We supported that wholeheartedly because we were limping along as such and you were getting police officers coming in off the street etc who weren't really fully trained. Rather than assisting the PCSO as it was a bit of a hindrance because they were having to teach or show as you went along. We viewed that a chunk of officers, the 62, would be better to come in for stability because they would then be permanent until such times as we could fill these posts. Reorganisation is taking place at the same time now so we are kind of caught up with going forward and we have still got shortages here and there. We are hearing of shifts being varied because of it staff being moved because there is not enough resilience etc. We are in the middle if you like. Could you explain what you mean by reorganisation? Right. There is going to be a new structure with the hubs. You questioned Mr McEw in the last time on that about the hubs. We are looking to increase staff, get staff, brought in etc and we hope there is going to be enough resilience in there because really what we should be aiming for is self-sufficiency going forward instead of having to keep taking officers off the street to help us back fill. We are left with this legacy of shortness which we are trying to manage but we are also trying to go forward as well. At the heart of my question is the impact on front-line policing. Sixty officers back filling. Would either Mr Steele or Mr McEw like to comment on that? The principle of moving forward is, as Lucille talks about, if I can just give some high-level indicators of what the force is doing around my criminal justice services division. The policy now is that all vacancies are filled from April 2017, so that has been on-going for a year. We are currently in the process of recruiting 70 new criminal justice PCSO staff, so 70 new people externally are coming into my division and we hope to have 45 of them in place by July of this year. That is a massive investment that the force executive has brought forward. Capital expenditure has been given in excess of £1 million to spend on looking at our estate and seeing new and innovative ways in which we can reduce the risk for the custodies but prevent front-line officers coming in. An example of that would be in the four criminal justice hubs that I spoke about last time, in Aberdeen, Inverness, Falkirk and London Road. We are putting in place new CCTVs, so we are putting CCTVs in every police cell in those four estates. What that means is that local police officers that currently have to either sit and watch a custody who is perhaps suicidal face to face or one camera. We have every camera with CCTV in it and what that will do is enable less local police officers to watch more cameras and to keep more people safe. The NCS, so we are the first division to roll out a national system in Police Scotland successfully. Can I stop you there? My question was what impact does the backfilling have on front-line services? The impact, from my perspective and from local commanders, is positive because what is happening routinely previously was, as I said, Mr Finnie, who is a police officer in group 1 in Aberdeen, would be backfilling one day, then a different officer the next day, and their inquiries that they are meant to be doing out in the front line are being impeded because they are getting brought on to custody. A permanency of police officers coming in then negates and there is no requirement for them or somebody else to fulfil their daily inquiry. So it is a nat verse effect? I think that there has been significant benefits and that is the feedback that I have been getting from local policing. They are being taken out of front-line duty to do custody duty and that is the positive? Yes, because previously they were getting taken out on a more ad hoc basis and there was more of them being taken out. So there is 62 now where it is previously over the years, I am talking three or four years ago, but you would be well into the hundreds that would be coming out of the backfilling. Forgive me, I am not saying that it is not as bad as it used to be. It is certainly a lot better, yes. But there is still an adverse effect. That may be your perspective. I am asking you. I think that there is a real benefit to policing and to the custodies and to continue to itself. I am Mr Steele and then that is my finish. Yes, thanks again and again through yourself convener. Counterintuitively, perhaps Mr Mitchell, it is actually better that we have had the resilience put into the custody rather than face the considerable delays, albeit there are still delays and occasions, that were being experienced by you dealing with, by coming up against a very under resourced custody area. So counterintuitively the removal of 62 officers to support the custody element of it has provided an improvement to the service that is experienced by police officers when they get to custody. Of course, self-evidently, the other side of that coin is that there are 62 fewer people out there to deliver the policing service. But in the round, the fact that those that are utilising the custody service in their own right do not experience delays of the same magnitude and the disparate approach that was evident before those 60-odd were brought in to shore up the capability within custody, it is counterintuitively, or certainly was, counterintuitively providing a better service. I think that we are looking at this as part of front-line duty but I was talking about actually people out in the street dealing with things as they come along and separating that from the process. I understand the connection. That is an interim solution. The 62 police officers that are in and have been in for about nine months now will be returned by November of this year because we are recruiting additional criminal justice PCSOs. An interim solution, as Calum describes it, is to shore up the current state of the division until we establish the new and the innovative ways of working and then the officers will be released back to the front line. It is having a negative effect without a doubt. We now have PCSOs working on their own when really there should be two of them because the SOPs say two to go to the cells, two to take people for an interview etc etc and that has been raised recently by myself to be told that risk assessments are now happening so you're finding that staff are working on their own where probably there would have been two of them before. We're having situations where I was at Dalkeith speaking to custody just on Saturday and one chap's moved away to another station, I think it was Livingston and then they had to get somebody to backfill his post at Dalkeith and of course that has to come from the street. So yes, you're right, it is definitely still having and is it better than it was yet but we're still having to backfill. It's still having a negative effect. That's very helpful. I'm grateful for you mentioning a risk assessment. A question for you, Mr McEwan before I know Daniel wants to come in with a supplementary. People would imagine the decisions that have been made around deployment in the custody area, which is a very important area, a lot of issues. They would be informed by, call it what you will, a work road analysis, a skills profile and as is important being said, their risk assessment. Are you able to share any of these documents with the committee? Have there been occasions when assessments that have been made, as we've heard, two members of staff do something, have not been adhered to? We have a full policy around care and welfare. A lot of the risk assessments that Lucila is talking is talking about are dynamic, so they are the staff on the ground. Sorry, can I interrupt you? Can you explain? I don't like the word dynamic, it seems to me that it's a make-up as we go along with my experience of dynamic assessments. How dynamic does it become if you have an input of custodays and a reduced number of people looking after them? When does the assessment then get made? I disagree with you there. Dynamic risk assessment is about empowering my staff at the front line, and I think that that's really important, to empower them to be able to make decisions rather than what's written on a guidance. We have a minimum set of resourcing principles, so this is where it becomes very, very not confusing but difficult to put it on paper. My resourcing principle is one member of staff to 10 cells, so across the country in some buildings you have up to 50 cells, so you can work out the sort of maths for that. The reality is that you might have some, like Gala Shields has three cells, but we obviously don't leave one member of staff, and there we'll leave two. A set of resourcing principles are there, but that's why it's important. Some custodays can be very high risk, some can be low risk, some can be suicidal, some can be compliant. It really is for the staff on the ground to make a dynamic risk assessment about whether it requires two people to walk that custody from me to you, or if he or she's totally compliant, if one member of staff could do that. That's what I mean by dynamic risk assessment. No one's taking away discretion, but are you saying that in the scheme of the police service, relatively junior members of staff are empowered to say that I'm not going to do that? I don't think that it's safe. It doesn't meet the terms of the risk assessment. People don't have the necessary skills profile? Absolutely. It's not that there are some junior members of staff, but it's staff from five-month service to 25 years that are doing this. I would empower them all to come forward with new ideas and to make decisions and to use their discretion. Are you able to share with us any skills assessment, skills profile and, indeed, risk assessment? I'm not clear exactly what you're asking for, but I'll happily provide. There's a three-week training course for our new staff that are coming in, so there are 70 new members of staff that are coming in. There's a three-week training course for them that's very comprehensive, so I can give you access to what the training programme is, if that's what you're after. If a police officer is coming in for the street now to assist in custody, it takes a three-week training programme to make it safe. Is it safe if they were coming in on an ad hoc basis just a day here? Sorry, you misinterpreted me. It's the new criminal justice PCSOs, so the new police staff that we're recruiting are undertaking a three-week training course because what we're trying to do with the new hubs that I spoke about is create an omnicompetent job description where the custody staff don't just do custody roles, they do case management, they do PNC, they do CHS, they do production, so we're really building and enhancing their skillset and enabling them to do more than one area of business to stop the silo working. And the ad hoc arrangements were safe? Well, the ad hoc arrangements currently have been mitigated because of the 62, as I mentioned earlier, if we've got that quality with you. No, but where are they safe, Mr McEwen? When? Well, if you had untrained police officers going into it. We don't have untrained police officers. The police officers are trained in custody. There may, and I do mean by real exception, if there is a real set of extenuating circumstances where we either need a police officer in there and there are none trained across the local area, then my decision would be we put that police officer in rather than have nobody, but my policy and my guidance is that the officers should be trained. In the main, and I'm talking 99 per cent of the time, they are. I'd like to put one supplementary question to the Seal Ingalls and to Calum Seal. My understanding is that the 60 police officers have been put in as a medium term backfill in lieu of 70 civilian or PCSO staff that are coming in. The Seal Ingalls said that the situation at present was better but still not what it needs to be. Will it be what it needs to be when the 70 PCSOs are trained and in place? I'd be interested in your view on that and indeed on Calum Seal. No, not in my opinion. The risk assessments is good that they do risk assessments but we don't have crystal balls. You start off in custody and everything could be quiet so somebody might deem that we can work with just the one PCSO but it just needs something to happen, somebody to go off etc. It's a high risk area and personally I would prefer to see more than somebody working on their own. I don't think it's good practice. I largely concurred with the 60 or 62 police officers where in themselves a shortfall of the original request or certainly the original indications that came from ACC was looking for 100 to show up the capabilities within the unit. That 60 in its own right was better than none but it wasn't as good as 100 so replacing those 60 with slightly more is still not giving you what the original shortfall was perceived to have been. I think that everybody recognised custody as a moving feast. The criminal justice act for reasons that we may or may not get onto later has resulted in a reduction in the number of people coming into custody. I think that some people take views that there are legitimate reasons for that and that we no longer need to take so many into custody. I know that that's certainly a significant number of my members believe it's a bureaucratic nightmare trying to take someone into custody so that creates an impediment in its own right to stop people getting in and of course there's the question of how long they have to wait to get back out on the street once they get to the custody facility. We have some examples that would make it hair curl for those of you that are fortunate enough to have some of the kind of things that have happened when we await entry into the custody facility because of the delay that the criminal justice staff are experiencing because of the obligations of the new act. The ceiling goes, would you concur with that implied shortfall of 30ft? Yes, the idea was for 100ft, but the trial to get the relief from local policing etc. If I may, I think that this is probably a really useful point that Mr Johnson has touched on here. I think that it highlights a perception that exists across the police service that when you need a problem filled, the place you go to fill that problem is what will broadly be termed front line response policing. Areas of the police service, and I'm not saying that those that work in those other areas of police service are not performing gainful jobs or delivering important functions, but the more corporate and support functions and specialised functions are rarely called upon to provide the support to other areas of policing when it's required and it's usually the diminution in what the front line would deliver. As opposed to some extent, if I may revisit Ms Mitchell's question, had the police service drawn from a greater area of policing to provide these 62 police officers, then the effect on the front line service would have been greatly diminished whilst also enhancing the capabilities of the encusted area. I just probe you on that point. Are you saying that those officers could have been drawn from other areas of policing or other areas of civilian staff could be retrained and redeployed? Which category of personnel are you talking about? I wouldn't dare to assume to speak for police staff, members of the police service, not least because there are a huge number of complexities associated with contractual arrangements that would have to be worked through. Police officers are inherently, through good or bad, inherently more flexible deployment resources, but the police service generally lacks imagination when it comes to looking to finding resources to move from one place to the other. ACC Mawson did ask right across the board to the specialised squads, areas, etc., but, unfortunately, it was lacking, so it did fall to local policing. But he did ask across the board everybody to look to see if they could release. I have been trying to come in to clarify that point. 62 officers have come from local policing. We have 10 or 11 now from corporate services division, so what would be defined as back office? I think that they absolutely do play a valuable role in training officers and new recruits, etc. There are 10 or 11 posts coming from them. The staff that work within the corporate services organisational development structures are actively looking to source more resources to bring back into my division. It takes a bit of time to achieve that, but we are definitely trying to modernise our approach around keeping as many officers on the front line and taking staff from other areas to support the front line business of which Custody is certainly one. We heard previously about the number of prisoners being transferred over long distances due to lack of capacity within the Custody estate. Can you tell us what assessments are made in order to ensure that vulnerable prisoners are able to undertake such journeys? If you recall the last time, the significant change has been the introduction of the new criminal justice act that we spoke about on 25 January. At the last session, I gave an indication, albeit not having a crystal ball, that I suspected that Custody numbers would reduce again because Lord Carlywy's presumption of liberation, article 5 on liberty of people and risk managing people within communities, rather than keeping them in a two metre by four metre box for two days until they appear at court. Over the 10 weeks before the act came into the 10 weeks after, there has been a further 15 per cent reduction in the number of Custodys that are getting kept in Custody centres across the country. What does that mean in numbers? Over that 10 week period, there are 2,600 less Custodys that have come into the Custody centres 10 weeks before to 10 weeks after. I expect that, as the act further embeds, officers and staff are aware of the Lord Advocate's guidelines and the presumption of liberation, that number will reduce. To put that in perspective, in 2013 there were 202,000 Custodys coming into my centres. At April, just a month past 31 March, there were 130, so there have been 70,000 year-on-year less Custodys. That is why it is important and difficult to keep looking back around numbers and staffing profiles because we have reduced by 72,000 people. It is absolutely right as a leader and as my staff, right from the grassroots, to redefine what the Custody model looks like because demand is plumeting. It would be folly of me to have Custody centres open across the country with very limited Custody. Custody is going through them, while members of staff are in effect employed. They are not being as busy as they could be, so that is not really the best value and not the best use of the public purse, in my view. Has it reduced the number of long-distance journeys that were happening previously? Has it helped the capacity? It has, and I could just—I did—so I have a dip sample. I will have to find my particular page around this, if you bear with me. If you will recall, at the last Justice Committee I gave four weekends in a comparison of 2013 to 2017, and these are from paper records in the 2013 national custody system now. Four weekends, which is when the transfers happen—they do not happen during the week, they happen at weekends—four years ago there were 79 transfers of a weekend. In 2017 there were 17, and in February for the first weekend there were five. We went from 79 transfers four years ago to five in that first weekend. The second weekend there were no transfers, the third weekend there were four transfers and the fourth weekend there were 23 transfers, which really sounds quite high. Clearly I looked into that, and that was because of some pre-planned work in Livingston and unplanned work. There was a flood in another custody centre, and our business continuity dictates that we need to then move the custodies about because of estate issues. We have moved from 79 down to five weekend to zero and four, so they are very minimal. Transfers require still to happen, because somebody might get locked up in a warrant in Glasgow, but the warrant might be for Aberdeen, so you cannot realistically expect that individual to spend a day in Glasgow and then be ferried up to Aberdeen two hours before a court appears. What we do is to plan that journey to enable the custody to be transported at the quietest time for us and for local policing, but to make sure that he or she gets there at the appropriate time. That was also the issue of enhanced levels of care. Some prisons have been transferred because there was no adequate facility of where they were. I am just wondering how that is panning out if the custody centres are not adequately equipped. How does that tie in with people who need extra care and vulnerable people? How are they assessed? You are absolutely right. It makes no sense to me to have someone locked up in WIC who has acute healthcare needs, Fort William or wherever. If that individual is likely to spend three days in custody from a Friday to a Monday, what that means is that police officers are getting taken off the street to watch him or her for that period of time, whereas the real healthcare treatment will happen in the big centres where we have nurses and doctors and or doctors permanently located. If we know that a custody is going to be kept for court, then we make a decision on a really strong criteria about their vulnerability, whether they are happy to do it, is their family being told, is the case being dealt with, do they have all their property, all the solicitor has, he or she, been notified. All those things are addressed first and then the decision is made to move the custody, but it is because of their healthcare needs and it is about looking after them. Those are real people. Do you call on anyone else to help with that assessment or do the police keep it in house? In some areas where we do not have healthcare professionals, the sergeant will look at the record, at the vulnerability question set, might there be arrangements in place in some of the rural areas where they will phone the locum doctor and seek her or her view around whether that individual should be moved to a centre where there is 24 healthcare coverage? If that is the right thing to do, we would do it. Mr Steele, do you have any comments on that particular issue? On both of them, as it goes, Mr McEwan is correct in terms of the weekend transfer where the number of people who were in custody being taken from one custody facility to another has. It has not quite gone off the end of a cliff, but it has reduced significantly, but the issue of people being driven long distances to get into a custody facility and the first place still remains. For example, I corresponded with my representatives across the country in advance of coming here. A simple example, if we look at U division, which covers the southwest of Scotland, if air closes then, custody facilities from Garvern are taken to Kilmarnock, which is an hour and a half. That is just the getting there and the getting back. The other area that causes considerable concern—this seems to be getting worse rather than better—is the amount of delay that they experience when they get to a custody facility. One of the examples that I highlighted in the correspondence was a three-hour delay in February from the individual being in the back of our van to getting through the door. I have other examples that are not quite as lengthy, but those are far from indicative of a useful productive use of police resource. An example from another custody area where a prisoner was waiting for an inordinate length of time in the back of a van and, despite being handcuffed, that prisoner was able to set himself on fire. There is a whole series of concerns that—I have to say, but for the quick thinking and actions of the police officers—serious injury was prevented. I think that they are probably cumulative. We have the issue that they still are not properly resourced, which is first and foremost. There is additional bureaucratic obligations placed upon the duty officers as a consequence of the new obligation of the Criminal Justice Act. Those two primarily lead to the greatest degree of concerns. We have also had an example where prisoners—you can argue whether it is through frustration or whether it is just through badness—kicking off in the back of a van broke the perspex because perspex degrades over age another indication of another area of the police service, which has problems because of a lack of money where the fleet is going backwards in the perspex, security screen degrades, so the perspex broke and the prisoner was left with a weapon. The issues of custody are in danger of being looked at in a tiny microcosm of being reflective of whether there is a problem elsewhere in the system or not, because having local policing officers waiting for a long length of time and having to deal with increasingly frustrated and irate prisoners—something that I highlighted previously or even prisoners waiting for three hours in the back of a van—is not something that the police service should be proud of. It is not the fault of anybody other than the fact that the service does not have the resource to be able to deal with the challenges that it is facing. Very quickly, thank you, convener. In terms of the correspondence that you said you undertook in advance of this meeting and the correspondence that you received back around delay, was there evidence that that was an issue in our big cities as well as other places? Yes, indeed. The specific example that I highlighted of three hours was in our biggest city. Yes, I am happy to come back on the two scenarios. The chap that Calum said set himself on fire, I am aware of that now and I have looked at that and I can give you a chronology. A violent custody locked up in Grangemouth was searched by the police officers prior to going in the van, but this guy was extremely violent. Hankuffs to the rear were the right thing to do, taken in the van to Falkirk. There was only one other prisoner getting booked in at that point, but because of the violent approach of this, there is a holding area in Falkirk that has got CCTVs, so a normal procedure would be to get out the van into the holding area and wait for the custody that is getting booked in to be dealt with. This chap was so violent that the decision by the local policing officers on the ground was to keep him in the van until that custody is clear. During that point, they saw him rummaging in his back pocket. He produced a lighter, he did not set fire to any clothing, he did not harm himself in any way and the two officers removed the lighter from him, so there was an adverse incident supported. I looked at the documentation and that is exactly the chronology around that, so I think that we need to be clear about the reasons behind it and actually to the extent. So nobody set themselves on fire, he did have a lighter in his back pocket that was taken by the officers, so really good work from them. In relation to the delays in Glasgow football match for Custodys, the three-hour delay is from the point of arrest at the football ground to the point of release, that was the three hours. The actual booking in process took 16 minutes and it is all there on IT if the members want to see it. It took 16 minutes to book that custody in, but from the point of arrest at the football ground to the point of release, not incarceration, release was just an excess of three hours. The facts are there and I am happy to share the facts should the committee want them in due course. I do not think that anyone doubts Police Scotland's wish to treat humanely prisoners. We do seem to have a very peculiar position where we have two witnesses in front of us, both serving police officers, one telling us that someone set themselves on fire and someone else is saying that that did not happen. It would seem strange that someone still had that the means to do so in their possession of being properly searched, but I am presuming that that is because they were so violent, is that it? That is my understanding. In the real world, in the front-line policing officers, this chap is extremely violent. The police officers do the best they can in those circumstances to search that individual. You cannot strip search somebody out in the daylight. A full strip search would be done in the custody environment, so the officers did what they could. However, the chap had a lighter secreted wherever it was. He had access to it, he tried, he did not injure himself, he did not set his clothes on fire and some very positive action from the officers. The only thing that I have to add to that convenience is that I have actually spoken to the officers involved. Some of that has been covered through one of my guys' questions, but it might be worth exploring a little further. In reference to long distances, I think that you refer to excessive distances. I am just wondering whether there is a definition or more detail that you can give around that. The example that you cited was not a move from one custody centre to another, but it was in reference to a custody centre that was not available and therefore the distance that was travelled was from a point of arrest to the nearest custody centre. I am just wondering whether the problem arises as much in terms of the first custody centre that the prisoner has taken or whether it is an issue of transfers between custody centres. I think that it is both. In terms of definition, it is very much going to be dependent on the local circumstances that prevail at the time. What may seem an excessive distance for a relatively quiet, rural area to get to a custody facility might not necessarily seem excessive for an exceptionally busy urban area, but the issue of delay is multifaceted. It is not just the issue of the transfer time—it is what happens when they actually physically get to the facility. That is where some of the greatest areas of challenge seem to be presented. If I may, through your self-convening, the SPF did highlight that we were concerned over the additional administrative burdens that were going to come through the new criminal justice act and highlighted them at, if not this committee, its sister body some time ago, although those concerns seem to have fallen upon deaf ears. We continue to have those concerns, and those that I have corresponded with have indicated that the issue of delaying getting into custody is much greater than it was previously. I am sorry to interrupt you on that. Both you and I have talked about the numbers coming into custody dropping significantly. One would imagine that those being taken into custody may therefore present more of a challenge. The circumstances are likely to be more challenging or more complex circumstances. Therefore, would the expectation not to justify inordinate lengths of time, but that the process is likely to take a bit longer for those cases that are being brought into custody now? I can certainly understand the temptation to go down that line of thinking, but those people were still there before. It is not like we are bringing in different people into custody. By and large, it tends to be largely a lot of repeat offenders. It was not the case that there were not instances prior to the criminal justice act coming into force where there were not delays occurring. I am not sure what the figures are, either as an average or the proportion that we are taking a long period of time, but I would not imagine that those delays did not exist prior to the criminal justice act. They did exist, but they did not exist to the same extent that the diminution of numbers has been more than offset by the increase in administrative burden created by the new act. It is interesting that you get the issue of the number of custodys, because again, as recently as early this week, I had representatives corresponding with me advising me that they are now in some parts of the country that are encouraged to make contact with the custody centre before they get there. Officers are experiencing a discouragement in taking custody to the custody centre in the first place, and in some instances have been directed elsewhere. I know that there was one example, but I have discussed it with Mr McKeith when it is probably not going to be helpful to get into that today. However, if I make a quote for the thing, the correspondence that I have got before, my officers are encouraged to phone ahead to check that there is space and that there is no queue ahead of them, then custody surgeons are taking the opportunity to tell cops not to bring bodies in, even for cases such as an offensive weapon. Those pressures that exist within the custody areas are creating additional pressures for officers in the street, and almost we have a situation in which we have an absolutely retrospective review of the decision to arrest, but it is almost as though the decision to arrest in the first place is being second guessed by the custody officer, who has not been fully exposed or certainly second guessed by the custody centre, that has not been exposed in first-hand terms to the events that the police officer should decided to make the arrest in the first place. I will bring Mr McKeith in a second. I just want to understand fully the discussions that you are talking about that take place, going into the detail of the circumstances of any arrest. It is not simply a conversation being had with the custody unit that they are saying, we really rather you did not turn up with this potential custody, and therefore a decision is then being taken to release under investigative lib or whatever. There may be a degree of treason to that, and I appreciate that there is always a difficulty in receiving a third-hand account from somebody that was not there in the flesh at the time, and they need Mr McKeith in the same position that he relies, unfortunately, on the content of forms, which may not necessarily be as accurate as the first-hand account of officers that have delivered narrations to me. I am going to go out on a limb here, but I offer the opportunity for any members of the committee to come to the meeting of the Joint Central Committee, or indeed I could convene a meeting of the Joint Central Committee of the Scottish Police Federation, especially to host members of the committee, so that you can hear first-hand from the police officers exactly what their experiences of custody are. I am telling you as honestly as I can just now that they are remarkably frustrated at how custody is performing as a function, not at the delivery of the service by those that are working very hard within it and certainly no slight of the professionalism of those that are, whether they are police staff or police officers that are trying their damnace to deliver a first-class service in very trying circumstances, but the simple reality is that the area of policing is phenomenally under resorcion and does carry considerable risk. I think that what you've got to be in mind as well is that some areas are working this one-to-one, you've only got the one PCSO on, so that delays things. Also, if a user is an example, they stick to the SOP, and if they've got 10 prisoners, that's it. They say, no, we've not got staff to cope with it, so they then have to transfer them somewhere else. That must have a bearing, and people do queue when they come into custody centres without a doubt, and staffing has to be an issue in there. To circumvent that, it adds, it has like a domino effect because at the weekend I found out that one PCSO he'd travelled in a weekend 128 miles, and that was to cover other custody areas. But when he went, they had to backfill from the street, bring somebody in, now the person they brought in won't be as up to speed as that PCSO would have been had he remained there, so that everything has to have a knock-on effect. Transfairs definitely are reduced, not done away with all together, but they're certainly reduced, you're not getting the horror stories where they were going from the east right through to the west, couldn't get in there, tried somewhere else and then ended up coming all the way back and spent all night really travelling around the centre. We're not hearing these stories, but we've now got people still being transferred being reduced, but we're now moving PCSOs around to try and cover gaps elsewhere, and then you're backfilling those posts with less experienced people, so it has to have an effect. Does it also include cases when we heard earlier, I think that you referred to the example of where somebody may be arrested in Glasgow, but the case is likely to be heard in Aberdeen and therefore the custody, it makes more sense for that to be in Aberdeen. Is the reverse happening there? If you've got air, for example, where they're saying we can't accept any more, now you're going to get somebody whose case is going to be heard, they are being put into custody some way distant, so it undermines the benefits of the transfers that are being taken place elsewhere. A lot of points there that I'll certainly not attempt to capture. The Pyrus form, so the new criminal justice act, there is a new form, which is called the Pyrus form, and without question that legal requirement to fulfil that documentation does take longer than the previous section 14 etc documentation, so it's a eight or a nine page document that takes longer and the officers and police staff will take a bit of time to get to use that, but you know this is where I don't mean to be sounding frustrating, but moving forward the plans that we have now in place, I touched on some of the investment, but one of the things that we're looking at around is iris recognition, so some of the forces down south have it where a custody comes in, the scan, the eyeball and the IT self-populate is 90 per cent of the form, so their booking in process times have reduced from about 40 minutes to nine minutes, so that's the things that we're exploring now to look at innovative ways to build into the criminal justice hubs that will actually reduce the delays in some of the waiting times. We are building new charge bars, we've built one at St Leonard's already, we've built a holding centre in Inverness, which used to be in Inverness that they would queue, we're now creating a holding centre with CCTV, so the custodies are not queuing in the back of vehicles, as they did four years ago and 14 years ago and 24 years ago before that, we're now creating a holding centre where they can sit, be monitored by CCTV in a more pleasant environment, so we are trying to modernise in a very, very quick way now, the final point I know I'm conscious of time, but there's 70 criminal justice PCSOs coming in this year, my proposal to the force executive, which they are considering for the year after, is a further 80 criminal justice PCSOs, so in totality over two years my preference is 150 new members of staff coming into this division, so the 62 police officers will be released back to the front line and we'll create a sustainable division that actually then begin to take work away from police officers, because what happens currently and has happened for 30, 40, 50 years is that police officers arrest or detain the custody out in the street and then they embark upon, they're present throughout the booking in process, present through the photograph and fingerprinting, present through the solicitor access, the solicitor consultation and all that work in the custody environment takes three hours of local policing, police officer time, and I want to build a model where we take that from local policing and the local policing staff hand over the custody and they go right back out in the street, so that's the model we're trying to get to, that's the proposals that have been agreed by the force executive as recently as a fortnight ago, that's the direction of travel and we're just incrementally now trying to get there, but it's got a two year start to finish day and an increase to 150 new members of police staff with first line managers built in there, so we're looking to develop and enhance the skill set of our police staff as they come in to actually release more police officers back to the front line. Thank you and before I ask my question I just declare I have a close family member who's a police constable. I think we've covered an awful lot about processing and so it's worth it. I think I'm only left with one very small thing and that relates to the pyros form that's just been made reference to. Is that something that isn't the public domain and if it's not could we see it? Yes, I think it is in the public domain and it's part of the new criminal justice act but I could certainly get you a copy. Because I think that that would kind of flesh out some of the things that mean it. Right, let me just raise a new issue that hasn't been brought up and of course we're very limited in time and this is really for Police Scotland and that is just what's happening on the custody provision estate review. If there's anything you can give us an update on that fairly briefly. Yeah, I'm not sure what you mean exactly by that. I understand you're looking at what you really need, particularly in the light of reduction numbers and other considerations. Are there any matters related to that that haven't emerged in the previous evidence that we've taken? We're looking to create four criminal justice hubs that I've spoken about in year one in Aberdeen, Inverness, Falkirk and London Road with increasing staff. Year two we're looking to create another five criminal justice hubs so we do all that work that local police singer currently doing that I spoke about in the five other key areas so there'll be nine criminal justice hubs strategically located across the country that will deal with the vast majority of custories that come in. Not them all, we will then retain the current custody provision that we have but as a consequence of the reduced numbers we are currently looking at further estate rationalisation. Now where that goes to I'm not entirely sure yet because it's too soon after the act. You know I've given the figures but I want to leave it another few months just to get a true baseline about where our custody numbers are going to be. Okay that's fine let me just ask very simple final question on this. You said vast majority going to the hubs what proportion of custodies is that? Approximately. I'd be to be honest with you I would have to look at that. Well you used the world's vast majority so you've obviously got something in your mind. No you'd be you know I would say about 80% of custodies but I don't I would have to really look at the numbers. Well perhaps you could let us know after. Yeah I could do that certainly. Thank you. Daniel you have some questions. To ask a couple of questions I mean it's clear from the broad soup of the questions that we've been asking that much of the solution to easing the burdens is the delivery of the new criminal justice hubs and the bringing online of the new omni competent and I have to say I love that term. I was wondering if I could take some omni competence training myself but I was some caution has been expressed both by SPF and using about the timelines that are envisaged for the delivery of phase one of that programme. And I was just wondering if again the steel ingles and calmsill could maybe elaborate on that a little further. Is that simply about the training of those PCSOs or are there other concerns about the timing and what are the impacts of the delivery of the other phases of that programme given that phase one is just three of the hubs and given that the full programme is nine as I think Gary McEwen just said. Yeah we're certainly on board with the restructure with the hubs etc certainly we've got a lot of butting of heads as yet over shift patterns etc that's a big thing. The timing it's going quickly I have to say recruitment there's still some vacancies there that we need to work around and we're going to monitor it as we go along rather than just say you know the trials for a year or 18 months we're going to keep monitoring it so tweak it as we go if need be or if it's not what we thought it was going to be etc so that's about as much as we're there I mean we've got the recruitment in for the team leaders which we welcome and going forward there should be no police officers in there per se it should all be PCSOs that are caring for the welfare of the prisoners which is a good thing from our point of view that releases police officers back to the street it's something that we are expert at you know they're well trained for it so that's where we are just now the recruitment's being done and I believe is it going to start in July it was to be June July I think going forward if we can agree a shift pattern so the training is a challenge because it's a three week training course so we're trying to broaden broaden out the skill set to do a number of different things rather than just custody or rather than just case management or rather just PNC and CHS they're going to be trained in them all it's a three week shift pattern sorry a three week training programme in July the the college are gearing up to train the initial 45 that are coming in July and then the following 25 later on the year but it is a definite you know it's a big investment staff so it does take it's a challenge for training and learning development to to build the programme but the force are definitely prioritising it. Can I say a wee bit apprehension shall we say round you know dealing with productions dealing with warrants etc records that they're going to be doing initially we were concerned about the impact that we'd have on people on these departments already doing these jobs however we're assured that it's not to replace them it's to help out I personally think maybe optimistic I think they think there's more downtime than there actually is but it'll be interesting to see as we go forward staff some are quite happy because they see it as extending their role giving them more initiative etc others are wary you know what it's like for change so can I just ask in your view I mean it sounds like these people are going to be asked to do a huge amount of different things there's a huge responsibility it's three weeks enough to train people adequately to do those range of roles and take that response it gives them the rudiments the systems if you like the computer systems etc a lot of the training will be on job training mentoring budding that kind of thing you know you don't go away and then suddenly become a fully qualified PCSO and just slot into the workplace you know you get your basic training and that will be on going and just come back to your previous answer you said you're going to sort of view as as you go along as to whether or not we're on track I mean are you are you confident that the delivery timescales are going to be met for phase one confident no hopeful you know we won't know until we actually start it to be honest you know i think how i'm stills interested in coming in as well i am a specifically senior you identified me to answer the question in the first place i think the short answer is very much depends on the appetite and hunger of the service to make it happen I mean it's it's not quite Archimedes-esque but if you give me a lever long enough and a full crim upon which to place it we can move the world well the same is through of training and investment in getting people through you know if we want to train more people we have more people in training to deliver the training do we tend to work the lowest common denominator as to what can be accommodated by the people that we have rather than looking to build a capacity but i am i am i am not overly pessimistic but i do you think that the timescales are very very optimistic insofar as they may well deal with the resources and requirements to deliver the service but as far as we can see there doesn't seem to be a great deal of resilience built within those numbers so the you know the likelihood of the criminal justice or the custody area being subject to absences abstractions through you know training illness leave and all the rest of it looks just as if this is on the very bare bones of having that kind of tolerance built within it which because of how we know the services responding to the financial constraints that are placed upon it comes as no surprise to us whatsoever. So finally I mean Gary McHugh and I was just wondering if you could address some of those concerns that have been raised and in particular could you just confirm when you expect phase one to conclude and indeed what you view the kind of the key risk factors and delivering to that date and how you're mitigating them. So the additional staff are coming in for beginning of july there will then be a three week training programme and then the staff will be cascade to the three hubs the two in the north and the one in here in central the the challenges that we are finding just now is the the 45 post the majority of them have so it's staff already within the organisation that want these opportunities so I think there's 35 of the 45 filled by current existing staff but then of course we need to fill their job so they're moving across to the new job but we need to fill so we're now externally advertising to fill these so I mean there is a risk you know I said that at the beginning at the beginning there is a challenge around getting the staff in place because it is about who's interested in the job when they can get released from their previous or their current position elsewhere in the in society in the 28 days notice etc etc etc but all I can really do to reassure you is that it's on our risk register around getting the training in place and getting the resource in place and as an organisation this is one of the number one priorities for the for the organisations to get these staff in and get them trained and get them in the hubs because the benefits to local policing and releasing staff back by doing that three hours of work that the sooner we can get that delivered the more officers that are out in the street respond to calls and dealing with local community issues and just critically when do you think it will conclude so we're we're looking to have the staff in place by july the 45 in place by july and then the following 25 in place by january of 2018 and then we're going to have to monitor the success or otherwise because this is a you know this is a totally new concept that we're looking to build that we think is really innovative really future proofing what criminal justice services division needs to look like but we need to really evaluate it and I would welcome coming back here in due course to to give the committee that opportunity to scrutinise it. Daniel I wonder on that point Mr McEwn would it be possible to give us an update both on the training and deployment but at key points because the committee does maintain a keen interest in the important issue of custody. I have one final question and it relates to a suggestion which fits with my thinking on how policing should be everything is should be as local as possible as a suggestion from the Scottish Police Federation that day to day control of custody provision could be given to local divisional commander it would seem to be a key function I'm not trying to do you out a job personally Mr McEwn but would there be any problem with that collaborative working has always happened across the service and would that not be a very clear signal of the importance about to me if I'm being honest I was a local commander before coming into the national I don't think I think the benefits around quality control the ability to flex resource across divisional boundaries which happens now you know Lucille mentioned that PCSOs are getting you know that's a too far a traveling distance a hundred and whatever round trip but if we return back to 13 different divisional custody programmes I think the ability flex resource will not happen the HMI's view on it is that the national custody system is the right structure the new criminal justice act that has come in talks about operational independence so what they say is that the the custody function the the reviews the ability to justify and and warn the the arrest of individuals should be independent from the operational policing my fear would be that that can happen at the moment with policing and a range of issues operational independence is someone detached from the initial so if they work together in my so going back 10 years ago what happened was you would have one sergeant that would have over your both custody and operational policing that's the model that we we moved from over the last sort of decade my fear would be we would we would return to that and that would be against the essence of the new criminal justice act it's certainly a suggestion that comes up very regularly amongst my representatives and of course there is a world of difference between having operational independence and keeping something separate from operational policing and I think that there is a danger in conflating the two I think to some extent the idea merits further examination because it's much the same way as policing has evolved over the last number of years it does seem rather rather counterintuitive to suggest you know to use the same word that I used at the beginning to suggest that policing would not be able to adapt its practices to ensure that that operational independence could be maintained and not just revert back to the bad old practice of days gone by where undoubtedly custody care was not as good as it is now you know I think if I'm looking for a positive note upon which to finish the one thing I will say is that the custody care when in custody is head and shoulders above what it was previously but I don't believe that that is necessarily something that is entirely dependent on having a separate custody division to enable that to happen proper training proper accountability and proper reporting lines should be capable of delivering it because once upon a time us at the police house was preferably able to do thank you miss singles yes I think the expertise lies within custody to be quite honest I think it would be a mistake to go back to to local policing being in charge of that final point is that the nine criminal justice hubs clearly there's 13 divisions so there's nine hubs so they're going to cross divisional boundaries to me we need to establish the criminal justice hubs then you know have them established and then I think a debate in two years time around whether certainly elements of the function was to return I think that's the time to have the debate I think we need to get the nine hubs in place and if we cascade it back to 13 division at this point I'd be surprised if it ever happened because it just would not be as streamlined as hopefully it will be okay thank you for that market you've just one color for case you said there were 72 000 less individuals in custody um over what period so each year so annually yes on 13 14 there was 202 000 and 17 18 there was 130 000 two years time we'll be closing our custody centres thank you any further questions committee okay can i thank mr mckew and mr steeling miss engels very much indeed for your very detailed responses that's much appreciated thank you we're now moving to private session