 Welcome to the 26th meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee. There are no apologies this morning. Pauline McNeill is joining us online. Our first item of business is to decide whether to take item 7 on the agenda in private or whether to consider the oral evidence heard and any draft letters on our prebu recover scrutiny in private at future meetings. Are we all agreed? Felly, y next item of business is to consider an affirmative statutory instrument—that's the Draft Scottish Biometrics Commissioner Act of 2020—a code of practice appointed day Scotland regulations of 2022. I refer members to paper one. The SSI specifies the day appointed for the coming Serly, update is coming into effect of the Code of Practice prepared by the Scottish Biametrics Commissioner under section 7 of the Scottish Biametrics Commissioner Act of 2020. I welcome Keith Brown, Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans to the meeting and his officials. Mr Lane Hamilton, forensic policy team leader of the police workforce equality and forensics, and Mr David Scott, policy manager for police, workforce equality and forensics, both with the Scottish Government. I welcome you all this morning. Can I just start off by inviting cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement on the SSI? Thank you, convener, and thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly about the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner Act 2020, code of practice, appointed day regulations 2022. In March 2020, the Parliament passed the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner Act, and the legislation speaks to some of the key societal issues of our time, so it touches on data protection, privacy, human rights and ethics, as they relate to the use by the police of very personal information. The Scottish Government therefore welcomed the Parliament's appointment of Dr Brian Plasto of Scotland's first biometrics commissioner on April last year. Given the rapid increase in the use of biometric data and technologies, it is important that we have an independent commissioner who will raise public awareness about rights, responsibilities and standards, as well as monitoring compliance with such standards. It is vital that a clearer understanding of those issues is promoted in our communities, especially for young people and for vulnerable people. An integral part of the legislation was for the commissioner to prepare a code of practice, and that code has been prepared by the commissioner. It symbolises Scotland's, I believe, progressive approach to biometrics in a policing context. It is worth mentioning that it is the first code of its kind in the world. It is designed to promote good practice, transparency and accountability by setting out an agreed framework of standards for professional decision making. It is intended to strike the right balance between the needs and responsibilities of policing and the criminal justice system, and the fundamental obligation to guarantee the basic human rights, privacy and freedoms of individual members of the public. The commissioner has developed a draft code in consultation with key interests, including those bodies subject to the code, as well as statutory consultees and other bodies represented on the commissioner's advisory group. I am aware that the committee has also had the opportunity earlier this year to consider a draft of the code alongside taking evidence from the commissioner. I know that the contents of the draft code were viewed positively by committee members, so the purpose of this instrument is to bring the code into force on the appointed day, and, as agreed with the commissioner, the day proposed is 16 November 2022. From that day, Police Scotland, the Scottish Police Authority and the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner will be required to comply with the code. The commencement of the code will therefore represent a major milestone in the implementation of the 2020 act. The Scottish Government is happy to work with the commissioner and other partners going forward to ensure that an ethical, proportionate and lawful approach continues to be taken in relation to the collection, use, retention and disposal of biometric data in Scotland for policing and for criminal justice purposes. I will now open it up to members if you have any questions on the instrument. In that case, we will now move to the next agenda item, and I invite the cabinet secretary to move motion 05906 in his name that the Criminal Justice Committee recommends that the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner Act 2020, code of practice, appointed day Scotland regulations of 2022 be approved. The question is that motion 05906 in the name of Keith Brown be agreed. Are we all agreed? Thank you very much, cabinet secretary, for attending, and that concludes our consideration of the SSI. We will have a short pause to let the cabinet secretary and his colleagues leave the room. Our next agenda item is consideration of the following negative instrument, and that is the judicial appointments board for Scotland membership modification order of 2022, and that is SSI number 268 of 2022. I refer members to paper number two. Do any members have any questions on the instrument? No? Okay, thank you very much. Are members content not to make any recommendations to the Parliament on this instrument? Thank you very much. Thank you for that. We will now have a short suspension to allow for a change of witnesses. Our next item of business is our first oral evidence session on pre-budget scrutiny of the Scottish Government's forthcoming budget for 2022-23 to 2024. Submissions received from our call for views are now published on the committee's web page, and submissions from the witnesses before us today are included in the papers for this meeting. I refer members to papers three and four. We will hear from two panels of witnesses today, representing policing and fire and rescue services. I extend a warm welcome to our first panel to the meeting, Ms Lynn Brown, chief executive of the Scottish Police Authority, Mr David Page, deputy chief officer and James Gray, chief financial officer with Police Scotland. A warm welcome to you all. We will move straight on to questions. If I may open up with a very general question, it might just be helpful in the current circumstances around a very difficult financial climate. Perhaps before dealing with any specific implications of the indicative flat cash settlement announced by the Scottish Government, if you would like to share a very initial overview of the Scottish Government's proposals, I appreciate that it might be quite difficult. I will bring in Lynn and James, then I will bring in Lynn and James. We are very surprised with the removal of real-terms protection in terms of what we have been doing in terms of the planning for the RSR, which is what we have to do in terms of planning for our budget. We have looked at the requirements that were laid out in the RSR, which we fully understand in terms of the challenges of public sector across the whole of the public sector. What was asked for in the RSR was that public sector bodies should be looking to deliver public sector transformation, reduce head count to pre-COVID levels, and to try and make those efficiencies to try and alleviate some of the pressures. One of the huge challenges for us in policing is that, obviously, we have delivered successfully now one of the biggest public sector transformations in the UK, let alone in Scotland. The merger of the eight police forces and the two other bodies into a single police Scotland did not come without a lot of challenges, as members will be aware, but we have delivered £200 million per annum of savings and we have delivered improved services. That has not been without a huge amount of pain and a huge amount of stress and pressure, if you like, on our staff, but we are delivering a much better service. If you look at Police Scotland delivery of service now compared to Aconipere groups, if you like, in England and Wales, our transformation has been successful. We only have a non-pay budget of £13,176 million. The vast majority of our budget is people. Any requirement to try and bring more efficiencies to deal with a flat cash settlement falls squarely on to the people, to the officers and staff that work within Police Scotland. We continue to push hard to deliver more efficiencies in Police Scotland and that journey never stops. In terms of the transformation journey of Police Scotland, that is far from complete. Although we have delivered a huge amount of transformation in terms of cost reduction and in terms of some of the technology improvements that we have delivered in the past, we are still far from complete in that journey. We asked for, in 2017, about £300 million to deliver the digital transformation of bringing eight police forces into a single platform and making it digitally enabled to allow us to compete with, if you like, organised crime and other threats. That journey is far from complete. We have mentioned in the past and it has been mentioned by Dame Elish, Angelini and others the requirement for things like national body warm video, which every force in England and Wales has, in fact, every force in England and Wales has moved through to their second generation body warm videos. We do not have a national capability in terms of body warm video. It is a key example of the types of transformation that still needs to be done by Police Scotland. We have delivered on the bulk of the transformation activities that would make us more efficient. We still have a long way to go and we will still push into that space. Looking at a flat cash settlement, where we have got to in terms of our analysis, we are left with a choice of either no pay rises going forwards or a pay freeze effectively for officers and staff, or we fund it ourselves. We basically cannibalise policing to pay for policing. The cost of that, because of our 86 per cent of our budget's people, is basically for every 1 per cent it is going to cost us about £11 million. If we are looking at a 5 per cent pay rise, which is what will be provided to officers and staff and was accepted for this year, that would be £11 million, which is equivalent to about 225 staff. That is officers and staff, because obviously it would fall equally on the workforce. It would fall disproportionately higher on officers, because obviously we have a lot more officers than we do in staff. If you look at it from another perspective, the attrition rate of our staff is much lower than the attrition rate of our officers, so it would be officers that would take the hardest part of that. We have discussed informally with our union colleagues and with Federation colleagues about if we were to adopt a pay freeze situation over the next four years to try and protect the service that we have at the moment, what would be their position on that. Understandably, both have reacted quite strongly to that informally, that they would not accept it, that we could anticipate quite severe industrial potential strike action on the staff side, and we all know where we were in the run-up to the pay settlement with police officers this year. It is our intention, the chief council's intention, to discuss with the board about the requirement to ensure that we provide workforce with a living pay rise as we go through the next three or four years. We have modelled that. As we have said, a 5 per cent pay rise, we are not saying that it would be 5 per cent, we are just saying that a 5 per cent indicative pay rise, which is what we gave for this year, over the next four years would cost us around £222 million. That would equate to a reduction of just over 4,400 officers and staff. We know that the RSR has been given to us as a planning guide, and it is not a budget. We have been quite clear that, if it was to translate into a budget, that is the sort of impact it would have on policing. We have laid out the maths, if you like, of the impact of an RSR-based budget on policing. The effect on policing would change Police Scotland from what we are at the moment, which, personally—and I know that officers and staff feel—is probably one of the better police forces in the UK. Police reform delivered a really good example of what policing should look like. If you look at England and Wales with the 43 forces, there have been numerous papers written about the fact that they are inefficient in terms of the way they operate. They should be merging them and bringing them together and regionalising things, which is what you need to do to achieve cost efficiency and better service delivery. We have done that in Scotland. We have a service now that is £200 million cheaper and delivers things like a really effective Covid pandemic policing model that delivered COP26, which is the biggest policing operation that the UK has ever had. We delivered that better than anyone else could do and did on the ground. We reacted extremely well to Operation Unicorn with Her Majesty's Death. We stood that up at very short notice and delivered it very successfully. We have been able to manage incredibly complex and very large operations at very short notice, because we have a really efficient police force. Our problem is that if we have to reduce the numbers, we lose that capacity and we will become much more reliant on England and Wales for mutual aid to dig us out of holes that we will not be able to police ourselves. We obviously have to use mutual aid at the moment because of the scale of some of these things, but our reliance on England and Wales will become much, much, much heavier. Secondly, because of the cutting capital and the threat to reform funding, the ability for us to continue to develop the technology capability in Police Scotland will be halted effectively. What you usually do if you are being squeezed in an organisation around your people resources is to offset that pressure by using technology. If we haven't got the money for technology and we're losing our people, all that happens is that you degrade the service. That's the direction of travel that we are fearful of, for Police Scotland, if the RSR dictates the shape of our budget for next year. I think that members will have follow-up questions on the initial opening topic, but I'll bring in Lynn and then James. The authorities are aware that, in the financial challenges that the Government faces, they have to make choices. The set-out in the RSR is what those choices are. Our ask is that they rethink that in terms of flat cash for the police and that they recognise that the reform that police has delivered cannot be a reset. We have taken it forward. We would like to do more and we would like some investment to do that. Our ask today is that there is a rethink of that choice and that they choose to support police. Thank you for that, James. Two or three points for me. I think that the first one is around the uncertainty, to be honest. We know that the RSR was published on 31 May. There were a number of planning assumptions around inflation at that point and clearly events have overtaken what was the expectation. Real terms protection was dropped and replaced with flat cash as a planning assumption. Flat cash in a stable environment of 2 per cent inflation is something that becomes more manageable. However, when you are running with inflation at 10 per cent currently and next year, you are probably still likely to be high. I am uncertain to be on that. I think that it is quite difficult to have any certainty over medium term planning. If you look at the year ahead, which is now only just over five months away, we have an acute issue in relation to that, if flat cash becomes what the settlement is for policing next year. The DCO has set out the point around pay awards, so just to clarify, a 5 per cent pay award is £55 million. That is the equivalent of 1,125 officers and staff. That is something that we would need to have in place by April in order to afford a pay award if it was to be that level. Again, that is indicative, because we do not know where we will be with pay next year. The other acute issue is around the non-paying, in particular the estate. We have been doing the budget work for next year. It is still in draft, so those figures are indicative. However, our current estates budget is about £60 million a year to run around 300 buildings, which is all the call centres, the stations, the cost of the streets and so on. We are looking next year at a pressure after we have applied savings around good practice around building energy management systems and putting in more solar panels and reducing temperatures in buildings. Everything that we can reasonably do is changing behaviours around the use of energy. We still have a £9 million pressure on that £60 million budget, and that is five months away from now. That is a real acute issue. How do you take 15 per cent out of your budget in five months time in order to manage a flat cash allocation? We have some really deep concerns around what flat cash would mean for us in the short term, but over the medium term, as the DCO said, it is the degrading impact of the compounded year-on-year on-year that would obviously be of real significant concern to us. I will now move straight on to members' questions. Perhaps Jamie, you have got a follow-up for this initial one. First of all, it is important to put on record our thanks to the committee and members to officers and staff from Police Scotland who do an incredible job. That being said, just to sum up your opening statement, Mr Page, it seems to me like the choice facing you if the SR comes to fruition and you are offered a flat cash settlement is that you have two simple choices. One is a pay freeze for five years and the implications that that has. It seems to me like you have written that off as an option. It is just not doable because of the effect that that might have or the resistance that you will be met with. The other option is to offer some form of annual pay rise to staff and officers. Modelling on 5 per cent, to be correct, that would equate to a loss of 4,400 staff over five years. My first question is A, that sounds quite a lot. What effect would that have on your ability to perform both basic statutory functions as a police force, not with standing any additional upgrades and investment projects that you have or may have to shelf? I am talking about your core work in protecting the public and responding as a first response body to the needs of the public. Secondly, that is modelling 5 per cent. If that number was to increase as a result of industrial conversations, disputes or action, would that 4,500 go up and by how much? The 4,400 number is over four years effectively in terms of the end of the spending review period. The chief constable and the force executive are modelling the impacts of the types of workforce reduction aligned with a lack of transformational capability enhancement. We are looking at things like having to pull back from the types of policing that we do at the moment, because we do not have bodies to do it, to be quite frank. Things like community policing, campus cops, which incidents do we attend in terms of roads policing, pretty much well-being, mental well-being, things like that. One of the other things that we are very concerned with is, as Lynn has already said, that we are acutely aware of the pressures on other parts of the public sector, local government. What has happened in the past has been that, when services are withdrawn, people still need them. People still need to pick up a phone and get help. What happens if the other services are being withdrawn because they are suffering from funding cuts? We pick up the slack, and our problem there, of course, is that, as our demand is increasing because we are picking up increasing slack, our resource is reducing. Our ability to answer 999 calls will be slowed. The 101 service—do we continue with that? If we do not continue with the 101 service, all that will do is shift people into dialing 999, who would have previously dealt with 101. If you have more people dealing with 999, what will happen then is that it will be a longer few to get through and longer for us to response. Response policing, digital forensics, public protection—all of those areas will be squeezed. There is a real concern that we will not be able to discharge our duties as, A, we currently do. We provide one of the best policing services. If not in the UK and the world, our officers are part of our communities. You start to lose that. Our clear-up rates are good. They could be better. They could always be better, but part of that is because of the engagement with our communities. You do not want Police Scotland to become a law enforcement quasi-paramilitary force, where all you can deal with is the most serious incident. That is not what Police Scotland was intended to be. It is not what our officers and staff joined Police Scotland to do. They are focused on the wellbeing of communities. They are focused on helping kids in schools, helping councils, helping vulnerable people. All of those things would be at risk. How much of that is you putting on a face to show a strong message to Government that a flat cash settlement is simply on? Is it realistic that you would be closing down the one-on-one service? Is it realistic that you would have to pick and choose which call-outs you attend? Would it actually be a reality that 999 calls would either be delayed in answering, not responded to or not answered at all? Is that a reality? What is interesting for me and Police Scotland now is that we have a really good group of our finances. The last five, six or seven years, we are managing it to the penny effectively. What we have done, looking at the RSR translation into budget, is that we have done the math effectively. We have laid out all of the options to the chief constable to determine how that would affect the operational service delivery of policing. All we have done is effectively laid out the mathematical consequences and what would be happening in terms of force police service reductions. It is for the chief constable at that point to try and juggle that, where do I put my resources? All the things that I have touched on are all the things that are under consideration. A lot of it depends on threat, risk and harm at the point. Again, the chief constable has not been clear about this. If you look at where we are today as a society, you look at the disruption that we have had in the UK around the direction of politics, potential future referendum, social cohesion, inflation, Ukraine, increase in digital threats through organised crime. That is a very choppy ride in the future. You want a strong police source to help to glue society together. The chief constable is very concerned about where we put limited resource when the threat is increasing. I would not speak for the chief, but the maths give him some very difficult decisions to make. It was just to make a similar point to the DCO around what it will look like. It is worth reminding us that, on page 7 of the written submission, the police service through reform has reduced its cost-based by 20 per cent. That is a similar amount to the reductions that were seen in England and Wales over the same kind of period. That is now being reversed through the increase of 20,000 officers. That is a place to look at as well. What was the impact in England and Wales around that? What we are facing now over the next four years is, broadly, another 20 per cent reduction on top of what has already been delivered through reform. It was done through reform and there has been service improvement, so that has been a real positive. Once you have had that service improvement, we might be able to get one, two per cent efficiency a year. That is what we are doing and focused on. This year, we have taken nearly £1 million of our fleet costs because we are moving to electric vehicles. We are reducing our estates costs by sharing accommodation with Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeenshire Council and many bodies around the country. We are pushing ahead with efficiency, but what we are talking about here is not efficiency. You cannot do that through efficiency. That is more like what you saw in England and Wales over that period, where they did not make their savings through reform. They made their savings through service reduction. If you wanted to see an example of withdrawing from communities, focusing on core capability and response, those ties into your communities and the models are different in Scotland anyway, you can see that there might be some kind of parallel there. That is maybe an example of a place to look as well. I am going to bring in Pauline McNeill and then I will come back to Jamie McNeill. My question has been covered. What are the implications of having a flat cash budget? You are outlining stark terms to the committee. I just wanted to confirm that I have understood it correctly. David, if the movie starts with you, all three of you seem to be saying that if this is not resolved, there will be quite a serious service reduction and perhaps more fundamentally a change in the model of the Scottish police force that we have been used to. The exemplary police force in Aberdeen with Jamie Greene on that point is quite different from other forces across the UK in the role that Scotland has played and exemplary record on big events. I presume that you have put that to the cabinet secretary and to the Scottish Government. I wondered given you that to the committee, which is very concerning, what response are you getting from the Government on the stark reality if a flat cash settlement is ravined by the next 40 years? We have had a series of conversations with the SP Board in private. We have had a series of conversations both with senior officials in the Scottish Government and with the cabinet secretary, with the chief constable and the chair. The cabinet secretary and the officials are very aware of the potential implications of an RSR-driven budget settlement. They are very sympathetic to it, but, as we have already mentioned, we are fully aware of the other pressures on the public sector. One of the things that we have emphasised is that we have delivered the types of savings that are being looked for across the public sector in terms of £200 million worth of savings and 2,000 staff jobs when we brought police reform together and all the other efficiencies. It is the fact that we do not have anywhere else to go because we have delivered reform, although it is an on-going journey and an on-going transformation need. They are hugely sympathetic to it and are working to see that the RSR is not the budget. One of our issues is that it is not that far before the budget arrives and then, if the budget reflects RSR, we will have a very short amount of time to make some harsh decisions, but they are fully sighted, fully aware and sympathetic. Do you want to come back in? I just want to maybe ask Alyn, if, similarly, you have expressed those views to the Government and what response you are getting? Thank you. The authority has probably two main concerns that they have made. The first one goes back to a previous question from a member of the committee, the pay award versus staff numbers. What is unique about policing is the covenant that we have with police officers that they cannot strike. Unlike other public sector workers who can strike, the police can't, and the withdrawal of the goodwill was not taken lightly by police officers to do that. That was concerning and I think that that is concerning for the future as well. The second thing is the scale. The scale of what is being asked concerns the authority and that is because the £4,500 is equivalent to having no police staff, none in four years. You might have your officers, no staff to support them, it is equivalent to not having a C3 operation. Those are either ores or not having any police in Glasgow or Edinburgh on the streets, so it is the scale of what is being faced concerns the authority. We are making those points to the Government and hopefully they will take that into consideration. I said at the start that I hope that they rethink their choices and obviously we will find out in December when the budget is decided. Meena, can we just ask for a point of clarification from Lynn? Do those numbers, the 4,400, when you see staff, is that staff and not officers or is it a mix of staff and officers? In our terminology, police staff are non-warranted officers, so you have police officers who are warranted and police staff. The 4,500 covers both police and staff. If policing was protected, police officers, you would have no police staff, none to support the police. The modelling that we have done on the 4,500 is a blended mix. One of the things that the chief counsel has been clear about is that policing is delivered by a combination of officers and staff. There are jobs that the staff do that officers can't do and vice versa. What we have modelled in terms of how would you afford 5% over that number of years is both by bringing down officer numbers and staff numbers and you have to look at attrition rates and the types of jobs that you would need to protect. The 4,500 would be about a 17% reduction in the police officer numbers and about a 31% reduction in the staff under one model, which is the model that got us to the 4,500 that we talked about, but we would bring down both. One of the things that the unions have made very clear to me in my discussions with them is that they would be aghast if we went back to what happened when police reform came about and we actually slashed the staff numbers because you can offer them voluntary redundancy and VR to protect police numbers but then what you end up doing is your unbalanced policing and then you end up with police officers having to do staff jobs which actually makes no sense because of actually economically staff are actually cheaper than officers if you look at the total cost of the public sector. We are keen to bring down the model on a kind of equitable basis to make sure that balance is maintained. What that balance looks like is a decision for the chief constable based on the operating model that we have to put in place at that point in time. Thank you very much. I've got quite a lot of supplementary questions so I'm going to bring in Jamie and then I'm going to bring in Russell, Katie and Rona. So Jamie first. Thank you. Thanks for that further clarification. Just to confirm the modelling on the 4,400 you just to be clear on the numbers you said you've modelled a 17 percent reduction in police officers and a 31 percent reduction in staffing that would be back office operational staff. 17 percent so those would be presumably what we would classify as front line officers if you like people who would be out in our communities weren't in the streets responding to events and proactive interaction with the community. 17 percent is quite a lot. Other than for example removal of community policing or campus policing, other types of community engagement, what would 17 percent look like to the public in terms of the amount of police officers they would see on the streets in their communities responding to emergencies? Again, it's a decision for the chief constable based on threat, harm and risk and what was happening in society at that time but at highest level less police officers on the streets, less police officers in schools. So the modelling, not so much our math modelling if you like, but the operational modelling is always based about where is the acute risk so you have to pull back and pull back and which is exactly what happened in England and Wales where they went away from, I mean it's been reported recently, burglary house breaking clear ups in England and Wales compared to house breaking clear ups in Scotland and of course house breaking is one of the most acute to you personally invasions of your rights if you like. We would see that adversely affected because we wouldn't have that many officers to do that type of investigation. Talking about a scenario where you would only respond to send out officers given reduced numbers if something was dreadfully serious life threatening, serious violent situation. That's a slope we would be on. Other types of crimes such as burglary, vandalism, car break-ins, there would be the bottom of the queue effectively. Can I just come in just on the point of what I think of as support staff but non-warranted staff as you've described them. I'm just interested to know if that cohort of staff includes your specialist, for example specialist forensic investigators, IT specialists and so on, so would they be included in that? They would be, so C3, the civilian staff that work in the 999 and 101 forensic scientists, custody officers who work, we would protect those cohorts of people as far as we could and we would try and take the civilian staff from again you know that the furthest away from threat harm and risk we could. The challenge we would have obviously is the only way we could reduce police staff numbers is through not replacing them so a recruitment freeze and of course we can't dictate where people leave from so we may find pressures in those key areas and secondly through introduction of a voluntary redundancy and VR scheme and again we can't choose who leaves so although we would try and protect the staff in those key areas forensic services, C3, custody, key technical roles, key digital forensics roles, key cyber roles all of which are as much front line as anything that you see in terms of an officer on the street we would try and protect those as far as we could. We're at the mercy of where people go in terms of where they leave when they choose to retire so we would try and manage it but we'd be managing what we were given effectively on that one. Thanks very much for that. Okay I'll now bring in Russell and then I'll bring in Katie and Rona and then I'd like to move on from this particular topic to Russell. Thank you. Where is the chief constable today? He'll be at Tulliel and doing chief constable duties. This is a budget scrutiny which is why you've got the finance people here. Okay because I mean a lot of what is in your submission and what we've heard from you today I mean you've said indeed that you can't speak for the chief constable will affect him and his officers. Do you not think it would be important that we should hear from him directly? I think you will hear from the chief constable. I mean the key issue at the moment is as we've already mentioned is that the RSR is what we've been told to use as the planning guide for what would happen going forward. The operation implications will fall when the budget falls. The chief constable and the chair of the SBA continue to have conversations with officials and the cabinet secretary. We're here to talk about the financial implications and the potential of operational implications. As I've said a number of times, the choices for operational service delivery impacts will depend on what the actual budget is, what threat, harm and risk is at a point in time. I appreciate it's all largely speculative just now, it's worst case scenario stuff but some of what you've spoken about will have very real effects on police officers and members of the public. We're talking about 101 services potentially being suspended. As far as I understand it, murder inquiries in recent years have been subject to MIPS investigations as a given. So only I suppose a chief constable could answer a specific question about an operational need to perhaps change that particular thing. Much of what I think I would like to ask would really only be able to be answered by the chief constable or one of his senior officers. Going back to the chief constable himself, it was reported a month ago that he's pursuing other roles, a view of discussions with him. Is that in any way connected to these budget projections? It's not connected. The chief counsel's looking at the other role was not in connection to the budget and he's fully committed to Police Scotland going forward. I was wanting to ask a bit more about the modelling with the 31 per cent of civilian police staff. My understanding is that there's been a process called civilianisation over many years in the police service with roles that perhaps previously would have been carried out by uniform staff, civilian staff and I was wondering what the implications are in reductions in numbers of those types of groups. The conveners already mentioned forensic services and what the implications are in terms of the expertise that Police Scotland has and what's likely to happen if some of those roles go. Will that mean that you will have to outsource work of that nature? Will you be reliant on outsourcing work to England and Wales? How would you deal with it if you were losing some of the expertise that's been developed over many many years? Is that a major issue that you're having to consider? If we were at a point where we were losing staff numbers because we didn't have the budget, to be quite frank, I wouldn't have the budget to outsource it because effectively the money goes either to outsourcing or it goes internally. Our preference in Police Scotland is always to deliver the service in-house because it, generally speaking, is more cost-effective and more cost-efficient. We continue a process of ensuring that any particular job in Police Scotland we have the right person with the right skills, be it an officer or a civilian member of staff. There was a process and there continues to be an ongoing refresh of who could that job be done by most effectively. As I mentioned earlier, when police reform came into being, as part of that journey to save £200 million, there was a very large number of police staff took redundancy to bring the cost base down to what we could afford at the time. That left a good number of jobs that civilian staff did that still needed to be done to keep policing going, which were filled by police officers. We've moved away from that but that's still a journey that we're ongoing and as technology improves, as different types of crime like cybercrime comes to the fore, you can use civilian staff in roles that might have been thought of as being front-line policing but actually now can be done by civilian staff. So we're continuing to refresh and look at our model but outsourcing is not something that we've looked at. I know the SBA has got a bit of outsourcing going on around some of the drug toxicology but that's more to do with capacity. You can only hire what's out there and one of the challenges we have across all of Police Scotland and the SBA is there's a good number of things that we need to do but the skillset is in demand and we can't compete financially so our competition is always around the kind of vocation of policing so we do struggle in certain areas. Sorry, I mean, so say on something, an error like finger printing, if you lose expertise because staff go, does that potentially mean that you're bringing in staff that are officers who are less likely to stay in that role for a lengthy period of time because they're progressing through the organisation or are more expensive? I mean, is that a false economy is what I'm asking? It's a false economy, I'm not sure that officers were used in the kind of forensic science as per say but if we were using, in the Police Scotland side, if we were using police officers to cover civilian jobs, which should be done by a civilian, absolutely it's a false economy. Thanks, thank you convener, good morning panel. Just a bit of clarification so as I understand it you don't want a flash, a flat cash settlement but negotiated pay rises are going to cause massive job reductions in the police force. In previous years have pay awards always led to a big reduction in staff? Are the two always related? No, so historically what we've always done is when we get our budget there's an allocation within the budget which is usually linked to public sector pay policy so we always offer public sector pay policy to our staff, we always offer effectively an equivalent to police officers or those of different negotiation mechanism for dealing with police officers. In terms of that, that's our position, Police Scotland's position, that's the SBA's position, that we don't offer that more than we can afford so we never move beyond that. The only time we move beyond that, like we have done with the 5% for this year, is if the Scottish Government determines to give us more money to fund a police and staff pay offer than was in our original budget so we never offer more money than we can afford and in the most recent pay round, the 5% pay round, which is above what we had in our budget, both Police Scotland from a negotiation position and the SBA only agreed to provide the additional 5% if we had a letter from Scottish Government confirming both additional funding for the budget for this year and on-going funding for that 5%. So our baseline position for next year going forward over the next four years is what we had this year, including £37 million, which is the cost of the 5% and the subsequent years of that. We only offered that because we had a written guarantee from the Scottish Government so we don't usually have to lose staff, this is a completely new territory for us. That was part of the reason my question. I don't remember it being this critical in previous years. I get the impression that you may be presenting us with a worst case scenario unless things change and I'm looking for a bit of light here. Apart from probably the obvious more money, is there anything you can suggest that might help us see our way through this? The first point I'd like to make is that this is not a worst-case scenario. This is a scenario based on a 5% pay rise and if inflation is running at 10% plus, then a 5% pay rise, I mean there's plenty of bodies out there at the moment that are balloting for strike and rejecting 5% pay rise. We've got a 5% pay rise for our officers and staff so it was a reasonable assumption to put into our modelling. It might not be 5% in subsequent years but we will adjust the modelling. All we've done is extrapolated it through. In terms of what could we do, we're continuing to push really hard around things like blue light collaboration, local government collaboration, we're working with our fire colleagues, with ambulance service about shared services, about how can we work more effectively. We're accelerating that. We are looking at a number of things in our non-pay areas as James has said, things like the estate reduction and things like that. Again, with the estate reduction, even though 4,500 was the number that we've talked about under one model, that's not in isolation the fact that we still need to reduce our estate because of the non-pay pressures. Again, we've spoken with the chief constable and the chief constable is looking at the options in front of him in terms of not only do you start to lose officers and staff but you start to lose your presence because we may have to close police stations if we don't have people in them and we can't afford to run them. We are looking at that as well. I'll just move on to Collette now. I think that you've maybe got some questions and then I'll bring in, I'll come back to Katie. I think that you were interested in asking a little bit around non-warranted staff, unless that's already been, yep, that's fine. Then I'll come back to Russell Finlay, so Collette. One of the things that in terms of efficiencies, looking at efficiencies moving forward, and I believe that there is a pilot scheme being run for mental health first responders, which effectively means that there's an efficiency there within Police Scotland. Can you maybe elaborate more on that and how that would run over in the next four years? Is that something that you've put in as part of your review? It's something that we're doing. I can't go into a huge amount of the details, I'm not that sighted on it, it's more of an operational component, but we are working with mental health nurses to try and reduce the pressure on the front line where we can redirect through our C3 operation calls to people who are better qualified than sending a patrol car out. So we've absolutely got work going on working with NHS colleagues to try and, if you like, catch people coming into the system earlier so it doesn't run all the way down to the system, so we have to dispatch a 999 car and we try and redirect them. We will continue to work with fire and ambulance in those types of models in terms of modelling an effect of an RSR settlement on that. We've not specifically looked at that again because that would be one of those operational service delivery impacts which effectively the chief constable would have to sit back and look at the whole range of every type of service we do to determine where he can put his resources. One of the other things that you mentioned was about the body-worn cameras that could have an impact in terms of the reduction in what impact would that have, from what you used to do just now, compared to if you were to stop basically allowing police officers to actually wear them? At the moment we've only got about 500 officers at where and they're the armed officers for the most part. It's a proven fact in England and Wales. We've done a public consultation in Scotland where 81% of the public want our officers to wear body-worn video. The benefits of it are massive. Complaints against police officers if you've got body-worn video it really does help to negate complaints. It helps to protect people who are complaining where it's a justified complaint. It helps police officers where it's a malicious complaint. I've spoken to officers who have had their careers derailed because they're malicious complaints for years because of the way the system works. It would protect people. It would increase trust in policing massively if people know that these things are being recorded. It's a real weakness that we don't have that basic capability to enhance our trust and confidence in policing. My apologies, James. I forgot to bring you in. I know that you were wanting to come in to respond to Rona Mackay's questions. I'm very welcome to come in now if you still want to. It was just to go back to that point about being in different territory now from where we have been. I suppose that if you look at the journey of policing over what will be coming up for 10 years since the start of police reform, the cost of policing in 1213 in the last year of the old legacy arrangements was £1,200 million a year, and that dropped to £987 million in 2015. No smoking mirrors, that was cash reductions, that was a shrinkage of the workforce by 2000, that was the disposal of 165 buildings, getting the economies of scale through better contracting as a single national service and other efficiencies. Pass that point, the reason we've not then been into that headcount reduction year on year is because there's been that element of real terms protection, but that real terms protection is, I think, a recognition of the fact that the service had gone undergone such a level of reform and had taken such money out £200 million a year on a recurring basis. So all the big elements of efficiency have already been delivered, and we will continue to do that, but in the context of now facing what potentially looks like another 20 per cent, again, on top of the 20 per cent that's been delivered, that's where the concern comes in. I'm not scaremongering and all that type of thing. To me, it's unprofessional, so that's not what this is about. This is just about setting out in reality of what will happen if that is what, in fact, we face over the four years, but again, going back to what the DCO was saying, it's a planning assumption, it's based on flat cash over four years. In reality, my own feeling on it is that it won't happen because it can't happen and that's not just in the context of policing, but across the public sector to have such a level of reduction over that period of time in a high inflation environment because, as I said earlier on, the spending review was based on flat cash in an environment where inflation would peak at 9.3 per cent this year and drop back down to 2.7 next year. Clearly, that's not going to happen. We might not even be at 2.7 in 2526, so I think that the basis on which the resource spending review was produced at the time and absolutely the right thing to do because the intention is right to give longer planning horizons and a bit more certainty to public bodies around multi-year planning, but the environment has changed so significantly that that's why I think we're looking at what you're hearing from us today is on the basis of flat cash in a relatively high inflation environment, but that's what the consequences would be if it did play out. David, do you want to come in and then Lynn, and then I'll come back to Jamie? I think you were wanting to follow up on Collette's questions. David? Thank you, convener. I think one of the really big frustrations that we have in Police Scotland is that having successfully delivered a massive public sector transformation that no one else in the UK has done and delivered these savings and improved service. It feels like a lack of recognition that, as James has just said, if you've already taken 200 million out of the service, you can't take another 200 million, otherwise we'd have no non-pay, we'd have no cars, no estate, no technology. So there is a kind of almost like a plea to say, please recognise the fact that we've delivered public sector transformation on a scale that's unprecedented in the UK, that England and Wales have failed to do. We've got one of the best police services in the UK that does one of the best jobs in the UK, and we're doing it highly efficiently, and we will continue to work and develop that. The men and women in Police Scotland are hugely proud of the job that we do, and it feels like we've got to the point where everyone's super proud of what we do. If we have to go back down the hill again, it's going to be both frustrating professionally, but it's also going to feel like a lack of recognition of the fact that the things that everyone's been asked to do around public sector transformation, it's not being recognised that that's what we've delivered. There's got to be a recognition of, if you've delivered public sector transformation, that is what we're asked to do, then protect our ability to deliver this at the policing service that we do for the men and women of Scotland. I'd like to come back to the question on mental health, if I may. I appreciate that this committee has got a real interest in mental health issues in terms of the challenges on policing and also on the mental health and wellbeing of police officers. I know that it's being framed sometimes in terms of efficiency, but it's much more than that in terms of the work that's gone on at the C3 is to get the right result for the citizen in the best way possible. That's something that authority has a priority to look at. I know that there is going to be around table in December, I think, convener. You've been invited to speak at it, as has the cabinet secretary, just to look at that, the mental health challenges in the citizens, in the community, on policing so that we can get some better answers to how we deal with it. C3 is only a small part of that. David Page, I totally agree with what you're saying. I think that we're all very proud of the police service and what they've achieved and the transformation. I don't disagree with any of that. I just wanted to say that perhaps you could recognise too that the Scottish Government is in new territory and very challenging territory with a fixed budget that's reducing. I know you know that, so it would just be a case of having to work together to try and work something out, but it's not a case of it's not being recognised because I think it has. I just wanted to put that on record. That's very much it. Jenny, do you want to come back in and then I'll bring in Russell Finlay? The first is, apologies for my misunderstanding, I thought this potential modelling of a reduction of nearly four and a half thousand staff and officers is the worst case, but it's not. Therefore, if a five percent pay offer was rejected and you had to pay more to them to keep them effectively, or to stop industrial action or strikes or whatever method is available to them, what would happen to that 4,400? Are we talking 5,006,7? Is it doubling? Does ten percent mean eight, nine thousand reduction? We could extrapolate the model pretty much anyway you like. At some point there's an operational model where the chief constable says, I cannot go below that number to deliver his statutory duties, so that would influence what we were able to offer as a pay settlement. If it was more than five percent, if it went up one percent, it's another 11 million, that's another 225 people. Okay, so it's 225 people for every percentage point pay rise? Okay, that's quite a lot. The Scottish Police Federation, who are not here today but have submitted written evidence to us, I'm going to ask to what extent you agree or disagree with the following. They say that if the current plans come to fruition, crime will increase, victims will be let down, public confidence will diminish and more people will be left in crisis. Indeed, many offenders will be unlikely to face any form of sanction or any form of justice. Do you agree or disagree with that statement? I think that if you look at the experience and anger in Wales you don't have to agree with it. Thank you very much. A lot of what we've heard so far, frankly, is terrifying. Some of the things that you said, and I really appreciate your candor, it's necessary, but it can't be easy to be so forthright with some of this stuff. I've got two separate questions. The first one relates to body cameras. I suppose being an example generally of equipment issues and how these proposed budgets will affect that. In your opening statement you said that England and Wales pretty much universal roll-out of cameras and indeed second generation cameras. Are you going to any supermarket at the security guards around them? Police Scotland have only got around 500 and they're mostly with armed officers. It seems pretty basic and we're facing these really serious financial pressures. Is there not an element of not having fixed the roof when the sun was shining? Is there not any sense that that's been a hugely missed opportunity and someone somewhere should have prioritised this or found the money to make that happen? It'll be about £25 million over five years to roll out national body warm video. Part of the why haven't we done it yet, given that we've ongoing transformation activity in Police Scotland, is you've got to be conscious of the fact that when we're using body warm video you need to capture the data then you need to secure the data somewhere because it could be used in a court. The data's got to be secure, you're kind of breaking the chain of evidence. That links to our digital data and ICT strategy in terms of the multitude of systems that we inherited from the police forces, the legacy police forces, and the journey that we've been on to try and create a single national digital platform that would allow us to have the infrastructure underneath national body warm video. It also links to the desk project, which is a Scottish Government crown courts Police Scotland digital project to allow evidence that can be captured on things like body warm video to go through digitally, right through the justice system, which would be very efficient and reduce lots of pressure on the justice system. So why haven't we done it yet? One, we've not really had the capital to do it yet. We've not had the capital and revenue to fix a lot of the infrastructure the way we wanted it to. We're at the point where we were building the initial business case because the timing was right to make that submission. One of the big challenges we've got is in a digital first environment, which is obviously something we want to do as a Scottish Government priority. Digital first effectively means revenue pressure, not paying for revenue, not reliant upon capital per se. One of the big issues with body warm video is that we'll need additional revenue to pay for the licences, to pay for the data capture and, of course, revenue is the thing that's under most pressure. Sure. On saying that, all the other forces, the dozens of forces elsewhere in the UK have managed to overcome similar challenges, presumably, and prioritised that spending. Moving on to the next issue, and it's to do with mental health. Now Lynn has already touched on officers dealing with people in the community who require mental health support and treatment. I'm coming at it from a slightly different position and that is police officers' mental health. We've heard some very strong evidence of officers, the pressures that they're under and the struggles that they face, and how that can seriously impact on their wellbeing and, indeed, a sense that they do not currently have the support that they need. There have been some absolutely tragic outcomes with officers taking their own lives and others coming close to doing so. If even this partly comes to pass, that's only going to get a whole lot worse. What thought has been given to improving the support for officers? Mental health and general wellbeing is right at the top of everything that we do, because at the end of the day you can't have a police service without having people. Unless we do the utmost to protect our people who do one of the most difficult jobs in society, you cannot sustain the police service. The chief constable made a commitment a good number of years ago now to try to protect and support police officers and staff in terms of their mental health and their wellbeing, so we've done an awful lot to try and protect and help them. We have got 23,000 people in the workforce, officers and staff. We have got wellbeing teams, we've got wellbeing managers, we are trying to invest more in it. We do have an outsourced service to help us with specialist performances in there. We would like to put more money into it, but obviously we're restricted because we're struggling at the moment this year with our own budgets because of the financial year 2223 because of the inflationary effect. The other issue we've got at the moment is because we started the year down on our police officer numbers because of Covid and because of training, it's meant that we were about 400 short at the start of this financial year. What that's meant is we're having to push an awful lot more money into overtime. That provides a level of service, but it also puts a lot more pressure on our officers and staff, so we can almost double what we plan for in overtime. One of the things that we are acutely aware of is that police officers and staff will try and deliver the same type of service they've always delivered because they don't want to let people down. If the workforce shrinks, it doesn't shrink and then we can use overtime, it shrinks full stop, so if people try and provide the same level of service, then they're going to be going over and above and beyond, and that's going to put more pressure on them, so we are acutely aware of the fact that police officers and staff will not want to let people down, even if we're not paying them not to let people down, and they will face increasing pressure and mental health pressure. We make mistakes. We're a really big organisation, we have a lot of people, and I do recognise and apologise for where we've handled things badly, but where we do handle things badly, we investigate it fully and then we try and fix it going forward, and it is probably the most important thing on the chief constable's list of priorities alongside violence against police officers and staff. Thank you, convener. Thank you, Mr Finlay. I'd just maybe like to give some context of where this sits and the oversight of the authority in terms of mental health of officers. It is very much a priority, and the first thing that we did was, when we reviewed our governance structures, we separated out the resources committee that used to look at people issues, and we've now got a separate people committee that focuses on the issues that affect police officers and staff. The other change was that the unions and staff associations are invited to that meeting, and they weren't before, and they're asked to contribute to any conversations, any reports around those issues. The other thing, and David touched on it, is when things have not gone as we would like. Lessons learned is very much part of the authority's role, and they try to link up with what's been heard in the people committee, with what's been heard in the legal committee, where sometimes this can end up in terms of financial implications. It's a very important authority, and it is a priority for them. As I said, the chair contributed to the round table that you convened to look at mental health issues, and we see that as a major area for us going forward. In terms of body cameras, we're not going to see them anytime soon, and mental health is no extra money, but there's some organisational issues that can be improved. If the budget reflected the RSR, it wouldn't be just a straightforward, we'll reduce numbers. It will have to look at what types of operational service delivery can we deliver, and also how can we protect our people as much as they need to be protected to enable them to do the job. That challenge at the chief constable has got, which is, what services do I pull back? Do I provide an extra million pound for a wellbeing contract, or do I shut two police stations? It's that type of kind of dilemma. Just on the theme of mental health, I want to ask you about the external contract that you have with Optima Health for officers. Can you tell us what the value of that contract is, what the duration of it is, and have you ever considered bringing the services in-house? Would that be more efficient? I could maybe start with the question. The contract expires, will expire on 31 March 2024. That's after exercising a one-year extension. Sorry to interrupt, so effectively is it a three-year, four-year contract? Six. Five with one-year extension. I'll clarify after the meeting the exact value, but I think it's in the region of £1 million to £2 million a year, but I can get clarity over that. I would say that, with regards to options beyond that, we've now got a window here at the moment, and the HR team within Police Scotland is all looking at exactly what the service offering needs to be and recognising the fact that it's becoming increasingly complex and actually looking to see what enhancements can be made, but that's in the context, obviously, of where we do get to with the spending review and the availability of resources. So it is something that's actively being considered at the moment about what the future needs to look like and whether it's an outsourced with additional enhancements in the specification or what alternative models, but that's something that will be picked up on over the coming months. Can I just maybe ask, Lynn, if there's an evaluation of the service provided by that contract done? So your award is quite a long, lengthy contract that's awarded, and do you do reviews of how effective it is with the officers at any point? The People Committee gets regular reports on a whole, it's like a dashboard of issues to do with staff welfare and how the contract is performing comes up at those committees around questions. Where does that information come from, from the officers? No, it comes from the, it will come from the, our colleagues in PND, which is personal and development. Yeah, but I mean, I wonder where they get the information. Is it, is it fed back to them from officers, or is it optimum, marking their own homework, you know, saying, well, we're doing a good job or? We have a series of forums by which the Federation and unions attend wellbeing forums. So we, we both have input from Optima in terms of, you know, service level agreements contracts, contract performance, things like that, but we also have feedback directly from the unions and the Federation, and we'll get individual members who are going through the service dealing with their HR contact in terms of giving us direct feedback. So there's a number of touch points and we do the Federation and unions sit on the health and wellbeing board. So there's a number of kind of areas where both unions and Federation are able to input into things. I am conscious of the fact that you've had a private session with some officers and aware of some of the kind of issues that have risen there. As I said, we're a big organisation and sometimes A, we get it wrong, and we need to kind of find out where we got it wrong and then we need to fix it. And secondly, unfortunately with ill health retireals, with injuries on duties and something like that, a lot of it is down to independent medical examiners, not us, determining whether it was an injury on duty or it doesn't qualify. If the decision goes against someone, they can be very, very disgruntled about it and very unhappy with the world and very unhappy with Police Scotland and feel it's unfair. And that will generate a lot of angst and I have a huge kind of sympathy with people who kind of find themselves in that position. So what we've got to do is just ensure that where the service isn't as good as it should be, genuinely shouldn't be, that we identify it from either people going through the process from the unions or from our own feedback from Optima and we fix it. And that we probably explain better to people who have not got an outcome that they were hoping for because of independent medical practitioners, why they're in that position and try and provide them as much support, notwithstanding they may not have got what they hope to get. I mean, I think the committee's concern was from our impression it seemed to offer a kind of one-size-fits-all solution, not recognising the unique pressures of policing and incidents and things like that, which brings you back to the point of maybe an in-house service would provide that better. You've just said you're going to be looking at the modelling, but that was our concern that it was just a general wellbeing service and not homing in on the experiences of officers. I've sat in this committee or at least as predecessor committee for six years now, along with my colleague Rona Mackaylai, I think we're the only two in that position. I have to say that this is the starkest that I've heard. Indeed, in previous sessions, it wasn't Jamie Russell, but perhaps he could say that their colleagues would actually have been asking questions to try and get you to say what you've said today. In all credit to the police, you've always came to the committees and said, no, we can manage this. And today, for me, it's just totally different. I think we need to sit up and take notes of that because, like you said, James, you wouldn't come in scheme longer, and I think you said that, and we've seen that previously. So I think that is really, really important, and none of us can be in any doubt about the serious pressures that you put in the day. And I guess that you've got an expectation that this committee will take that back to government, including those of us, the four of us who are government backbenchers, and we will do that. On the same token that Rona Mackay raised, I would hope, and this is for the record rather than a question, because I know that you wouldn't want to be involved in politics. I'd hope that our conservative colleagues here also use their influence in the position that they're in to ensure that the new Prime Minister doesn't take a sledgehammer to public services and put the Scottish Government in that position as well. But, as I said firstly, this committee's job is to scrutinise the Scottish Government, and there's no getting away from that, but I just wanted to put on record what I've heard today, because I do think that it has been very stark and very different from previous years. The question I wanted to ask was something that David Ewing has already touched on, and it's about that interaction with other services. We're going to hear from the Fire Service in a wee bit, and I'm guessing that they'll maybe have a similar thing to say, but there's a flat cash settlement for other key justice sector organisations, including the Fire Rescue Service courts and others. How do you think, have you had any thought about how that will impact on yourselves, because obviously you all work together? What sort of impacts do you see coming down the line if the cuts, if you like, go ahead to be these other services as well? How's it all going to work? As I said, we were very closely with Fire and Ambulance. We actually have a blue light collaboration board, which I chair along with the Interim Chief Fire Officer, who's sat behind me, Ross, and Scottish Ambulance. We are all working, knowing that, and we discuss it as a group of three, blue light bodies, that the huge pressures we're all facing, and we are actively looking at accelerating collaboration opportunities across the three services. We actually held a conference on 4 October, where we had about a dozen different work streams of IT people, procurement people, PND people, finance people, strategy people, all sitting together virtually, looking at how we could work together to reduce cost and improve service, not just for one service, but for all of the services. We're actually talking in the blue light collaboration committee about trying to do shared cost pressure management, so that, if one of us could save some money in a particular area, could we help spread that across three services? We've always tried to collaborate, and we've got a long history of collaboration, especially with the fire service, but we're more acutely working over the last couple of years, especially since RSR, where we're really, really trying to get the three of us to deliver an outcome that helps all of us in the face of that kind of flat-cush environment, so we're working extremely, and also other partners. Obviously, Council, as James already mentioned, the need-it project, where we've saved a small fortune for both Police Scotland and improved rental income for Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen Council on our ongoing basis. We're constantly looking for opportunities for collaboration. That's actually good to hear, and I know that you have referenced it. We obviously are worried about the impact on all the services and how that collaboration can work. In terms of possible ways forward, do you think that any upcoming legislative changes can help? Obviously, this committee is looking at the bail and release bill. There's going to be a criminal law reform coming up. I know that the police will feed in to them, as you always do. But have you had any thought how those sort of reforms could perhaps help in those challenging financial times? Was that a bit off until the bill was actually coming before you? Probably reserved judgment until the bill comes. What I would say about any new legislation, it tends to put more pressure on us. It usually involves more training and more work that we have to do. Anything that involves, to be honest, more legislation coming through, generally speaking, means more work and more cost. I do appreciate it, but those particular bills that I mentioned, I think they're an attempt—I don't think the Government has sort of said they are an attempt to try and help with pressures in the system, but of course they are right. They'll initially come with more training and learning about them. Before I bring in Pauline McNeill, Jamie, do you want to come in? It's a supplementary question that I've been mulling over as the conversation's been going on, and that's to pose another scenario to you. If, as a result of the evidence that you've given, or today's oral session, Government ministers are sitting in their offices and listening and taking action, instead of a flat cash settlement, as is the case currently you've been forecasting and scenario planning round, they do offer an increase in your budget. We don't know what that may be if it does occur, but assuming there were an increase in your budget, would that simply be swallowed up by the pay increase? It sounds to me like even if you got a 5 per cent increase in cash terms in your budget, it would simply disappear into any potential pay increase anyway. As a result of that, you would still be halting ICT upgrades, you would still have problems with fleet investment, you would still not be rolling out body war and cameras, you would still have problems with recruitment and retention, and so on and so forth. What I'm asking then is, in another scenario, if the Government does offer you cash, we are welcome to put a number on it if you have one, but if you don't, even if they do offer more money, are we still staring down the barrel of potential problems or cuts anyway? We've had a lot of conversations with senior officials and the cabinet secretary, so they have been fully engaged with us and they're fully aware of the various scenarios and where we could be. In terms of any additional capital or revenue, we would welcome it, whether it would be sufficient to fund future pay increases, depends on how much it is. We are constantly looking to evolve as a service, so we are looking at our operating models. There's a number of things that we're looking at to try and improve how efficient we are. A lot of these take a little bit of time. It might be that, with an additional cash settlement, it helps us towards future pay and it might help us in terms of we may have to accelerate a model change or something like that, so it may result in a differentiated service, but we're always looking at differentiated services anyway because of cybercrime, serious organ and crime. There's an ebb and flow to things. It might result in a change in the model if we've got additional cash, but not as much as we needed. Again, it would be for the chief to make a determination on that. Okay, that probably raises more questions than I say, so I'm afraid, but okay. Thanks very much. Pauline, would you like to come in now and then I'll finish off with a final question for the panel? Pauline? Thank you, convener. What we've heard this morning is stark and concerning, but we haven't even got to the question of what we've heard already in evidence, which is the number of police officers that have indicated that they will or have retired. I'm going to ask the panel, given what you said about a cash settlement, all the savings that you've already made pressure on you for a pay increase for staff and police officers. What impact is the pending retirement of police officers? Do you have any up-to-date numbers on that? Previously, we did see some numbers around the number of officers that have already indicated that they will retire with either their 30-year service or retire early. It was some relationship with some pension changes, although the Federation has said that that is not the only reason why we are losing police officers. We have said that the morale and the force is low. In fact, I raised this with the First Minister only a few months ago that officers were complaining of their days being cancelled at the last minute, not really being given proper welfare treatment and so on. That's the reason why we're losing officers. I wondered if you were able to comment on the impact of that to date and any update on the figures would be very welcome indeed. Our five-year average on retirements over a calendar year would usually be about 573. This year, as of last week, we're at 1118 retirements. The key thing to note is that usually during the last calendar quarter of October to December, we have 137 retirements, which is a five-year average. We're at 124 retirements in October, so, as you can see, that's probably going to take it well above that average. Effectively, it's more than double at the moment. The peak has come and gone and it's starting to settle down at a new number. We used to have an average of high 60s in terms of average people leaving the service. We're probably running around 83 a month at the moment. We do expect that there might be another peak as we get into April next year, and we're watching that position carefully. That brings its own challenges, because obviously these are the people with the most experience in policing, so quite often things like superintendents, chief inspectors. We are having to look very carefully and manage very carefully the service in terms of training for people with the skills and on-call and things like that. We are monitoring the pension's impact. It will have an ongoing impact. We do expect to see more people retiring from the service month on month than was previously the case. There may well be, in April of next year, another bit of a spike purely because of the 5 per cent pay rise that we gave in this financial year. We will wash through interpensions at that point. On October 23, the pension's remedy regulations will become effective and that might have an effect as well. We are keeping a really close eye on what that means in terms of both overall numbers and the level of experience in the service. I hope that answers the question. I mean, thank you very much. David, perhaps you can't answer this. Of course it does need to be the chief constable, but I said that I raised this issue before, so we can see how concerning that is based on those numbers. One of the reasons that police officers are choosing to retire is because of the conditions that they are working in. For example, as I said, having their arrest days cancelled and holidays cancelled at the last minute, I mean, don't answer this if you feel that it's a different means for chief constable, but has there been any response to that? I mean, enough thought as an organisation, you want to try and retain those police officers, retain that experience, given the stark things you've outlined to the committee. I wondered, are you able to say anything about how you can try and address that? We do want to retain people with experience, obviously. Most people leave the service through retirement. The spike that came in April was because of the removal of the commutation cap. Effectively, it gave officers with 25-year service over the age of 50 the ability to access a higher lump sum of cash, and that's what they've done. In terms of can we retain skills, one of the things that we have been looking at, and we're making progress in this, is that there's a number of officers who leave the service as warranted police officers but then come back in as experienced civilians. That's another thing that we are looking at, but the impact of pensions on our workforce is something that we're monitoring tightly. Did you see that last sentence? You said that you're monitoring the police officers leave and come back as civilians. Is the suggestion that they wouldn't be able to do that because that's encouraging them to dictate retirement and come back and work as civilians? Is that what you meant? No, if we've got an officer that's retiring because they can retire effectively and there's a job that they could do as a civilian, then we'll bring them in if there's a job vacancy because there's good skills and experience there, but it's got to be the right fit. It can't be jobs for the boys or such. It's got to be a role that we need and they've got to have the right skills and experience, but it is a valuable resource. Thank you very much. Times against us and I'd like to draw the session to a close. I've been some helpful discussion this morning. I'd just like to ask one final question, just in follow-up to the discussion about body-worn cameras and kit and resources that Russell Friendly brought up. Obviously your IT refresh plan that you spoke about earlier, that's a sort of critical of organisational requirement, but I was just interested to know if the potential cuts coming forward would impact on progress with that plan. I'm thinking about areas such as the mobile phone data triage work that's going on, photo lab, that type of thing. I'm just interested in whether or not there would be implications for that operational delivery. Any technology spend that we have planned at the moment around enhancing our digital capability, our technology capability across any of the programmes that we've got, all of those are under review in terms of whether we can afford them or not at the moment. It may be the case that we have to shift our transformation programme from capability enhancement, which has been the focus for the past good number of years, to more radical cost-saving programmes. Again, it's something that we're looking down every crevice to try and find ways of saving money at the moment. One of the things that James has mentioned is that we're not here to shroudwave. What we're just pointing out is the actual maths of a resource spending review-driven budget and the potential consequences that the chief has put in the letter. We don't want to get into what exact service could be withdrawn, what would the delay be on a 999 call? We actually don't know until we get a budget. We've got all the modelling ready. We'll apply the modelling once we get a budget and then we'll present that to the chief constable and he'll have to take everything into consideration, both the budget, the modelling, what we have in front of us and what the societal position is at that point. That's very much James. Just to say, there's a very close link between investment priorities when you look at the capital allocation and the resource allocation. In the capital, it's flat, as we're told to plan on for the next number of years, but flat, as you know, in real terms is a reduction. Our capital budget is broadly split into two. It's split on maintaining insofar as we can our existing asset base around ICT vehicles, specialist policing equipment and the buildings, and then on transformation, which is some of the things around the DDICT and other programmes. As you shrink the buying power, if you like, of that capital budget, it will gravitate towards maintaining the asset base. I mean, we're not maintaining our buildings. The size of our estate based on a flat cash model is not sustainable, so we wouldn't have to rationalise that estate. The cost of doing maintenance work on the estate is running far higher than 10 per cent. Construction inflation and materials around that is much higher than that. Whilst you might take the overall budget and go 10 per cent inflation, that's reducing the buying power. In certain areas, it's considerably higher than that. What you probably see is a core focus on maintaining what we need to do for statutory health and safety around the estate and making sure that the vehicles are safe and the core systems are protected. That will leave a lesser amount for doing transformation work. As the DCO says, that's more likely to then have to be focused on cost reduction initiatives. That pressure around the revenue budget in itself creates pressure on the capital budget. If you don't maintain the upkeep of your buildings from a revenue maintenance perspective, it means that you get a deterioration in the fabric of the building, which then has bigger repair costs around things like replacing a roof because you haven't maintained it over a period of time. You get into a downward spiral on that. The question that you ask is really pertinent. That is a real concern for us. That's our ability to take things forward with flat cash for both revenue and capital diminishes. I suppose a concern over the reform budget that hasn't been mentioned provides the resources that we need to do, change activity and where we might be around that, into next year and beyond. All of that hits well being as well. As the committee is aware of, we've quite rightly had lots of criticism in the past from the Federation and unions about not maintaining buildings and gaffer take on cars. We have tried to move away from that. We've made a lot of good improvements, but with the direction of travel that we're going at the moment, we're only doing essential health and safety repairs across the estate. We're about to cut that right back this year because of inflation. We're going to go straight back to where we were before, where, unfortunately, we have to wait for something to break before we fix it. Okay. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you all for—sorry. Normally we don't or try and avoid as a committee party political issues, but I thought it was important just to get on the record response to the points made by Fulton MacGregor earlier. The Scottish Government makes decisions about how it spends money. The Scottish Government is in receipt of a record £41 billion block grant for the UK Government, and the chief constable himself told the SPA in June that the Scottish Government clearly sets out its spending priorities, and policing is not among those stated priorities. That perhaps helps to give us some context to the bigger financial picture. Thank you very much indeed for attending. I appreciate that. As usual, if members have got any further questions, we'll follow that up in writing. We'll now have a short pause to allow for a change of witnesses. Thank you very much. Thank you everybody. I now welcome our second panel of witnesses to the meeting this morning. We've got Mr Ross Haggart, interim chief officer, Mr Stuart Stevens, interim deputy chief officer and Mr John Thomson, acting director of finance and procurement at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. I'm very welcome to you all. Mr Haggart, you would like to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener, morning, committee members, and thanks for your time this morning. As you have said, I'm Ross Haggart, interim chief officer of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and with me this morning I've got Stuart Stevens, interim deputy chief officer and John Thomson, acting director of finance and procurement. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has written submission for this meeting. It's contained within the agenda pack, and within our submission we've provided some information in respect of the four areas requested by the committee. That's namely the assessment we are making of the impact of a possible flat cash settlement on the delivery of our services for 2023-24, the contingency plans we are developing, and what the impacts may be on SFRS and our services to communities. Secondly, the assessment we are making of the impact of a possible flat cash settlement on our capital spending for 2023-24. Thirdly, the assessment we are making of the long-term impact of the possible flat cash settlement out to 26-27, if the present inflationary cycle continues beyond this year. Finally, we've made some additional comments within our submission on the potential impact of the flat cash settlement on the SFRS. Since the publication of the resource spending review, we've been exploring the implications of the indicative flat cash figures and the application of a flat cash settlement, the services resource budget, which currently sits at £294.207 million. Similarly to the questions we've approached this in two stages. Firstly, we're exploring savings we would need to start making for 2023-24. Secondly, we're looking at what a two to four year programme of work would look like, i.e. taking us from 24-25 to 26-27 to make longer-term savings. That has been supported by us developing a range of potential future financial scenarios utilising our medium-term financial model, which I've informed our considerations today, and I'm sure John can provide some additional information on that modelling. As outlined in our submission, our modelling indicates that a flat cash settlement in 2023-24 would require the services to make savings in the range of £12 to £18 million next year. Thereafter, as we move further into the future, it becomes more challenging to accurately predict the impacts of the indicative budget. That is because key variables that will impact upon the cost base of the service are more difficult to forecast with the degree of accuracy, essentially the medium to long-term impact of inflation and also pay settlements for staff over this period. However, we have set out, in our submission, indicative savings required by the end of the four-year period of between £29 million and £43 million across the services budget. Although there are degrees of uncertainty within the modelling, it does, however, provide us with indications of the potential scale of the challenges that we may face and the measures that we may need to take to overcome those from a resource budget perspective and further details are provided in our written submission in relation to that. In respect of our capital budget, we have also set out within our written submission the impacts of remaining at its current level of £32.5 million per annum. That is very much within the context of the current condition and suitability of our community fire stations, vehicle fleet and equipment. Again, further details around that are contained within our written submission. Thank you again for your time this morning. Stuart John and I will be more than happy to provide any additional information and answer any questions that you may have on our written submission that will assist the committee with its pre-budget scrutiny work. John, I will just bring you in if you would like to follow up from Ross's opening statement. Yeah, thanks, convener, and thanks also to committee members and good morning to all. As Ross has indicated, we have produced a number of financial scenarios and I guess it is important to stress that they are financial scenarios but they are based on the reality of what we are facing as a service in terms of the potential inflationary impacts and also the pay award impacts. I will explain a wee bit more about some of the assumptions that we have made behind that. I guess that that would really highlight similar to what Police Scotland has said in terms of the immediate impact in terms of £23.24, because we are talking about that range of between £12 million and £18 million, which is a significant level of saving that we require. However, that cumulative impact in terms of that four-year period could potentially ramp up to £43 million, but just to make sure that I give an indication of the assumptions behind it because it is all based on assumptions in these financial scenarios. In terms of inflation, we have assumed inflation for 22, 23 at 9 per cent, for 23, 24 at 6 per cent and 2 per cent thereafter in 24, 25. Now, anyone can suggest that that is the right position, but that is the target inflationary pressure. Therefore, our modelling takes that into account. In addition, we have looked at the fact that there is a likelihood that we will have to cover up the pay award for this year. Five per cent is certainly the figure that has been negotiated around. However, that will flow through into the next financial year, 23-24, because we will have to find recurring savings for that pay award, plus we have done some financial scenarios that say what will happen if we have a subsequent 5 per cent pay award in 23-24. That is what gets us to the position of the £43 million in cumulative savings, just so that the committee is clear on our assumptions behind the modelling. Obviously, there are financial scenarios, and we are looking at a range of scenarios—I think that I have got 23 scenarios to date—based on different variations in terms of pay award, in terms of inflationary pressures, and how we think. I guess that those scenarios are really just to guide us as to what the scale of the challenge will be for the service. The other thing that I want to mention or to highlight is that flat cash does have a significant impact on the service. Our staff costs are 80 per cent of our overall budget. Therefore, to mean flat cash means that we will potentially have to reduce our staff bill by looking at the pay award increase on a year-on-year basis. That is another important factor to recognise that we are having to make these savings within an annual financial framework. Within the service, there is obviously no compulsive redundancy, so possible reductions are basically based on retiros and natural wastage across the service. Just as a metric, a 1 per cent pay award costs £2 million for the service, and in terms of our non-pay, that is actually 20 per cent of our budget. Therefore, when I look at the pressures in terms of inflation, although we have the thought process that inflation is the headline 9 per cent, 10 per cent, it is not uniform across how it impacts the organisation. For example, we are expressing pressures on fuel, 45 per cent increase in prices, electricity, 30 per cent gas, 89 per cent construction cost on the capital side is about 30 per cent. Therefore, although we are talking about an average headline inflation, there is incredible pressure coming through the supply chain, both in terms of the resource spending review and also in terms of our capital position. The final thing is that the service does not hold reserves, so when we are talking about a position where we are looking over a four-year period, it would be really advantageous to have a reserve position so that you could perhaps potentially bank savings and then carry that forward into future years, but the service does not have that financial lever. Before I open it up to questions, I wonder if I may pick up on the point that you raised about staffing and the potential implications that you face within the current financial constraints that we are facing. Obviously, you were in the committee room earlier when Police Scotland was outlining some of the scenarios that they potentially face. I wonder if you could provide any more detail on what considerations you may have to make around staffing, what are your workforce planning and your staffing profile going forward? What we are seeking to do at the moment is to balance the savings that we are needing to make across the whole of the organisation. Because of the nature of our organisation, we clearly want to prioritise the delivery of front-line services to communities and outcomes for communities. However, as we have outlined in our written submission, 80 per cent of our budget is on staff employment costs, and of that around 80 per cent is spent on operational staff costs, including operations control personnel. That is round about 64 per cent of our costs are spent on operational staff costs. Therefore, savings of the magnitude that we have to make, we will not be able to make savings of those magnitudes without that impacting upon staffing within the organisation and operational staffing within the organisation. In terms of the firefighter numbers, we employ different types of staff across the organisation in an operational context. We employ full-time firefighters, and we have 74 fire stations across Scotland that employ full-time firefighters. We also have on-call firefighters across Scotland, and they comprise personnel that are conditioned to the retained and the volunteer duty system. When we talk about firefighters, we have different categories of firefighters, full-time firefighters and on-call firefighters. As I have already said, we will always seek to protect front-line service delivery for communities. However, as I have said, the current staffing arrangements and the current service delivery model that we have got would not be sustainable in its current form if the resource spend and review figures turned into annual budgets for us. Anything that we would do to change our service delivery model, we would always do that based upon community risk, while maintaining safety of our firefighters and any proposals for any significant changes that we meant to that model. We would do so accompanied by appropriate stakeholder engagement and consultation, and we would do specific impact assessments on any specific changes that we would make. In terms of the suite of options that would be open to us to reduce the cost from our staffing budget, we could look at a number of things such as looking at the crew arrangements on particular fire stations. That might mean changing those crew arrangements for example from full-time to on-call firefighters. On a risk-assessed basis, we may have to remove fire appliances from service going forward and we also may have to close some community fire stations as well. That would be the suite of measures that we could use in order to continue to deliver a balanced budget under whatever the budgets are going forward, whether it is the flat cash aspect, the resource spending review or anything else going forward. There is not necessarily a link directly between firefighters' numbers and our budget because we might have firefighters conditioned to different duty systems going forward. However, as John Scott pointed out, we support the Scottish Government's no compulsory redundancy policy, so we would reduce any number of our headcounts through retirements, other leavers and vacancy management. That is across all staff groups, operational and support staff as well. That clearly could cause challenges because where people retire from or where people leave the organisation geographically might not match where we think that we can make risk-based decisions regarding our crewing going forward. To give an indicative figure, however, we can employ approximately 28 whole-time firefighters for a cost of £1 million. For each million pounds that we have, we can employ 28 whole-time firefighters. That roughly equates to one whole-time appliance being crewed by firefighters 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. That million pounds is roughly how much it costs us to crew one whole-time fire appliance 24 hours a day. As John Scott mentioned, each 1 per cent pay rise across the service equates to approximately £2 million of additional costs to us. I hope that that sets out the kind of quantum of the numbers. I hope that you will appreciate that, in making those savings, however, it might not translate into riddly into firefighter numbers because we might change the duty pattern that firefighters are working. However, that of itself is not without consequences, because clearly on-call firefighters would need to mobilise to stations, to mobilise to incidents and stuff like that. All of those things will have impacts upon communities, but it is not as easy just to translate a numerical figure into firefighter numbers because of the different duty systems that we have. That is helpful. On the subject of staffing numbers, we heard earlier from Police Scotland who predicted that there would have to be around £4,500 cut in staff in order to service a 5 per cent pay award. Have you done any modelling that would allow you to look at the implications of a similar pay award? We have not done that modelling based on pay award. As John Scott alluded to earlier, what we have modelled within our financial modelling is a 5 per cent pay award for this year across all staff groups that we have modelled. We have modelled that again for next year, and then that pay award is moving back down to 2 per cent for the years thereafter. That is an indication of where inflation may track. That is how we have got to that overall figure of £29 million to £43 million by the end of the resource spending review period. I can tell you that if we were to translate that into whole-time firefighter numbers proportionately to how much we spend on operational costs, it would equate to approximately 780 whole-time firefighter posts that would be the proportionate reduction. That is essentially between 20 and 25 per cent of our whole-time firefighter workforce. That is simply modelling that has been done and if we applied it proportionately across the whole organisation, that is the scale of the numbers that we would be talking about across that period. That is helpful. It was on the issue of pay. The Fibrigate Union will lobby the Parliament tomorrow, and as you will know, it is currently having a consultative ballot on the 5 per cent pay offer, and the recommendation is for a rejection of that 5 per cent. The case they make, because I am sure that you are well aware, is that they have received year on year real terms pay cuts for 15 years. Over the past decade, there have been significant job cuts, and we all know the inflation rates, so it is not that they have a bad case or an unreasonable case. How are you going to make decisions about that? Is there going to be the cabinet secretary involved in that, or how will you make decisions about how you deal with this pay issue? It clearly is a massive issue for the people that you employ. Thank you for that. You are right. We have different negotiation mechanisms for different staff groups in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. I will start with support staff. For support staff, we negotiate directly with the support staff unions, which are unison and unite for support staff pay awards. We made the MF5 offer, which is currently out for ballot at the moment, and support staff unions have recommended acceptance as the best negotiated package to their members. We are expecting that ballot to close imminently, so we will know the outcome of that ballot for support staff. In terms of uniform staff, that is negotiated through the National Joint Council for Local Authority Fire and Rescue Services at a UK national level. Although we have a seat at the NGIC table, it is not entirely within the gift of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in terms of what that pay offer is, because that is done at a UK national level. The original offer that was made back in June was 2 per cent, which was purely based on affordability of services across the UK. We then engage with Scottish Government, we produced a business case for Scottish Government and they increased our funding for this year in order to be able to support us through the NGIC being able to make a 5 per cent offer. That 5 per cent offer has been made now at a UK national level. You are right that the Fire Brigades Union Executive Council has rejected that offer and they are going to ballot, which starts on Monday, recommending to their members to reject that offer, but it would be inappropriate for me to comment in terms of anything else in relation to that particular negotiation, while there is a ballot that is about to take place that is about to commence on Monday. Perhaps if we could be kept advised in relation to this issue, because it is obvious that that would be helpful? I am just going to open up questions to members now and I am going to bring in Jamie to begin with and then I will bring in Russell Finlay. I have listened to what you have said carefully about that it is not as easy with your service to equate reductions in budget to reductions in headcount due to the nature of the roles that people have and the types of contracts that they have, but for the purpose of budget scrutiny we will have to perform some type of analysis. So maybe we could work on a full-time equivalent type arrangement, which is not necessarily equivalent to how you operate, but it certainly gives us an ability to equate people and numbers. If the proposed budget comes to fruition as a budget rather than as a forecast warning, could you try and help us quantify this in terms of people, front-line people? I think that what the public are probably most interested in is how many firefighters will be available, how many stations will remain open or have to close, how many fewer vehicles will be there to service, how many crew will be on a particular job or call-out. So it is that front-line service that I am keen to dig below the surface. What would that mean to front-line firefighting in Scotland if that came to pass? So the figure that I gave you earlier, if we applied the reductions that we will need to make across our budget proportionately across all parts of the organisation, then that would equate to approximately 780 full-time firefighter posts at the moment. So that is essentially the 64 per cent of the budget that we currently go on, operational front-line staff costs, would equate to roughly about 780 full-time firefighter posts. That probably equates roughly to about 30 full-time fire appliances. We currently have within the service 116 full-time fire appliances and we have also got 345 on-call appliances as well, so that gives you an order of magnitude that we would be talking about probably if we were to apply the savings proportionately across the organisation, we would probably be talking about 25 per cent of the whole time firefighting establishment that would not become affordable by the end of the four-year period. Right. So even on a flat-cash settlement, have you factored in a pay rise or not? Does that include a percentage pay rise in that calculation? So that is based on the £43 million, which is the higher end of our modelling, and that modelling is based on a 5 per cent pay rise for £22.23, a 5 per cent pay rise for £23.24 and then a 2 per cent pay rise thereafter across the remainder of the resource spending review period. So those are the pay rises that we have factored in for modelling purposes only, and clearly, as John has already alluded to, those pay rises, whether it is either directly with support staff, unions for support staff or through the National Joint Council, those pay rises are negotiated on an annual basis, but those are the numbers that we have factored in to our model for financial modelling purposes. Okay, so on the modelling of a potential 5 per cent pay rise annual for the next couple of years, which, as we already know, sounds like it's being rejected at this stage, so it could be more, and the flat-cash settlement you'd be looking at equivalent reduction of over 780 full-time equivalent firefighters and around 30 full-time appliances out of 120. That's quite a big reduction. What are the consequences of that? So what we are doing at the moment is we're doing modelling. We've got our community risk index model, which is a GIS system that we've got that we have plugged a lot of data into. We've plugged our historical incident activity data into it, because although where incidents haven't occurred in the past necessarily says where they'll occur in the future, it gives us a good approximation of risk across the country in terms of where we've got a predominance of certain incident types. We have also looked at population data, so we've used the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, we've used software systems such as Mosaic, so we've got a really good understanding of risk across Scotland. We are then able to overlay our current disposition of resources against that risk map, and then we can understand from that modelling what specific impacts would be of either changing duty patterns at a particular location or removing appliances or closing stations at particular locations. Now we will always do that on a risk-assessed basis, and we will always do that in a way to try and minimise the impacts upon community and firefighter safety as best we can. But ultimately, if the flat cash settlement turns into budget reality, and as I've already said, it will undoubtedly impact upon front-line firefighter numbers, then that will undoubtedly increase across the piece in particular areas where we make changes, things like response times to incidents, potentially the initial speed and weight of response to incidents. That's an inevitability. We will undertake specific impact assessments at a local level on those specific local proposals that we would make for change, we would engage with stakeholders, we would consult with stakeholders on that, we would always seek to minimise that, but ultimately, if we are to change our crewing arrangements as I've outlined or we are to remove resources, it would ultimately impact upon our response times, but we will always benchmark that and provide information to communities to benchmark that against our median response times, so we understand how that will impact against our median response times across Scotland. That's quite a jargon-filled response and I understand the reason for that, but I think what we're looking for in the committee, as you've heard in the last session, from front-line services from Canada, what does this mean in layman's terms for people? Are we talking about delays to responses, prioritising call-outs, the closure of stations, incidents not being responded to? What does it actually mean to the general public, because they're the ones that are worried and concerned about it? Absolutely, apologies if I used jargon, I was unintentional. Essentially, what I'd outlined earlier is more, very rarely within the fire and rescue service do we, so we always respond to every emergency within Scotland that we're called out to. Very rarely do we not send an immediate response to an incident, we tend to do it when we experience spate conditions, so if we've got particular storm conditions, we're about to approach the bonfire season, we tend to have to start calls at times like that because the demand outweighs our capacity, but generally speaking, we don't delay response, so we wouldn't anticipate being in a position where we are delaying a response and stacking calls and not responding to calls immediately, other than those situations, but what it would mean is that it may be that the attendance time for appliances is because there is a lesser disposition of appliances or we might be moving from some appliances that are currently crude on a full-time basis to be crude by on-call firefighters and there's a natural delay for on-call firefighters to arrive at the station, so generally speaking, across the piece, we would expect our attendance times to incidents to increase proportionately to how much resource we have to remove from service. Can I, just before I bring Russell Finlay in, just on this issue about having choices around where you make these cuts and how you configure that across your service provision, so we know for example that during Covid fire death numbers increased and there was perhaps a correlation, I think I'm right in saying that there was a correlation between that and areas of deprivation, so does that mean that you would have to think carefully and maybe even use modelling or data to inform in a geographical context where and how you make those cuts, I hope I'm not straying too much of budget, but I think it's maybe important as Jamie was saying in terms of public confidence how those cuts might be, how they might look. Yeah, so you're absolutely right that there are links between deprivation and vulnerability and susceptibility to all manner of unintentional harm, including fire. And as I mentioned earlier, we've got our community risk index model that gives us a good indication at the moment of what population risk looks like across Scotland. We're adding to that at the moment as well to look at physical risks such as flooding risks, wildfire risks and things like that, so we've got a good understanding of risk across Scotland and any decisions that we make will always be made with the view to minimising the impacts upon community safety as best we can, so it will absolutely be risk assessed and any significant changes we make will be subject to their own impact assessments and will be subject to full stakeholder consultation and engagement as well. Thanks very much indeed. I'll bring in Russell Finlay and then I'll bring in Runa Mackay after that. Thank you very much. I think first of all it's good to see senior officers here today, I think firefighters and the public will be grateful for that. And I've been really quite taken aback by some of the figures. You know you don't really imagine that it cost a million pounds to effectively crew a single fireplanes 24 hours, 365 days a year and obviously you face some very tough choices. There's one quick question that I'd like to pick up on something Mr Thomson raised and that was the inability to hold reserves. It might be academic in the short term given the budgets but is that something that can be fixed or something you've addressed for the Government? It's something that we are seeking to understand. I guess when we were going back in history in 2013, prior to that we were local authority based and we had the reserves and the ability to hold reserves. When we became a single service, we no longer have the ability to borrow and also we don't have the ability to hold reserves so that's why I was making that point. I guess the point of reserves is more around it can help smooth any delivery, especially when we're talking about any potential changes in crew models or stations. It helps to move the overall position but ultimately we would have to work with Government and say look here's our savings plans, it might be a bit lumpy, can you help and support us effectively acting as a reserve? Is there any discussion about having that ability? Not that ability. More generally, you also mentioned 23 scenarios that have been modelled, which sounds like the equivalent of wandering through a smoke-filled room. These presumably are one extreme to the other and everything in between. Do they include worst-case scenario things like ending the policy and no compulsory redundancies or is that off the table? We are following Government policy and that is no compulsory redundancy. So I guess to highlight therefore that the fastest you can go in terms of pace is linked to the retirees and the number of people that are leaving the organisation. So that particular policy is set in stone as far as the service is concerned? That's my understanding. I think from my perspective, the no compulsory redundancy policy that's a Scottish Government policy that the service supports is of great comfort to our staff. It provides our staff not just within the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service but across the public sector with a great deal of reassurance and it's certainly not something that clearly if it's a policy decision for Scottish Government, that's up to Scottish Government but it's certainly not something within the service that I would advocate for because I think it gives a great deal of reassurance and comfort and security to our staff. Okay, thank you. I'll bring in Rona Mackay and then I think Jamie Greene might be wanting to come back in. Thank you, thanks, convener. Good afternoon. Just a quick question for John. First of all, has there been any financial planning done on the fact that it's been mentioned that possibly community stations might need to close et cetera, subject to risk assessment? Is there any planning done on what revenue that could bring in if you were able to sell those premises? Is that within your ownership? What could be brought in from that? What could be gained? I suppose the reality is that we have not identified specific stations at this stage and what we have probably looked at is more in a general context. What would that mean in terms of number of stations? What would that mean in terms of crew and models et cetera? It's not until you get to the specifics of what's happening. But there would be revenue to be able to come in from that. Absolutely, so just to put it in context, and Ross mentioned that there was that single pump station cost us about £1 million. Typically 80% of that is the cost, in fact. It might be slightly more, but I'll get in check with my numbers. But there is then a property running cost and yes, we would be able to save those costs going forward and also potentially realise a capital receipt, which would help us from our backlog in terms of capital investment. We've highlighted the fact that we have a growing backlog of capital investment. Our capital backlog at the moment is just over £492 million. I'm going to ask a question, which I appreciate is probably difficult to answer, but from everything that's been said and if cuts need to be made in the way that you're describing, what area would be impacted most, do you think, just in a general sense, if you had to make certain cuts? Are you talking about the area of the organisational geographical area? As I mentioned, we would always try and protect our front-line operational resources, but similarly to Police Scotland, we've been on a journey of reform as well for the past 10 years, and that's probably resulted in us removing something in the order of about £482 million out of the cost base of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service over the past 10 years, so that's if you basically take our budget over that period and compare it with legacy service budgets if they had been subject to inflation over that time period. What that's resulted in is us being an extremely lean organisation, so while we will always seek to make savings across the whole of the organisation, we're a very lean organisation. We've got pretty lean back-office functions. Police Scotland spoke earlier about seeking opportunities for shared services and collaboration, and we're absolutely seeking those opportunities with Police Scotland, Scottish Ambulance Service and other partners. Unfortunately, because we're quite a lean organisation already in those areas, it's quite difficult to make substantial savings there, so there will be quite an impact on our front-line operational resources because we don't have the ability to make any significant savings from elsewhere within the organisation. And because of the nature of our operational, we spoke earlier about whole-time resources, so full-time resources, which are predominantly in more urban areas across the central belt of Scotland. Whole-time resources, because we are employing people on a full-time basis, take up more of our budget than on-call resources, where we pay people, on-call firefighters provide fantastic services to their communities, but they're paid a retaining fee and then paid for training and to attend incidents and things like that. It's a less expensive model, so when we look for substantial savings to be made, unfortunately, where we can make those savings is more from the whole-time elements of our service than from the on-call elements of our service. Fulton, do you want to ask a follow-up to this? Thanks a lot. I've got some questions later, but one of the questions that I've got actually falls on directly from Rona. I should say good afternoon as well, so thanks to the convener for allowing me to take it in. When you're talking about the on-call crew, and I know that your submission, and you've spoken about this, has already said that how stations are crewed is a possibility. This is something that, even before the current situation that we find ourselves in, I had some queries about, and I've done a bit of work around the Cote d'Ike, or Cote Bridge fire station, around the current situation. You've already answered Rona McIather, but I wonder what the on-call service sounds like really helpful, the fire service, but what difficulties does that bring, what risks is associated with that, because that's certainly what I've heard from those who are at it. Is it a less responsive service? Does it come with a greater risk of something going wrong? Good afternoon, committee. The on-call colleagues provide an exceptional level of service across Scotland, particularly in our remote rural communities. It's an old model, and it is increasingly difficult for us to resource that model. There's a number of societal changes that are reflected across the world in terms of provision of on-call staff. Migration of staff from rural areas to urbanised areas reduces the ability to recruit from those communities. We've got a huge amount of work on going at the moment to try and bolster our on-call programme. We've got a programme of work that looks to improve the attraction and retention of on-call staff, but it's not without its challenges. As I said, we're doing a lot of work around that. We also have a youth engagement scheme that we're rolling out across Scotland at the moment. We see that as a pathway for young people to perform an interest in the service, join the on-call and hopefully a pathway into the whole time as well to try and bolster that on-call. The on-call is and remains a challenge, not just for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, but for all services across the world, as I say. Thanks very much, and that does save one of my questions later on. I'll bring in Jamie Greene, and then I'll bring in Colette Stevenson. I hope that I'll open up Colette's line of questioning in more detail, but I just wanted to kick it off with the... Obviously, we're looking at the budget forecast, so flat cash settlement for the next couple of years, which obviously will present challenges, as you've indicated, but is it fair to say that, even before that announcement, we still had problems with funding and cash settlements? My understanding is that, as far back as 2018, Audit Scotland identified a huge backlog of capital investment in the service, which I presume results from years of capital under investment. Where were we at before we got to where we are today? Surely it's all very well looking ahead at what you might need to cut now if these budgets come to pass, but even if these budgets don't come to pass, even if you are offered more cash, capital or resource by the Government, and you're not in the scenario planning that you've identified today, that doesn't address the issue of the huge backlog of capital investment, which, as we know, clearly puts the health, wellbeing and safety of firefighters into jeopardy, given some of the stories that we've heard in the media in recent months. Where were we at up until now? How did we get to that point? Why were things so bad in the first place? Thanks very much, Mr Greene. You're right that we have Audit Scotland, back in 2018, described our capital backlog as insurmountable. Because of what Audit Scotland said at the time, we needed a sustained period of about three years of having approximately £80 million invested in our capital, and then it would be able to drop off to about £50 million. However, clearly we've not had capital allocations of that magnitude. Our current capital allocation is £32.5 million per annum, and, as John mentioned earlier, the spending power of that at the moment is a lot less than it was even 12 months ago. We heard, John, speaking earlier, about 30 per cent inflation and construction costs and things like that at the moment. We undertook, earlier on, towards the end of last year, last calendar year and to this year, we undertook a risk-based assessment of our capital needs. Our capital needs essentially cover our community fire stations, our vehicle fleet and our equipment. Our assessment was that we had almost a £500 million backlog in terms of our capital at that time. Our assessment was that we would need to invest £63 million per annum for the next 10 years in our capital in order to make good that particular deficit. However, as you say, that is through decades' worth of insufficient investment in our capital portfolio. Within our submission, the most pressing concern that we have is that we have 14 stations at the moment, a construction method that has reinforced autoclave aerated concrete, 14 stations that have essentially taken remedial action to safeguard them at the moment, but essentially in the long term will require those stations to effectively be rebuilt. Based on previous estimated costs, that would be to a cost of about £70 million. Clearly, that would be increasing with the current inflationary pressures. Those stations alone need to be replaced because of a safety concern with the previous construction methods would cost us £70 million alone. We are very much taking a risk-based approach to how we invest our capital money at the moment because it is insufficient to meet our needs. Quite literally, we did not fix the roof while the sun was shining. In some cases, the roofs have fallen down in fire stations. That must present a huge challenge and risk. 14 stations is a lot to not be in satisfactory condition. There is no wonder that the unions are up in arms over this. It sounds unacceptable to working conditions for some, but half a billion quid is a lot of cash backlogged. That is when inflation was low, when construction costs were low and when budgets were going up, and now we are staring in the face of the opposite at the moment. It seems very unlikely that you will ever get that amount of money. If you are not getting what you asked for when times were good, how are you going to get 62 million when times are tough? What would you request to the Government to be given what we are talking about today in terms of cash budgets? We believe that our requirement for capital per annum is £63 million. That is what we believe that we require based on our risk-based assessment of our current estate, our current fleet of vehicles and our current equipment. We are always seeking to make improvements to our vehicles and to our equipment, whether that be to support our low-carbon initiatives or whether it is to improve community and firefighter safety. For example, over the past couple of years, we have replaced all of our hydraulic rescue equipment, which have petrol-driven generators and hydraulic hoses with battery-operated equipment, which is better for the environment, safer for firefighters and safer for members of the public when we are using that equipment. That costs us something in the order of about £4 million. It is extremely difficult for us to make those improvements, although the existing capital budget that we have is being used to make good properties. One thing that we are doing, and Police Scotland spoke about it earlier, is that we are, wherever possible, collaborating with Police Scotland, Scottish Ambulance Service and other partners. We have just over 50 of our stations, and we have got either Ambulance or Police Scotland or another partner. I live across the road from one. Utilising, so we take these collaborative opportunities. We are not just doing that in terms of our front-line operational premises, we are also doing that for our corporate buildings as well. The way that people have worked now is vastly different to three years ago. We have got an agile working policy for all of our support staff or those staff that do not need to come into the workplace on a daily basis. We are currently reviewing our corporate building requirements based on the fact that people are working more agilely at the moment. We are doing that with partners so that we can make better use of our partner properties from a non-operational perspective. We are doing all that we can in order to ameliorate some of the problems that we have got ourselves, but, ultimately, we still require significant capital investments within the organisation. Can I just bring in Russell? I think that you are a very quick follow-up. Well, it is kind of connected, but there are a couple of questions, so you want to go first. Okay, collect, and then I will bring you in, Russell. Okay, thanks very much. Good afternoon. I am notwithstanding the basic backlog that ESA is dealing with in terms of capital, obviously that flat cash settlement is going to have an impact on the fire service, in terms of your ability to put more investment into the likes of your estate, as you have touched upon, the fleet as well, improving digital IT and whatnot. I wonder if you can give more detail on the significant impact that it will be and the particular risks that are involved in areas because you are not upgrading and because you are not improving current systems. I can take that in two aspects, first of all, the resource budget aspects. We have already spoken about potential impacts on front-line service delivery. It is also very difficult, quite a lot of new initiatives, particularly those that require new ways of working, new IT systems. We have some quite ageing IT systems. A lot of those systems that can make organisations operate more efficiently and effectively require some upfront investment. It is difficult for us to have resources to be able to make investments, to make improvements, to make subsequent efficiencies within the organisation from a resource perspective. We are currently looking at all of our major change projects at the moment and reviewing their viability going forward, because we may not be able to invest as much as we would like to within them, from a capital perspective. As I have already mentioned, we have quite a significant capital backlog. Basically, we are having to use the money that we have to amend within stations rather than improving our portfolio of properties. We have been able to invest approximately £10 million over the past few years in green ways of working, whether it is appliances, whether it is on stations, but that is reliant on additional ring-fenced money from the Scottish Government, which is very welcomed. However, we cannot make those sorts of improvements within our core capital budget. We have also got concerns regarding dignified facilities for all staff and visitors to a number of our premises across Scotland. We have also got concerns that are starting to become more apparent in terms of occupational cancer associated with firefighting and the ability for firefighters to be able to appropriately decontaminate within our premises when they come back from incidents and things like that. We do not just require capital investment to be able to maintain what we have currently got because of a lack of dignified facilities within some of our premises, because of a lack of ability for firefighters to clean themselves properly when they come back from incidents. That makes it necessary for us to be upgrading our existing premises. Never mind just maintaining the existing premises and the existing conditions. Those are all things that we would love to be able to invest more money in, but it becomes more challenging when we have such a challenge across our capital budget. I commend on that. You touched on it as well, John, because the fact that you do not have the ability to borrow. On the capital backlog and that, have you got the ability to lease rather than capital outright purchase, in which case it would be shown on your balance sheet as a completely different, rather than capital as such? Yes, so we could undertake a lease or a purchase arrangement. However, there is also a change in the accounting standards around that, which means that it becomes part of your balance sheet and we have to have the capital to cover it. Even though it is a purchase or done through a lease, it would effectively be capitalised and it would have the same impact. It would just have to be funded through our capital programme. Sorry, but it would probably lengthen your capital in terms of your budget going forward? Yes, but you have to capitalise the whole life cycle of the actual lease period and that would then be represented on your balance sheet and we would have to undertake it. In essence, what I am saying in a cumbersome accounting way, it makes no real difference whether we lease or purchase in terms of the impact on our capital funding effectively. I am just mindful of the time and I have some other members wanting to come in on this topic of discussion. I am going to bring in Katie, because I do not think that you have asked any questions yet of our fire service panel, and then I am going to bring in Pauline. If there is time, I will bring in yourself and Russell. Katie, first. I wanted to pick up on the issue about the extensive research that is now on the carcinogenic effect of fire particles and some of the implications for the estate. Indeed, some of the legal implications for the fire service and the duty of care that you have towards the people that you employ. My understanding is that there are significant numbers of stations where there is an adequate showering or toiletry. I know that you have referred to this, or indeed even a proper fresh water supply. Can you give us more detail about that? I think that there are legal obligations in terms of your duty of care towards staff and as more information becomes available. I understand that a lot of work has been done abroad and a lot of research is available that shows that there is a significant link between exposure to fire particles and various forms of cancer. Is that something that you could expand on in terms of the needs to upgrade the estate that you have now? The first and probably the most important thing is that it is an issue that we take extremely seriously within the organisation. We have a contaminants working group that we have created to look at the issue, and we are working closely with the Fire Brigades Union on it. Indeed, we will have some sessions next week, where one of the four most academics in this field is coming to Scotland. I think that she is visiting us and the Parliament next week, as well, sponsored by the Fire Brigades Union. We are very supportive of that work. What we have done to date is that we have audited all of our stations, so we understand what the current picture is in terms of our ability to enable firefighters to decontaminate appropriately when they come back to station. In some cases, that is a combination of technical solutions on stations, but practical application, one-way systems and things like that. We are looking at all of our premises and how we can devise something that is appropriate to each premises. You are right, that we have a small number of stations that do not have running water at them. We have got specialist decontamination wipes that we provide to those stations so that firefighters can undertake decontamination when they come back from station. It is an area that is of a real priority for us. We are doing a lot of work in this regard, a lot more to do, but we absolutely see it as a priority in our working very closely with the Fire Brigades Union. You are on it. I have been told that there are over 100 stations where there is not sufficient showering or toileting. Do you think that that is correct? Are you able to come forward with a cost of what the resource implication is to undertake this upgrade work for these specific reasons? Yes. It is not a figure that I would disagree with in terms of that number of stations. We have individual costs for those elements. However, all of that is when we talk about our current assessment of £630 million backlog on our capital. All of those are taken into account within that. We have individual figures for those individual elements. I do not have them to hand, but please be assured that all of those issues are wrapped up within the overall risk-assessed approach that we are taking to our capital investment, and it is included within that £630 million. Would you agree that that work has to be a priority? I am sure that there is a whole range of upgrading work that ideally would want to take place on the estate, but that particular work has to be a priority. In terms of capital spend, it would be useful to get as much information on that as possible in terms of that particular tranche of work that is necessary for the reasons given. I would certainly wholeheartedly agree that it is a priority, and I am more than happy to provide some additional detail to the committee if that would be the case. Thank you very much. I am now going to bring in Pauline McNeill. Good afternoon to the panel. I just wanted to go back very briefly to the issue of pay. You told my colleague Katie Clark that the pay negotiations were obviously taking place at the NGIC at national level. There is talk of a 5 per cent increase, and Katie Clark already said that it looks like that slightly to be rejected, but what I wanted to ask you was if a figure is arrived at by the NGIC, whether it is 5, 6 or whatever that percentage is, do you simply have to implement that figure if the NGIC makes that decision and that comes off your existing budget? I know that you said that you have a seat around the table on that, but essentially that decision could be made in the national forum that could be a figure that you would just have to implement regardless of what that was. Yes. Whatever the NGIC agrees, the NGIC is a group that is made up of employers and employee representatives. The employee representatives on the NGIC negotiating body is made up of the Fire Brigades Union, and then there are employer representatives from across the UK of which Scotland has a seat on that group. However, to answer your question very simply, yes, if there is an NGIC pay rise that is agreed upon, then that would be implemented within Scotland. We have heard similar evidence from the police service that there is virtually no more saying that it could be made. Transformational change in moving to a single service has used up a lot of that room. You said something similar. It sounds like we are hearing almost comparable evidence from the fire service and the police service in relation to whether there is nowhere else to go. My question is whether we have concerns that we might lose fire service officers from the front line if there is no proper payment or settlement that would be satisfactory. Do you have any concerns about retaining firefighters in the long run? We always seek to appropriately reward our staff and retain staff. Our staff provide excellent services to communities across Scotland on a daily basis, so we always seek to retain our staff who are highly valued by the organisation. We have similar challenges to Police Scotland in terms of recent changes to pensions, and that has led to a number of our staff retiring earlier than we had previously anticipated. Indeed, one of the other challenges that we face is that it becomes more difficult now with the changes to pensions to accurately predict when people are likely to retire. Traditionally, people have effectively retired at a certain age or after 30-year service, but that has now become a bit more nuanced. It is difficult to predict retirel rates as an impact on workforce planning across the piece, so we have similar challenges in terms of that. We have people who will leave the organisation as well outwith retirement, but, thankfully, although that occurs, those numbers tend to be fairly low. Most of the people leaving the organisation and taking a lot of years of knowledge and experience with them normally are through retirement, but, as I said, that is becoming more difficult to predict and challenging to manage just because of the recent changes to the commutation factors associated with firefighter pensions schemes. Thank you very much. John, do you want to come in on that? Not on that point, but to pick up on the point that Katie Clark mentioned. It was just to give you a wee bit of clarity around the figure. It is £138 million. We describe it as suitability of our station, so there is the asset condition of our station and then there is the suitability of our station. We obviously have to prioritise on the asset condition, but we also have to consider the suitability of it, and that is for contaminants. The actual figure that we believe is £38 million. I just could not find it quick enough in my paper. I will bring in Fulton before I bring in Russell, just to bring our session to a close. I thank the convener and I thank the sirens for the purpose of the committee. I had a few questions, but some of them have been covered as I said earlier. I had a question about DoD at Scotland report in the 14 stations with serious structural safety issues, but colleagues have covered them, so I can just move on. The only question that I have is one that you might have heard me ask the police service in the last session, and that is about joint up working. If there is a flat-clash settlement for all the services that you are, all integrated, you will work together. What are your thoughts and what are your plans on how that is going to pan out? Do you see it as a situation? I think that what the police were saying earlier was that they expect that a lot of the time when other services including yourselves and other justice partners struggle, they are left to pick up perhaps in areas where they would not normally. Is that how you would see it going? Would it be the police or would you see it actually as yourselves? Would you pick up from the police in some areas? Are there just some general thoughts on that? There are probably two things I would say in relation to that, Mr MacGregor. The first is in terms of collaborative working. Mr Page from Police Scotland earlier mentioned the Blue Light Collaboration Board, which sits underneath the reform collaboration group, which was formed back in 2013 when the police fire reform took place and also includes the Scottish Ambulance Service. We are looking at a whole host of collaborative opportunities to work with partners so that we can mutually look to savings that we might need to make over this period in work collaboratively with one another, whether that is shared premises, whether it is shared services for back-office functions, we are looking at all those sorts of things. What we would also say is that we believe that the Fire and Rescue Service and our firefighters can do more for communities across Scotland. Members might be aware that over a number of years we have been in discussions with the Fire Brigade Union, both at a UK national level but more recently specifically within Scotland in relation to developing the role of our firefighters within Scotland. We have had very fruitful discussions with the Fire Brigade Union, where we have reached a mutually agreeable proposal between the service and the Fire Brigade Union on what a developed role for firefighters could be going forward. We believe that by developing the role of firefighters, both in terms of the types of emergencies that our firefighters attend, but also equally importantly broadening the preventative role of firefighters, because I have a front-line firefighters as well as having a response role of a very important prevention role to play as well. We believe that by developing the role of firefighters we can make additional benefits for communities, we can improve a broader range of outcomes for communities and we believe that positivity from that can resonate across the whole of the public service, not just within the fire and rescue service or the justice portfolio. We believe that investing in the Scottish fire and rescue service, developing the role of our firefighters, appropriately remunerating firefighters and having terms and conditions that reflect that, would be of great benefit to communities and the public sector more broadly as well. I really welcome all that. That is a fantastic piece of work and I think that the Blue Light Collaboration has spoken by both yourself and the police earlier. I think that it is great and should be happening. I guess what I am asking on terms of the budget scrutiny is, and it might be that you are not able to look at this but it is part of your own analysis and your own assessments looking at how other services might be cut or do you just have to leave that to decide, you know, not concentrating that in case, you know, maybe whether the police get an increase or whatever, or do you sit and say, look, the police might be getting cut here. This is how it's going to impact us. Yeah. So, as I say, we're doing that through the Blue Light Collaboration Board where we're looking at, I think there's about nine different thematic areas that we're looking at between ourselves, police and the Scottish Ambulance Service in terms of how we can look particularly across our corporate functions in terms of how we can collaborate, work together so that we can, and as Mr Page said earlier, it may well be that one of the services can make a saving by using services of another service but across the piece we can balance that out. So, we're absolutely looking at how we can work together in order to take a partnership approach to collectively looking at the savings that we need to make going forward. So, what progress? Thanks anyway to that. Can we now do one other very quick supplementary question that's actually just came to me as I've been speaking throughout the course of the committee and that's about the impact of climate change. Now, the reason why I'm asking this today is throughout this committee the day I'm getting a sun that brought me my screen here, I've seen 16 degrees and at certain points today it's actually said that it's a record temperature now that we're in, nearly November and 16 degrees Celsius. That's it, it's turned red now, it must be listening to me. So, at temperature record, so what impact, when you're thinking about your budget going ahead now obviously today, it's maybe not the best example, but the summer there we had with Scotland, you know, use must have been really busy at that point. Is that something, is climate change something that you're actually filtering in to your budgets and your requests of Scottish Government? Absolutely, absolutely, and when the chief talk there are ambitions moving forward to broaden and expand the role of firefighters in Scotland, part of that is that the inevitable response to climate change is going to increase and as you say we've seen over the last few years one-off incidents of flooding of wildfires are becoming much more frequent. So we've invested heavily in a wildfire strategy and we've invested in specialist water rescue teams, but part of the discussions that we're having with the FBU in terms of an expanded role would allow us to expand that capability across Scotland to meet the challenges that will inevitably come of climate change. So yes, we're absolutely focused on that, but again that requires investment for us to meet that demand. Thanks very much, I know that some of that was referred to earlier as well. Thanks again. Thanks for giving me that extra question. And finally Russell. Two very very quick and specific questions about capital, one to do with buildings, one to do with vehicles. Buildings, you're talking about 14 needing rebuilt at a cost of £70 million pounds. I understand right now there's a building that's gone significantly over budget in the region of something like £4 million to £14 million, I don't know if you recognise that and if you do, whether indeed a £70 million budget for 14 new stations is there for in any way realistic. I'll probably ask John to talk about the specifics regarding the £70 million and how realistic that is for those buildings. First of all, the overrun on the one that's happening just now, is that recognised? I don't have the specific McDonald's road. I don't know actually. The figures were 14 to 14 approximately. The cost was about £15 million in terms of McDonald's road. That's not just a station that also included a museum element to it as well and it's obviously a wider facility, a community facility. That was part and partial of some of the things that we talked around, the construction inflation cost that we had. We actually had a number of issues with McDonald's road. Was it £4 million? No, no, no. The original building was never £4 million for McDonald's road, not that I'm aware of. I don't know. I don't know. Approximately, yeah. Would it possibly be helpful to follow that up and write down to provide some information? I'll move on to the vehicle question. You've got a fleet of electric vehicles, cars. Now I understand that they've perhaps not been as used as well as they might have been due to the practicalities of charging and so on. I also see you've just taken possession of an electric fire engine, which was on your Twitter feed. Has that been bought, first of all, the cost of that and second of all, has it been bought primarily for the practical purpose that can serve or has the decision been significantly influenced around environmental considerations? If so, is it the right vehicle for the job? So I'll answer the question. I'll pass over to John in a moment for the electric vehicle fleet generally. I can speak about the electrical fire appliance. It's effectively, what we have done, it's a prototype appliance, although we've purchased it, and it's effectively got exactly the same operational capabilities of a traditional fire appliance that would have an internal combustion engine, but the propulsion mechanism is different. Clearly there's a range in terms of how far it can go, there's a time it can pump for an incident and things like that, that might be different, but in terms of its front-line operational capabilities, it's the same as a traditional fire appliance. We were able to procure it with assistance from Transport Scotland and it's very much a prototype to see how that type of technology could work within the fire and rescue sector. Is it in use just now? It's not in use at the moment, it will be deployed to Cambaslang community fire station once it's in operational service, so it's not actually on the run just now, it's being built and I think it's with our training department at the moment. And this is a bit left field but the photograph of it from the front shows a giant, it's blue and white, it's a saltire. If that was coming up behind a vehicle, it looks more like a haulage vehicle than a fire engine. That wrap will be removed once it goes operational and it will look like any other fire appliance once it's operational. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, John. Just to come back on the figures, it was £660,000 was the kind of tender price around the electric appliance and we received a grant from Scottish Government of £500,000 in relation to that. We've also received additional grant to support the infrastructure because being a fairly significant electric appliance, it requires a higher charge feed, so there's been some additional grant given to us for that infrastructure as well. For a first fire engine, how much would one normally cost? Oh, I think it's under the £500,000. Right, so it's not, it's more but not, double or nothing, yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much for attending. I wonder if I can just maybe finish off just to follow up from Russell Finlay's questions about the faulty RAAC panels and maybe just ask if there can be any follow-up information on that and the potential closure of stations around that and what the implications are for that, so that would be very helpful indeed. Again, thank you very much for your attendance today and we'll just have a short suspension to allow our witnesses to leave. Our next item of business today is to discuss recent correspondence that the committee has received and I refer members to paper number five. The clerks have suggested some ideas of how we may want to take forward the various issues but ultimately that's for us to decide if we decide differently, so I'll take each of the letters in turn now and firstly the letter from Police Scotland on the use of cyber kiosks. Does anybody any members have anything to raise or are we content to agree to the recommendations made? Thank you very much and secondly the letter from the Scottish Prison Service on purposeful activity. Any member wants to? I was to do with the two prisons under SPS control. They are not addressed and I wonder whether we need to seek that from those operators. Maybe we want to write for some clarification on that. Thank you very much. If there's no other points that members wish to raise then that completes our public business for today. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 2 November when we'll continue taking evidence as part of our pre-budget scrutiny process and as previously agreed we'll now move into private session.