POLICE Scotland is facing a £17.5 million black hole after the force massively overspent on staff costs.
Papers released by the the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) ahead of the body’s monthly board meeting said the force underspent by £9.6m in the capital budget but overspent on revenue by £27.1m.
With “strict workforce planning” these staff costs are now being “managed down”, the SPA said.
“At present the organisation is facing an overspend against budget for the year. Further work is now required to manage this forecast downwards over the coming months to bring expenditure back in to line with the budget,” the SPA added.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Douglas Ross said: “This is a startling increase in overspend, and shows that police budgets are starting to spiral out of control.
“It is no secret that Police Scotland are facing budgetary pressures, and there are serious questions about whether they have the resources needed to carry out their job.
“The SNP need to explain why this increase in overspend is happening, and reassure the public that it will not have a knock-on effect to frontline policing.”
Scottish Labour’s Claire Baker said SNP election pledges to protect police budgets had been “nothing more than a cheap sound bite”.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We have committed to protecting the police resource budget in real terms in every year of this Parliament, delivering a boost of £100m by 2021. We have also provided an additional £55m of reform funding in 2016-17.
“The Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland are working on a long-term strategy for a flexible, modern and sustainable police service, building on the recently published strategic policing priorities.”
During the board meeting, Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone defended the force’s response to the attempted murder of two of its officers on Sunday night.
The force was criticised by the Scottish Police Federation, effectively the trade union for rank-and-file officers, who asked why it had taken 12 hours to alert the public that the suspects were still on the run. Arrest warrants have been issued for the suspects.
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