Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Kaitlin Dryburgh, policy officer at Common Weal. To receive the newsletter direct to your inbox every week click here.
RURAL areas already pose a logistical and recruitment nightmare when it comes to delivering public services, and it’s about to get worse.
To meet a costly tax bill, Police Scotland has announced an occupancy charge for officers living in police accommodation. In a very short-sighted move, officers could be slapped with a bill of anything from £200 to £600, according to 1919 magazine.
This newly imposed charge could push officers out of remote and rural areas, and the Scottish Police Federation believes this is a very real threat. A survey conducted by the federation suggests that 38% of respondents living in accommodation would look to transfer, while a further 50% say they would also consider moving, having not budgeted for the charge.
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The lack of forward planning and safeguarding for the future is shocking. In most professions which struggle to recruit in remote areas, their number-one problem is housing – available, suitable and affordable housing. Why would the Scottish Government make the mistake of pulling this incentive?
Remote and rural recruitment is hard so it’s only a certain type of person who can take up a post in these communities. This coupled with most young people wanting to live in more urban areas means there have to be incentives to working in remoteness.
Although Scotland remains one of the only countries within the UK to still own a considerable amount of accommodation for its police (approximately 120 Scottish officers have police accommodation), why should we view this as a tradition forgone? We once used to readily provide housing for professions such as nursing and policing. In healthcare, this was a common occurrence, but now those properties have all been sold and we’re facing staffing issues.
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The Highlands and Islands division already faces heightened pressures. Chief Superintendent Rob Shepherd spoke of the challenges that police officers in rural Scotland face. Working in a small community means everyone knows exactly who you are and it’s more than likely that whatever incident you’re dealing with, you may well know the people involved. There is little chance to fully switch off from the job.
Shepherd also provides the example of an assault on the small island of Benbecula which resulted in the only two officers in the area recalled to arrest and wait overnight with the suspect for the next ferry to Stornoway. This then demanded two officers in Stornoway to make the two-hour journey to meet them. During the almost 20-hour ordeal, no-one was policing Lewis or Harris, and those officers worked a 16-hour shift on a day off. The rural police officer life is a hard one and not everyone is suited to meet the challenges.
Those challenges are of stark contrast to those in Glasgow and this is something Shepherd spends a lot of his time highlighting. Scotland’s police force being centralised isn’t the worst idea in the world – other countries of similar sizes have successfully centralised their police. However, the problem is that policymakers need to understand that the challenges are different. The needs of a city or even a suburb are not the same as in rural Scotland. A study conducted in Edinburgh about a new police initiative might as well have been conducted in a different country if compared to Orkney.
Just like their colleagues at the NHS, delivering policing in rural settings costs more than in other geographical settings, so when national budgets are set in the central belt, this makes the current situation much harder. Although Shepherd covers the Northern Division which makes up 12,000 square miles of land (the biggest beat in the UK), the division only has 3.4% of Scotland’s police officers.
Police Scotland has warned that without an increased budget, it will have to take the tough decision to cut jobs, with some predicting this could be around 800 jobs by April 2024. Although this will put a strain on policing all over Scotland, rural areas cannot ride out that reality. If they were to accept the "fair share" which they do when it comes to budgets, that could mean large areas without any policing. The Northern Division already took a hit in last year's round of budget cuts which saw nine redundancies. Councils then issued a warning that those living within remote and rural communities live with increased risk because of it.
The delivery of public services in these communities does pose unique challenges for policymakers, and they won’t be solved by central belt ignorance. Understanding the barriers to policing in these areas means understanding the housing needs. Employers shouldn’t be naive and believe all they do is provide a salary; for a job like this, benefits and the tools to integrate both job and lifestyle are required. Although it may be a quick cash-raising decision, it could have a detrimental impact on communities in the future.
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