1. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the recent update report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary in Scotland on call handling in Police Scotland. (S5O-00710)

The Scottish Government welcomes the publication of the HMICS update report on call handling and notes the considerable progress that has been made by Police Scotland since the November 2015 HMICS independent assurance review on the same subject. We expect the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland to give careful consideration to the findings of the update report and to continue to work closely with HMICS as it seeks to further strengthen its approach to police call handling.

Given that the report says that limited progress has been made in improving the functionality and accuracy of the gazetteer that is used by control room staff, and that nearly a quarter of all notable incidents arose because the wrong location was chosen by the service adviser, what further action will the Cabinet secretary now take to address those issues? Will he, for example, reconsider at this stage his plans to close the control rooms in Aberdeen and Inverness, which can lead only to an increase in such incidents?

As the member will recognise, overall the report shows that good progress has been made by Police Scotland with regard to the way in which it is taking forward reforms around call handling. Only last week, when giving evidence to the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing, the chief inspector of HMICS praised the work that had been taken forward by police call-handling staff and the service in relation to this area of reform.

The chief inspector of HMICS has identified an issue around the stability of the gazetteer system. There is a practical issue, which is that we have three emergency services that have, historically, all used separate gazetteer systems for the same purpose—the Scottish Ambulance Service has one, the Fire and Rescue Service has one and Police Scotland has one. One of the pieces of work that is being considered is the development of a single gazetteer system that would be used for all of our emergency services, which would ensure that it was as up to date as possible. We expect progress to continue to be made on that area of work.

Overall, following the assurance review, we are now in a situation in which, of the 30 recommendations, 16 have been discharged, 12 have been partially discharged and only two remain open.

On the issue around the intended changes in Aberdeen and Inverness, progress is being made around those pieces of work. The assurance review group met only yesterday to consider the on-going changes at Aberdeen, and further work will be taken forward on that over the coming weeks. It has been demonstrated that good progress is being made regarding the change and transfer in Aberdeen, and the SPA will consider the issue further at its next board meeting on 22 March.

I do not have good news for the member in relation to his call regarding the call centre changes in Aberdeen and Inverness. Obviously, the Inverness call centre is changing to another purpose under Police Scotland. I give the member an assurance that good progress is being made and that the assurance review work that I directed and expect HMICS to continue to make progress on will continue to be monitored.