HMICS Corporate plan 2025-28

Our corporate plan sets out our purpose, vision, values, approach and strategic objectives for the next three years, building on over 165 years of history as a credible, competent and collaborative inspectorate that adds value and strengthens public confidence in Scottish policing. By setting out our key objectives for the next three years it will help us to keep on track with what we want to achieve and how we are going to achieve it. We will review this plan regularly to ensure our objectives are supporting us to fulfil our purpose of improving policing across Scotland.

We aim to maximise the impact our work in terms of:

• Providing assurance regarding the governance and delivery of policing services
• Providing quality advice and support
• Assessing the effective use of public resources in policing
• Supporting an increase in public confidence and trust in policing.

We build impact assessment into all our work, from scrutiny risk assessment and planning, through delivery and reporting, to recommendations, follow-up and repeat inspection. At all stages of our planning and inspection processes, we will consider the positive outcomes we want to deliver.

To increase confidence in HMICS, provide visibility and ensure transparency of the scrutiny work we undertake, we produce an annual report. This sets out where we have added value and supported the continuous improvement of policing in Scotland, using success measures such as:

• The reports we deliver in support of our scrutiny plan
• The specific assurances we provide to the public, the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Ministers and the SPA over those aspects of policing we inspect
• The direct support we provide to the SPA and Police Scotland to build on our recommendations to achieve the necessary improvement
• The successful and timely discharge of our recommendations
• The collaborative work and joint inspections we undertake
• The feedback from Scottish Government, SPA and Police Scotland (and other key stakeholders) that our inspection process and its results add value and drive improvement.

HMICS is entirely funded by the Scottish Government. We set out in our annual report how this public money is spent supporting the delivery of our statutory purpose, vision and strategic objectives.