Strategic review of the Scottish Police Authority

Scope and exclusions

We considered the fundamental role of the SPA, set against the original policy intentions that created it, and subsequent legislation. The review involved some benchmarking against other jurisdictions and models of governance, and best value. Observation of SPA committees formed part of this review, but was limited to:

• Board Meeting
• Audit, Risk and Assurance
• Resources Committee
• Policing Performance Committee
• Complaints and Conduct Committee
• People Committee
• Legal Committee
• Exceptional Circumstances Committee.

We considered the role of the SPA at a strategic level and did not inspect day-to-day operations in detail. The SPA self-evaluation that formed the basis of this review is limited to its corporate functions. The SPA Forensic Services function was not inspected in this review. However, we took into account our previous inspection findings on the effectiveness of the SPA Forensics Committee. The ICVS function was also not inspected in the review.

Methodology

We provided assurance that the footprint of this inspection would be carefully managed, making use of existing evidence as much as possible so as not to duplicate work already undertaken or planned. As such, we committed to using the self-evaluation conducted by the SPA, based around the seven best value areas. Self-evaluation and evidence relating to board member development, the SPA improvement journey, and the quality of the self-evaluation process and quality of the evidence supplied, also formed part of our review work.

As part of the inspection process, we engaged with key stakeholders, conducted interviews, observed meetings and reviewed documents.

Between December 2023 and March 2024, we:

• Identified a single point of contact in the SPA to support the review process and to facilitate appropriate access to people and information
• Liaised regularly with the SPA and maintained ongoing engagement with other key stakeholders
• Analysed the self-evaluation and other evidence provided by the SPA and considered relevant documentation in the public domain. Where possible, we minimised the amount of further documents requested
• Conducted a small number of interviews with key stakeholders within the SPA and Police Scotland. These were conducted with the aim of providing further information to fill any gaps and provide context and further detail where required
• Continued to observe SPA committee meetings, and evaluate SPA committee effectiveness statements
• Conducted additional document reviews where relevant, including benchmarking against other models of self-evaluation/best value.

In validating the SPA self-evaluation, we considered:

• The relevance, sufficiency and reliability of data and evidence gathered and what this reveals about strengths and weaknesses
• Outcomes from the implementation of strategy, policy, specific operations, tests of change or other improvement activity; how was this evaluated; what was the learning; was learning cascaded to others to support ongoing improvements
• Evidence of assessing progress and impact of strategy, policy or plans
• The impact that strengths and weakness have on service delivery.