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The aim of this strategic review was to assess the state, efficiency and effectiveness of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) in fulfilling its core role and meeting its statutory obligations.
Additional
Key findings
- The SPA has a strong commitment to self-evaluation to support improvement. Its detailed 2023-24 Best Value self-evaluation exercise has been carried out effectively, involving staff and using appropriate statutory guidance. It has also been transparent in reporting its approach and results and demonstrating clear ownership of the outputs.
- The SPA recognises the need to continuously improve its approach to self-evaluation against best value characteristics. Future exercises can be further strengthened by inviting even wider participation in the self-evaluation exercise, and more fully encompassing all of its roles, including its role in holding Police Scotland to account.
- Stronger leadership, vision and direction than during our last inspection of the SPA in 2019 is now in place, provided by the SPA Board and Chief Executive. Consolidating and building upon this progress will help mitigate any risks associated with future changes in key positions.
- The SPA’s strategies and plans clearly set out what it wants to achieve over the short to medium-term, but further work is required to develop a longer-term vision and sustainable policing model, with longer-term strategic partnership and engagement working clearly integrated.
- The SPA has a wide range of effective partnerships, but could be clearer about the purpose, range, impacts and intended benefits from partnership working and stakeholder engagement. This would help guide future work and the next iteration of its Engagement Strategy. There is also scope for the SPA to strengthen its advocacy role for specific issues, especially where ownership or responsibility is complex or unclear.
- The SPA has appropriate governance arrangements in place. Its decision-making processes are consistent with public sector best practice in being generally open and transparent. The SPA has a strong commitment to self-evaluation to support improvement. Its detailed 2023-24 Best Value self-evaluation exercise has been carried out effectively, involving staff and using appropriate statutory guidance. It has also been transparent in reporting its approach and results and demonstrating clear ownership of the outputs.
- The SPA recognises the need to continuously improve its approach to self-evaluation against best value characteristics. Future exercises can be further strengthened by inviting even wider participation in the self-evaluation exercise, and more fully encompassing all of its roles, including its role in holding Police Scotland to account.
- Stronger leadership, vision and direction than during our last inspection of the SPA in 2019 is now in place, provided by the SPA Board and Chief Executive. Consolidating and building upon this progress will help mitigate any risks associated with future changes in key positions.
- The SPA’s strategies and plans clearly set out what it wants to achieve over the short to medium-term, but further work is required to develop a longer-term vision and sustainable policing model, with longer-term strategic partnership and engagement working clearly integrated.
- The SPA has a wide range of effective partnerships, but could be clearer about the purpose, range, impacts and intended benefits from partnership working and stakeholder engagement. This would help guide future work and the next iteration of its Engagement Strategy. There is also scope for the SPA to strengthen its advocacy role for specific issues, especially where ownership or responsibility is complex or unclear.
- The SPA has appropriate governance arrangements in place. Its decision-making processes are consistent with public sector best practice in being generally open and transparent.
- The SPA is committed to continuous improvement in its governance and accountability, supporting board members with appropriate training and development and identifying
where improvements can be made through annual committee effectiveness reviews. - Board and committee meetings provide a healthy environment for members to offer constructive challenge, with members generally demonstrating effective scrutiny and challenge of reports. However, we identified scope for the SPA to consider more overt, improved and systematic co-ordination across its committees to support scrutiny.
- As an organisation, the SPA has effective, award-winning risk management in place, and regularly reviews its own risk position and reports on this to the Audit Risk and Assurance Committee (ARAC). However, we also found that the SPA could strengthen its oversight and governance of strategic risks and transformational change within Police Scotland.
- We consider that the SPA, both as an organisation and in its scrutiny of Police Scotland, could demonstrate a more consistent focus on outcomes to give a better assessment of how well the strategic aims of both organisations are being met.
- The SPA demonstrates effective financial planning and management, and its Resources Committee provides appropriate and effective oversight and scrutiny of Police Scotland’s financial performance. Its scrutiny of other resource areas (including ICT, fleet and estates) has been less visible and is constrained by a lack of overarching asset management.
- In conjunction with Police Scotland, the SPA urgently needs to refresh its medium-term financial strategy to reflect projected funding settlements from the Scottish Government. The SPA has identified the need for a new policing model – underpinned by a strategic workforce plan to ensure future financial sustainability – and it should keep pushing for this.
- The SPA recognises that both its own and Police Scotland’s performance management and reporting could be improved. This would facilitate more effective scrutiny and provide the public with more easily accessible information.
- The SPA promotes a culture of equality and is working closely with Police Scotland to embed equality into all aspects of working. While demonstrating improvement from its last annual Best Value self-assessment, the SPA recognises the need to better demonstrate how it assesses its equalities impact.
- The SPA is making progress on sustainability issues, driven by its corporate sustainability plan, but recognises that this aspect of best value requires noticeable further improvement. It has identified individuals to lead relevant work and is putting measures in place to monitor progress.