Thematic inspection of road policing in Scotland

1. HMICS has committed to a thematic inspection of Operational Support Division (OSD) during the period of our Scrutiny Plan 2022-2025. OSD is a national division within Police Scotland that provides a number of different specialist services across the country.

2. Before publishing our scrutiny plan, we conducted a consultation and engaged in discussion with key stakeholders and partners. The main themes that emerged during our scrutiny planning consultation were road policing, air support and armed policing. During the scoping for this inspection, it became apparent that it would be beneficial to adopt a phased approach to the inspection. This first phase of our inspection focused on road policing.

3. The aim of this thematic inspection was to assess the state, effectiveness and efficiency of road policing arrangements in Scotland.

4. Road policing services across Scotland are delivered by local policing officers, and by officers and staff from the road policing department. The road policing department is part of OSD and provides a wide range of specialist road policing functions across Scotland.

5. In 2014, only 10 months after the creation of Police Scotland, HMICS conducted a Thematic Inspection of road policing in Scotland. This inspection made five recommendations to Police Scotland and one recommendation to the SPA.

6. In 2020, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published Roads policing: Not optional – An inspection of roads policing in England and Wales. This report found that the importance of roads policing in England and Wales had been in decline for some years with less enforcement of drink/drug driving and seatbelt offences, alongside an increase in deaths attributed to these offences. The report made 13 recommendations to improve the effectiveness of road policing in England and Wales.

7. The Police Scotland Strategic Threat and Risk Assessment (STRA) 2023/28 document aims to ‘provide a risk based assessment of the threat, risk and harm, complexity of demand and organisational challenges/opportunities facing police Scotland to inform the Operational and Organisational Policing Priorities and recommendations’. The STRA states that Police Scotland remains committed to working with key partners to reduce those killed or seriously injured as a result of road traffic collisions (RTC), by targeting the identified contributory factors and priority risk groups.

8. In 2021, Transport Scotland published Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2030, which set out an ambitious long-term goal for road safety where no one dies or is seriously injured on the roads by 2050. This framework states that road safety will remain a key priority for Police Scotland, and that senior police officers are involved in the Strategic Partnership Board, which was established to govern the framework.

9. The road safety framework identified speed, motorcyclists, young drivers, older drivers, cyclists and pedestrians as the priority focus areas for further consideration.

10. Our inspection sought to establish how effectively Police Scotland is contributing to the STRA and to the road safety framework, as well as to local policing plans across Scotland

11. We sought to examine how enforcement and preventative approaches are being best used to make Scotland’s roads safer. We also considered how effectively technology and innovation are being used.