Lack of funds for policing in Scottish budget means Police Scotland will find it harder to fulfil its ambitions for community policing, says Rob Hay, President of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents.
One of the clearest ambitions set out by Chief Constable Jo Farrell has been for Police Scotland to rebuild and strengthen community policing. This means more visible officers, deeper local knowledge, stronger relationships, and earlier intervention to prevent harm rather than simply responding once it has occurred. It is a direction that resonates strongly with public expectation and reflects what communities consistently say they value most from policing. Community policing is the cornerstone of the Scottish policing tradition.
The recently announced Scottish Budget makes that ambition significantly harder to realise – arguably impossible without painful cuts and service reductions in other areas.
This is not a question of leadership intent. The Chief Constable’s plan is coherent, evidence-led and aligned with modern policing practice. It is well-supported by a committed workforce who want to give better service to the public.
The difficulty lies in the widening gap between what is required to deliver that vision and the resources now available. While the policing settlement includes a £90 million uplift, it falls far short of what Police Scotland itself assessed was necessary simply to maintain existing service levels – before any meaningful expansion of community capacity is contemplated.
Community policing is often discussed as if it were primarily a matter of redeployment – moving officers from specialist functions back into neighbourhoods. In reality, it depends on having sufficient overall capacity across the whole system.
Demand arising from serious violence, public protection, cyber-enabled crime, major investigations and public order does not diminish because communities are prioritised. Community policing is one part of the complex ecosystem that is modern policing: Changes in one area affect that system in its entirety. When those pressures intensify, local policing officers are drawn away from their communities, however strong the strategic commitment to keep them there.
The impact of this funding gap is unlikely to be sudden or spectacular. Instead, it will be incremental and cumulative. Community teams will continue to exist, but they will be thinner. Officers will spend more time abstracted to cover events or urgent pressures elsewhere; leaving less time for the proactive engagement, problem-solving and partnership work that make community policing effective. Visibility becomes inconsistent. Continuity is harder to maintain. Local knowledge declines. The preventative benefits that community policing promises are delayed or diluted.
For the public, these changes will be all too familiar: Fewer local officers, slower follow-up, less time for reassurance or early intervention. Over time, the effect becomes chronic. Problems that might once have been addressed early escalate instead. Trust becomes harder to sustain. Demand increases rather than reduces, placing further strain on an already stretched system.
It is also important to recognise that community policing cannot be built on goodwill alone. It requires leadership, training, analytical support and the space for officers to act locally rather than constantly react to crises. These enabling functions are essential to long-term effectiveness, yet they are often the first to be squeezed when budgets tighten. Investment to develop and improve services is cut, placing further inefficiencies and strain across the system. Keep squeezing hard and the balloon will burst; things will go wrong and previous ‘lessons learned’ will be forgotten.
The Chief’s vision is the right one. The risk now is that progress atrophies, any gains are fragile and attempts at transformations stagnate. The public will still see policing, but it will feel more transactional and less connected. This is not the result of diminished ambition, but of constrained capacity.
If community policing is to be more than an aspiration – if it is to form the foundation of public safety in Scotland – then it must be supported by funding that matches the scale of the task. Without that, change is inevitable and the quality of the public service people rely upon will quietly, but steadily, be diminished.