SCOTTISH
POLICE FEDERATION
5 Woodside Place, Glasgow, G3 7QF
MEDIA
RELEASE
The Scottish Police Federation represents all police officers in the
ranks of chief inspector and below, about 15,000 people, over 98%
of all police officers in Scotland.
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Friday
1 February 2008
Budget
Update |
In
response to the Government amendments to the Budget announced yesterday,
Joe Grant, General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation said,
"If
we can recruit an extra 1,000 officers by 2011 we can make real improvements
in the quality of policing. We fully support the Government
amendment and urge MSPs to support it next week. If they do
it will be the most significant commitment to policing in a generation."
NOTE:
Yesterday in Parliament,
the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Development, John
Swinney MSP, tabled an amendment to the Budget which will increase
the funding available for the recruitment of additional police officers.
The amendment will, of course, be subject to approval by the Parliament.
Last
November, Mr MacAskill announced an investment of £54m over
the next three years to support additional recruitment, building capacity
at a national level as well as supporting key retention and redeployment
initiatives. This included direct funding of an additional 500 officers.
As he said at the time, this was a first step towards achieving the
Government's commitment to deliver a more visible policing presence
on Scotland 's streets and make an additional 1,000 officers available
in our communities.
The
Government's amendment, if passed, will see £10m added to the
Police Central Government budget for 2008-09 which, together with
additional amounts of £13m and £17m being made available
in 2009-10 and 2010-11 will allow for the recruitment of a further
500 officers by March 2011. Taken together with the plans already
announced, this means that the Government will be directly funding
the recruitment of an additional 1,000 police officers by March 2011.
The management arrangements for these extra resources will remain
the same as for the first tranche, with the Government directly reimbursing
forces for the additional recruits and overall delivery of the commitment
under the scrutiny of the additional capacity programme board.
For further information contact Lesley Stevenson at 5 Woodside
Place, Glasgow, G3 7QF
Telephone: 0141 332 0901 Mobile: 07967 104173 Fax: 0141 331
2436
Email: lesley.stevenson@spf.org.uk
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