Police Scotland expects multi-million pound overspend

credit - Steven Straltan

Police Scotland has forecast a total overspend of £11.5m – outstripping last year’s £8.1m budget deficit, the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) has heard.

Revenue costs, which cover day-to-day expenses such as staff costs, are expected to run £21m over budget by the end of 2016/17.

This would be even higher than the £18m revenue overspend in 2015/16.

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Papers lodged today at the SPA set out the scale of the financial difficulties facing the single nationwide police service.

The force said it will mitigate this with bigger-than-expected cuts to its capital expenditure, fixed assets such as buildings which provide a one-off budget boost when disposed of.

Police Scotland’s capital budget is expected to be £9.6m under-budget, about the same as the final capital underspend in 2015/16.

The cashflow problem comes despite First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announcing an £18m uplift in the police budget for 2016/17 to combat terrorism.

James Gray, Police Scotland’s interim chief financial officer, said: “The main reasons for the forecast revenue overspend are a combination of overspends against budget on both police officer and police staff costs, which is now being managed down, as well as an overspend on non-pay costs, as a result of not being able to realise the level of savings that had been targeted from these budgets.

“A significant exercise has been undertaken by Police Scotland to analyse all non-pay budgets on a line-by-line basis to identify where quick savings could be delivered in-year.

“This has resulted in £5 million of savings being identified, which has been factored in to the forecast outturn.

“However, these are not sufficient to meet the budget requirement, contributing towards the overall forecast overspend."