Concerns have been raised over the shrinking numbers of Ayrshire police – after new statistics showed the regional division lost more than 10 per cent of its available officers in one year.
The stats come from Police Scotland’s quarterly report and reveal a drop of 458 cops covering Ayrshire between June 2021 and June 2022.
That’s a decrease from 4,384 to 3,926 and represents a reduction of 10.5 per cent.
MSPs have accused the Scottish Government of treating police officers “with contempt” by ‘failing to honour’ spending commitments they promised for the policing budget.
South Scotland Conservative MSP Sharon Dowey, said: “It is local policing divisions such as Ayrshire that are shamefully bearing the brunt of the SNP’s brutal underfunding of our police force. It is shocking to see such a reduction in local officers in Ayrshire policing division.
“It is hardly surprising, though, when the SNP government have treated our hard-working officers in Ayrshire with such contempt.”
Scottish Conservative shadow justice secretary, and West Scotland MSP, Jamie Greene, said: “These latest figures show a drop more than 450 officers serving Ayrshire in the last year alone, highlighting that policing is no longer an SNP government priority. The Scottish Government need to fix this mess.”
But Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley SNP MSP, Willie Coffey, responded: "Policing numbers overall in Scotland are correctly a matter for the Chief Constable, not the government.
“Crime rates do fluctuate year on year but the overall trend is decreasing crime rates in Scotland since 2007. Over the past year, that downward trend has continued with total crimes recorded by police in Scotland falling by four per cent and crimes against society decreasing by 14 per cent.
“Scotland’s police officer numbers are higher per head than in Tory England where they sacked 20,000 police officers and are only now trying to reverse that mistake.
“If we had followed the Tories' advice we may not even have a police service in Scotland since they vote against the budget that funds the service year on year."
Justice secretary Keith Brown said officer numbers continue to reflect the impact of COP26 and Covid restrictions, which “reduced capacity” to train new recruits at the Scottish Police College.
But he added: “I welcome the fact around 300 new police officers took the oath of office in April and around a further 300 last week – a vocational choice no doubt influenced by the basic starting salary for a constable in Scotland which is currently approximately £5,000 more than that paid to equivalent officers in England and Wales.”
In Ayrshire policing division, there are 73 fewer officers than nine years ago, when SNP ministers created Police Scotland.
The report states that police officer resources are “supplemented by specialist resources” at a regional and national level which each commander “has access to”.
“As well as these specialist resources," the report adds, "the division can also request additional support to police large-scale events or major incidents.”
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