The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 has been a key that has unlocked a door. I truly believe that, before the Christie commission, we talked about partnership but never really did it. We also talked about co-location but, for me, the issue is integration.
I want the policing plan in its next iteration to be embedded in the local outcome improvement plan, and I want it to sit under the umbrella of community planning. As you know, it has a top-down and bottom-up approach through locality planning, which ensures that there is a voice right across communities, particularly the voice of those in communities who are facing challenges.
We in the north-east will be embarking on opportunities to integrate local services over the next year and a half. What has happened in Peterhead is perhaps an example of that. That move, which was approved by the Scottish Police Authority board, is not about co-locating the local authority with the police but about integrating services to ensure that when a problem comes in, we look at whether it is a social work issue, a housing issue, a police issue or a health issue instead of trying to work out the best person to deal with it. It is a truly different way of doing business.
However, if you are going to do that, you cannot have a siloed policing plan sitting to one side. I can speak only for the north-east division, but I would suggest that the current plans point towards delivering services in partnership. We deliver the counter-terrorism strategy—or CONTEST—road safety and so on in partnership. There has to be a new and more efficient and effective way of doing our business, and for me it is all about integration. Co-location does not go far enough. Through integration and the alignment of the policing plan with local outcome improvements, we will truly make a difference.
We have talked about demand, and that might be the catalyst. We are all shrinking as organisations, and we are all being challenged by budgets, but we can truly do our business in a more innovative way. The time is right for that and some tests of change are happening in the north-east.