Introduction
Strathclyde Joint Police Board is the Police Authority for the West of Scotland. The Authority encompasses the areas of the 12 councils of the former Strathclyde Regional Council area.
The Board is a corporate body established under an Amalgamation Scheme Order issued, in 1995, in terms of police and local government legislation. Perhaps the simplest way to regard the Board is to see it as in effect a council in its own right but having as its purpose the delivery of the police service.
Because the Board is drawn from and established under local government legislation almost all of the duties and obligations which fall on local authorities also fall upon the Board.
The Board is funded from within the system of general funding of local authorities in Scotland although there are additional peculiar financial and legal overlays in this respect.
Membership
There are 34 members of the Board. A Board member must be an elected councillor from one of the 12 councils in the Strathclyde area. Board membership is not open to members of the public or any other form of lay appointment.
The numbers of members who may be appointed by each Council is specified in the Amalgamation Scheme Order. Eight members are appointed by the City of Glasgow, four each are appointed by North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire Councils and two each are appointed by the remain nine councils in the Strathclyde area.
Current Police Board membership (PDF 33kb)
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Board area
Although there are eight police authorities in Scotland, Strathclyde is responsible for almost half of Scotland’s population.
The Board area covers 5,371sq miles and provides a policing service across diverse rural and industrial territories ranging from the Grampian mountains in the north to the southern lowlands of Ayrshire, and from the island communities of the Inner Hebrides in the west to the Clyde Valley in East Lanarkshire.
This encompasses a residential population of 2.2 million people within the 12 local authority areas. The police service is the largest Force in Scotland comprising 7,300 police officers and 2,200 Force Support Officers. In British terms Strathclyde Police is second in size only to London’s Metropolitan Police.
Strathclyde Police
Police officers are not employees. They hold a unique position in law and their status has exercised many constitutional writers. Broadly they are regarded as the holders of an office. Many of the aspects relating to the common law of employment have to be specifically applied in legislation to aspects of the activities of police officers.
The Force Support Officers are all employees of the Board in exactly the same fashion as council staff are employees of the Council.
For further information please access Strathclyde Police website.
Board duties
Like any other local authority the Board requires to observe the requirements of local government law in relation to the management of its income and expenditure and the management of its assets. It has the same obligations in relation to the Support Staff as any other local authority has in relation to its staff.
The Board is subject to the same duties of competition, best value, EU rules on public procurement, community planning, the power to advance well being, data protection, freedom of information, human rights etc and all of the other legal stipulations which relate to local authorities.
Apart from these general duties which rest on the Board as with any other local authority and in respect of which the Board has to make appropriate arrangements to accommodate, there are specific statutory functions peculiar to the police service which are also laid on the Board.