Control centre £1m over budget

By James Cook
BBC Scotland reporter

The new control centre is over budget, according to the report

A new control centre for Lothian and Borders Police is more than £1m over budget, it has emerged.

The hi-tech facility at Bilston Glen on the outskirts of Edinburgh has been plagued with a series of problems since it opened in February.

It was built to handle all police calls in the force area but has been swamped by the volume of telephone traffic.

A report to go before the police board on Monday will reveal the project has a £1.2m overspend.

Calls waiting

The Force Control Centre was designed to answer and handle all calls to individual police stations, the central switchboard and 999 emergency calls.

But when it opened earlier this year the centre encountered huge problems in dealing with calls.

One police officer who dialled 999 had to wait 13 minutes for an answer.

But temporary Deputy Chief Constable Malcolm Dickson promised the service would improve.

When someone phones 999 in any police force in the UK they don't always get an answer straight away but we will be delivering a better service in the future than we have in the past Malcolm Dickson Lothian and Borders Police

He said: "I don't think that some of the difficulties that we have had are acceptable to the public.

"That's why this service will be better than it has been before.

"That's what we're aiming to provide because the public deserve a better service.

"When someone phones 999 in any police force in the UK they don't always get an answer straight away but we will be delivering a better service in the future than we have in the past."

New staff have been taken on to speed up call response times, but the centre is still not fully operational.

During the day the only non-emergency calls it handles are from Edinburgh.

Calls from Lothian and the Borders are still being taken by the old control rooms in Dalkeith, Livingston and Selkirk; at a cost of £5,000 a week.

Operational friction

Police board convener Councillor Eric Milligan said: "When you were at school your physics teacher told you to make any change or any movement you've got to overcome friction.

"That's the way of life. And there's always disturbances, there's always tensions, or maybe even gremlins in the computer, that you didn't anticipate.

"It takes a little bit of time, a little bit of experience of working the new system until you're able to properly gauge what it's going to cost."

There's a real crisis of confidence that's got to be addressed here with this new call centre David McLetchie Edinburgh Pentlands MSP

But despite these assurances, Scottish Tory Party leader and Edinburgh Pentlands MSP David McLetchie believes the new control room should be put on hold until all of its problems have been ironed out.

He said: "I've had a lot of complaints from constituents who say they call the police to report a crime and they don't get an answer.

"People complain to me all the time they don't see enough police officers. That's bad enough.

"But we've now got a situation where we call the police and the police apparently don't respond.

"There's a real crisis of confidence that's got to be addressed here with this new call centre.

"And the police have to got to make absolutely sure that it's spot on before it goes fully operational again."