Dundee mooted as superlab site
Dundee is being suggested as the site of one of two superlabs to provide forensic services for police forces across Scotland.
- By Maura Bowman
- Published in the Courier : 14.07.10
- Published online : 14.07.10 @ 07.15am
The superlab option is one of a number of possible scenarios being considered by the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA) to improve the speed and consistency of crime lab services while cutting costs.
A paper on the modernisation of forensic services in Scotland looks at ways to maintain the 250,000 cases completed each year, speed up the time taken to deal with DNA, fingerprint and drug tests and cut annual costs by up to £3.5 million.
The SPSA intends to maintain scene examiners (formerly known as scene of crime officers) in each of the eight police forces, widening their skills to include blood pattern analysis and fire examinations.
Any changes will come in the support they receive from forensic science labs, currently situated in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.
Two options would retain all four labs but either introduce cost and efficiency measures to achieve annual savings of £1.75 million by 2015, or invest in new IT to deal more efficiently with case management, leading to a potential saving of £2 million a year in the same timeframe.
SPSA is also looking at the possibility of retaining four smaller "satellite" labs, supported by two high volume processing units in Glasgow (later to be transferred to a new site in Gartcosh) and Dundee.
That would realise annual savings of around £2.8 million by 2015.
However, the biggest saving — some £3.5 million each year — would be made by moving to a completely new structure, with all scientific support delivered by the labs in Dundee and Glasgow (later Gartcosh).
SPSA Forensic Services employ around 570 members of staff, but between 37 and 93 posts are expected to be cut, depending on the option that is ultimately chosen.
The options are the result of a year-long analysis of the best way to meet the needs of Scotland's police forces and prosecutors which found that, while forces are broadly satisfied with the support they receive in serious complex crimes like murders, they are concerned at delays and inconsistency
when the labs are faced with day-to-day offences, such as housebreaking.
After putting all four labs under the microscope, researchers also found wide variations in cost and in the way they carry out their work.
Launching a six-week period of discussion about the proposals, SPSA director of forensic services Tom Nelson said that since it took over responsibility for Scotland's forensic services in 2007 the backlog of cases has been slashed from 8000 to 3400.
However, he went on, further changes are needed to provide the level of service required by its "customers."
"The options we have set out today are about consolidating and optimising what we do for policing — but they do herald changes for us as an organisation," he said
"Change in practice. Change in procedure. Change, too, in terms of people and places.
"What we seek to achieve over the coming weeks is a consensus around which of these options strike the right balance between what the customers are looking for and what generates the best efficiency for the public purse."
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