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STV News
5 days ago
- Politics
- STV News
Scottish Government accused of ‘shameful neglect' over asbestos in police stations
The Scottish Conservatives have accused the Government of 'shameful neglect' after figures show that more than 170 Scottish police stations contain asbestos. The figures, obtained by the party through a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, show that 177 police stations around the country contain the substance. Every region in Scotland has stations with asbestos in them, with the highest number being found in Aberdeenshire and Moray where 25 buildings contain the material, followed by 23 in Greater Glasgow and 21 in Tayside. The FoI figures also show four police stations contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac), which has been shown to be susceptible to structural failure. The party pointed out that the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) has warned for years about the state of police stations in Scotland. It also referenced a 2019 Holyrood committee hearing in which former SPF general secretary Calum Steele described the Ayr station as 'probably being carved out of asbestos'. The party's justice spokesman Liam Kerr said the figures should be an 'urgent wake-up call' to the Government. 'It is utterly appalling and downright dangerous that any of Scotland's police stations should still contain asbestos,' he said. 'The fact the vast majority do across the country is deeply alarming and puts our hardworking officers and staff at great risk. PA Media The Conservatives' Liam Kerr described the figures as 'shocking'. 'These shocking findings are the latest example of the SNP's shameful neglect of Police Scotland. 'They have ignored warnings for years about Scotland's crumbling police estate and left officers and staff working in these buildings to face the consequences. 'This must be an urgent wake-up call for the SNP Justice Secretary to properly fund our police estate and guarantee asbestos will be removed from all of these stations where it is safe to do so as quickly as possible.' Figures released in April under a previous FoI request by the party showed there were 333 stations around the country in need of repairs, with the north-east region being the highest with 53 stations needing work. A Scottish Government spokesperson said: 'While responsibility for managing the police estate is for Police Scotland, we support their work to address issues in police buildings and welcome their commitment to providing a safe environment for officers, staff and the public. 'We have more than tripled the policing capital budget since 2017-18 and we are investing a record £1.64 billion for policing this year. 'This includes £70m of capital funding to invest in resources and estates.' Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Health
- Scotsman
SNP accused of 'shameful neglect' as scale of asbestos in Scottish police stations revealed
A number of police stations in Scotland also contain Raac, new figures have revealed. Sign up to our Politics newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... SNP ministers have been accused of 'shameful neglect' after it was revealed that almost 200 police stations contain asbestos. Figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests by the Scottish Conservatives revealed that 177 police stations across Scotland contain the substance that can cause serious health problems if fibres that are released into the air are breathed in. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad almost 200 police stations in Scotland contain asbestos | Police Scotland The data shows that every region across the country has police stations that contain asbestos. The region with the highest number of asbestos-containing police stations is in Aberdeenshire and Moray, where 25 buildings contain the material. Great Glasgow has 23 buildings with the material and there are 21 in Tayside. The figures, obtained from Police Scotland, also show four police stations contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac), which has been shown to be susceptible to structural failure - mostly when buildings have come to the end of their lifespan. Two police stations in Tayside contained Raac, as well as one in Edinburgh and another in the Lothians and Scottish Borders region. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Tories have highlighted that the Scottish Police Federation (SPF), the union representing rank-and-file officers in Scotland, has warned for years about the state of police stations across the country. It also referenced a 2019 Holyrood committee hearing in which former SPF general secretary Calum Steele described the Ayr station as 'probably being carved out of asbestos'. The Scottish Conservatives' justice spokesman, Liam Kerr, said the figures should be an 'urgent wake-up call' to the Scottish Government. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'He said: 'It is utterly appalling and downright dangerous that any of Scotland's police stations should still contain asbestos. 'The fact the vast majority do across the country is deeply alarming and puts our hardworking officers and staff at great risk. Scottish Conservative MSP Liam Kerr 'These shocking findings are the latest example of the SNP's shameful neglect of Police Scotland.' Mr Kerr added: 'They have ignored warnings for years about Scotland's crumbling police estate and left officers and staff working in these buildings to face the consequences. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'This must be an urgent wake-up call for the SNP Justice Secretary to properly fund our police estate and guarantee asbestos will be removed from all of these stations where it is safe to do so as quickly as possible.' Figures released in April under a previous Freedom of Information request by the Conservatives showed there were 333 stations around the country in need of repairs, with the north-east region being the highest with 53 stations needing work. A Police Scotland spokesperson said: 'Necessary repairs and investment have been made over the years to ensure our buildings have met health and safety requirements. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'In November 2024 the Scottish Police Authority endorsed Police Scotland's estates masterplan, a 10-year programme to create a modern, fit for purpose estate that best serves our communities and our workforce. 'The aim is to create an estate of strategically based locations or hubs that enable officers to be visible and accessible to local communities, whilst being environmentally sustainable and economically viable for the future. 'Our buildings need to be safe, functional spaces, that are adaptable to meet the changing nature of policing. Modernising our estate will help us improve employee welfare and wellbeing, contributing to our 2030 vision of a thriving workforce. 'As part of our programme to invest in our estate to be retained, by the end of this financial year upgrade work will have been carried out on a significant number of our buildings.'
The Herald Scotland
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Police officers 'at risk' with asbestos in stations
It comes as figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives through freedom of information request, revealed that 177 police stations around the country contain the potentially harmful substance. The substance was banned in construction by 1999 but is still present in may older buildings. It can cause serious lung and respiratory conditions. But with 214 police stations across Scotland, there are just 37 that do not contain any asbestos. All 13 divisions of Police Scotland contain stations with asbestos, while three - Tayside, Edinburgh and the Lothians and Scottish Borders - include reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), the lightweight material used in the deadly Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. Read more: The highest number of stations with asbestos is found in Aberdeenshire and Moray where 25 buildings contain the material, followed by 23 in Greater Glasgow and 21 in Tayside. 19 buildings in the Lothians and Scottish Borders contain asbestos, as do 18 in Lanarkshire and 11 each in Edinburgh, Argyll and West Dunbartonshire and Ayrshire. Fife and Dumfries and Galloway have 10 buildings each with asbestos, Forth Valley, nine, Renfrewshire and Inverclyde, six and Highlands and Islands, three. The precise stations affected by asbestos and RAAC have not been revealed. Liam Kerr, justice spokesman for the Scottish Tories, said the "dangerous" figures must act as a wake up call for the Scottish Government. The party also warned that the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) has warned about the state of police stations in the country for years. In evidence to Holyrood's justice committee in 2019, former SPF general secretary Calum Steele described Ayr station as "probably being carved out of asbestos". He described much of the police estate across Scotland as "frankly decrepit". Read more: Mr Kerr said: 'It is utterly appalling and downright dangerous that any of Scotland's police stations should still contain asbestos. 'The fact the vast majority do across the country is deeply alarming and puts our hardworking officers and staff at great risk. 'These shocking findings are the latest example of the SNP's shameful neglect of Police Scotland. 'They have ignored warnings for years about Scotland's crumbling police estate and left officers and staff working in these buildings to face the consequences. 'This must be an urgent wake up call for the SNP justice secretary to properly fund our police estate and guarantee asbestos will be removed from all of these stations where it is safe to do so as quickly as possible.' Senior management at Police Scotland declared 29 stations were unfit for purpose in October 2023. The force is considering the feasibility of retaining some stations as part of its 10-year Estates Masterplan. It was revealed in 2023 that around 140 police stations across the country had been closed, with front desks falling from 340 in 2013 to 253 in 2023. A Scottish Government spokesperson said: 'While responsibility for manging the police estate is for Police Scotland, we support their work to address issues in police buildings and welcome their commitment to providing a safe environment for officers, staff and the public. 'We have more than tripled the policing capital budget since 2017-18 and we are investing a record £1.64 billion for policing this year. This includes £70 million of capital funding to invest in resources and estates.'
The Herald Scotland
06-08-2025
- General
- The Herald Scotland
Shock, horror: moralising over bad taste jokes is a waste of time
Whilst it was January 28, 1986 that opened my eyes to how the impact of tragedy and disaster knows no bounds, it was events of the following days that served me with an arguably more important life lesson altogether. Now we have to remember that 1986 was the pre-internet, pre-mobile phone age. Communication was personal, face-to-face, and the corded landline was king (provided, of course, that you put some coins in the wee payment box that sat beside the phone in most people's homes). Newspapers were everywhere, magazines too; people made the effort to meet, pubs were thriving, and any mention of WhatsApp would almost certainly have been met with a 'Not a lot – what's up with you?' So, there I was – in the playground of Daliburgh School, listening to, laughing at, and retelling jokes about Nasa – with the full knowledge and appreciation that it was the shock factor of the jokes – on the back of death and tragedy – and in the most dramatic of fashion – that made them work. Kids my own age would laugh and then recoil at the subject of the joke in the first place. Here we were in the Hebrides, telling jokes that had been passed around the world by phone and in person, and were doing so within days of them almost certainly being coined, and likely whilst the debris of the shuttle was still falling to Earth. As kids, we knew we weren't laughing at the deaths themselves, or the pain and heartache that the loved ones of the crew were going through, but laughing we were all the same. Read more by Calum Steele In the years that followed, the deployment of dark humour became part and parcel of life. No tragedy, disaster, or personal misfortune escaped them. The Herald of Free Enterprise, hurricanes, floods, Rodney King, the fire at Windsor Castle, Princess Diana's death, John Wayne Bobbitt – every one of them was fair game. Of course they were shocking – that was the point – that was what made them work. They didn't work for everyone, obviously – and neither should they. Humour – dark or otherwise – is as subjective as it is subconscious. But more importantly, that fact did not need to be explained; it was just simply understood. The ability to find any form of release valve in high-pressure situations is key to preserving the sanity of those who work in them. In the years I was an operational cop, I saw and dealt with things those outside of the police simply wouldn't believe. This in turn has led to more dark humour, but at no time has that ever translated into a lack of empathy, compassion, or care for the events we were dealing with. It is possible to laugh at paedophile jokes, at suicide jokes, at car crash jokes, without that translating in any way, shape or form into laughing at the victims of such, or being anything other than the epitome of professionalism and compassion when dealing with them. How then have we managed to get to a position where a group of friends and colleagues can pay good money to go to see, say, Jimmy Carr (other comedians are available) and laugh like drains at his jokes (as I have), only for them then to be ostracised if they repeat them outside the theatre – or, worse still, commit the most heinous of HR crimes and do so by WhatsApp, where the written words lack all context to those who find themselves accidentally reading them, and then sit in moral judgement over them? Even the fire at Windsor Castle was the subject of dark humour (Image: Newsquest) The Salem-esque trial of Sandie Peggie delved into this sanctimonious ritual a few weeks ago, as a handful of off-colour jokes, emojis and racial slurs from the tens of thousands of messages exchanged between supposed friends were thrown up as evidence of the impurity of soul of the woman who dared say 'no'. No evidence of her abilities or skills on the matter for which she was employed though – for these didn't matter. Not a sentence was uttered to suggest these jokes in any way influenced or affected in the slightest how she delivered emergency nursing care. It was what she thought that was on trial, and even though not one of us can possibly know what another person thinks, these written words were the rather feeble attempts to do just that and impugn her character in the process. How dare she have laughed or shared jokes, no matter how offensive – or simply unfunny to many – burn the witch! Now I'm pretty certain that some, or dare I say much, of what I've laughed at over the years would, absent context, the moment, and the company of who was there, look absolutely bloody awful in written form. In fact, I'd be prepared to go as far as to say that in pure, raw form I myself would jar at the content. And that is precisely why moralising over them in the sterility of learned moral outrage is a complete and utter waste of time. Every one of us will have sat behind a hen party or stag do on a train or in a pub and overheard some outrageous examples of humour. Those of us who have the clarity of thought and maturity to see these moments for what they are should be applauded – not least as our lives are better for it – and those who position themselves as our moral overlords and custodians should be shunned and pitied the way every puritan should. Calum Steele is a former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and former general secretary of the International Council of Police Representative Associations. He remains an advisor to both
The Herald Scotland
02-07-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
We can't risk another 'one we got away with' when Trump comes calling
The 2005 G8 summit was anticipated to draw some of the largest protests ever seen at such an event. In anticipation, thousands of officers had been extensively trained in crowd and riot control at the long-since abandoned Law Hospital in South Lanarkshire during the previous year. Everyone I know who undertook that training still describes it as among the best they ever received. There is no question this was the biggest security event ever to face Scottish policing – and arguably one of the most significant peacetime security challenges ever faced across the UK. You can't bring together the presidents of the United States, Russia, and France, the chancellor of Germany, and the prime ministers of Canada, Italy, Japan and the UK under one roof without inducing sweaty palms among those tasked not only with keeping them alive but ensuring they come to no harm whatsoever. Read more by Calum Steele When the stakes are at their highest, every politician suddenly remembers that policing is the nation's number one priority. Any hint of being unable to guarantee the safety of the world's leaders would be devastating to national pride and credibility. A four-, five-, or six-hour wait at A&E is suddenly reduced to a policy footnote. As the summit began, it quickly became clear that highly organised protestors were pushing the police to their limits. Demonstrations and attempts to shut down the A9, coupled with repeated efforts to breach the security cordon, had every Chief Constable calling for reinforcements from the officers left behind to hold the fort. The urgency became undeniable when the outer cordon was breached on the afternoon of July 6, prompting the rapid deployment of a Chinook full of riot police to push protestors back. July 7 was always a significant date for me as I awoke early to get ready for what was shaping up to be a very different kind of birthday; little could I have imagined just how. The mood from the previous 12 hours pointed to an adrenaline-fuelled day ahead. Everyone was convinced that, buoyed by their successes of yesterday, the protestors of today would be even more resolute and that violent clashes were looking likely. Doubts were beginning to creep into the minds of those on the ground about whether they could hold the lines. The terror attacks that commenced just before 9am on the London Underground, and an hour later in Tavistock Square, saw an immediate shift in focus from Gleneagles to London. Tony Blair briefly addressed the nation with the full G8 leadership standing behind him in a show of solidarity before he returned to Downing Street. Protests and disorder instantly ceased as the scale of death and devastation became apparent. Quite simply, everyone went home. The summit itself petered out. While few would admit it publicly, the 7/7 attacks spared policing in Scotland from what could have been a global humiliation. In classic police parlance: 'That was another one we got away with.' The police service in July 2005 was just over 16,000 strong; on paper approximately 300 fewer officers than are in Scotland today. But that is a hugely misleading comparator as, with very few exceptions, the police service of two decades ago had minuscule numbers of officers who weren't fully deployable, and even fewer who were on long-term sick. Today's police service carries some 1,250 of the latter and an almost equivalent number of the former. Specialist public order officers are now concentrated in smaller teams, narrowing the skillset across the wider service. The strength and depth of response teams that made up so much of the contingent support for large-scale deployments are now a shadow of their former selves — with a much diminished and less experienced rump in their stead. The last time there was mass training for major events was at Law Hospital over 20 years ago. Since then, training has declined to the point of being more conceptual than practical. Today's service is more preoccupied with the diversity statistics of who boards a Chinook rather than whether they could actually fill it. The scene in Tavistock Square, central London, after a bomb ripped through a double deck bus on July 7, 2005 (Image: PA) The visit of Donald Trump to Scotland in 2018 came as police numbers had just started to slide and were some 1,200 higher than in 2005. Whilst few would argue the then (and now) President of the United States is perhaps one of the most polarising to have held office, the scale of the police operation to safeguard his security was a fraction of that required for G8. Despite having more officers to call on and less onerous security demands, there was a major security breach as a Greenpeace paraglider managed to fly to within a few feet of the President before disappearing into the depths of the Ayrshire hills. This was yet another 'we got away with it' moment. With another Trump visit expected in the coming weeks, his security team will undoubtedly review both the 2005 and 2018 breaches and ask hard questions about the guarantees Scotland can offer. The police's whitewashing on the impact of reducing numbers may work domestically but they simply can't carry the day. Like it or not, the safety of a US President is a matter of higher national importance than managing protests that may accompany his presence. Police Scotland will need more than a lucky break or a tragic distraction elsewhere to rise to the challenge. We all have to hope that, if for nothing else other than national pride, trust, and confidence in our police service, they are able to do so — as betting on a third 'we can get away with it' would be a very risky strategy indeed. Calum Steele is a former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and former general secretary of the International Council of Police Representative Associations. He remains an advisor to both.
