Police Scotland defended the controversial move to close its control room and call centre in Aberdeen yesterday, and invited councillors to visit Dundee and see for themselves how emergency calls from the north-east are handled.
At yesterday’s meeting of the city council’s communities, housing and infrastructure committee, Chief Superintendent Campbell Thomson and Chief Inspector David Ross gave members an update on the transition.
Since March 28, all 999 calls have been passed to handlers at the North Area control room in Dundee for dispatch, and all non-emergency calls have been taken at centres in Glasgow, Motherwell and Midlothian.
Yesterday Ch Insp Ross told the committee than in the 23 weeks since the closures in Aberdeen, police have recorded more than 114,000 non-emergency calls, as well as more than 19,000 emergency 999 calls from people in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray.
Members of the committee agreed to take up the chief inspector’s offer of a tour of the Dundee control room, to find out more about how staff have been dealing with north-east calls.
Critics say a loss of local knowledge is putting lives at risk, pointing to a series of examples of confusion by call handlers.
In March, staff at the Tesco on Great Northern Road in Aberdeen called police to report a smashed-in door.
However, call handlers sent police officers to an address of the same name in Glasgow, and officers only turned up to the correct shop in Aberdeen more than three hours later.
SNP councillor and former police officer Alex Nicoll said he hopes the trip to the Dundee control room will reassure councillors who have previously raised fears that a potential lack of local knowledge could lead to problems for call handlers.
He said: “I really do think that councillors should take this opportunity to see the new set up for themselves.
“There has been a team embedded up in Aberdeen for the last year, taking on board a lot of local information and transferring it south, and I certainly took advantage some months ago to visit the facility down in Glasgow and I was impressed.
“It was certainly a huge improvement compared to the situation I was used to during my time in the police.
“A lot of councillors have raised concerns, but hopefully by visiting the centre in person it will help to allay those concerns.”