More than 53,000 working days at Police Scotland were lost to stress in the past two years, according to figures released on Sunday as the scale of the crisis engulfing the force’s call-handling operation became increasingly apparent.
The figures, obtained from Police Scotland through a freedom of information request by Scottish Labour, also show that between January and March this year over 10,000 working days were lost due to stress, an increase of 84% compared with the same period last year.
The release of the figures comes a week after the death of Lamara Bell, 25, who lay undiscovered from early on Sunday 5 July until the following Wednesday morning next to the body of her boyfriend John Yuill, 28, after the couple’s car left the road on the M9 southbound near junction 9 at Bannockburn. Officers failed to respond to a report of the crash for more than three days.
Bell, who had two young children, had been placed in a medically induced coma after suffering a head injury and broken bones in the crash and kidney damage as a result of dehydration. She died at the Queen Elizabeth University hospital in Glasgow last Sunday
Police Scotland is facing a barrage of criticism after it emerged that a call reporting the crash on the morning it happened was not entered into its systems.
The failure was immediately referred to Scotland’s police investigations and review commissioner (PIRC), which has begun an investigation, while Scotland’s justice secretary, Michael Matheson, has formally directed Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) to undertake a “thorough and speedy” review of all police call-handling.
But a former civilian worker at Bilston Glen call centre told LBC radio on Friday he had believed it was “only a matter of time” before a fatal error in call-handling occurred.
The man, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “Police Scotland came in and all of a sudden it became a fire-fighting exercise. You were doing, say, 10 tasks, half as well as you could, because you were trying toget so much done.
“It wasn’t long before people were going off with all manner of illnesses. I believe a lot of them were stress-related and when they go off, they go off for months at a time.” The worker added that Police Scotland failed to bring in extra staff to cover these absences, leaving staff under even more pressure.
Scottish Labour’s community safety and legal affairs spokesperson, Elaine Murray, called for the report of the HMICS inquiry to be published as soon as possible. He said: “The inquiry into the problems in police call centres following the M9 tragedy cannot be kicked into the long grass. It must be published in full as soon as possible, so that we can get to the bottom of the clear systemic problems at Police Scotland.”
She added: “The SNP government must also accept its responsibilities. Since the creation of the single police force there have been cuts to services, thousands of civilian jobs lost and a lack of transparency over stop and search policy. It’s time for the SNP government to get a grip on policing in Scotland.”
Murray repeated calls for the head of Police Scotland, Ch Con Sir Stephen House, to resign. House described the catastrophic error as the result of “individual failure” in a statement in which he publicly apologised to both families.
Serious questions have been raised, however, about whether the failure was the result of deeper and more systemic problems within Police Scotland, which was centralised into a single force in 2013 and has since seen severe cuts in control room staff.
Both Matheson and Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, have given their backing to House, while the chief constable himself has denied that the crash had anything to do with recent restructuring measures, in which four control centres have been closed, with two more planned by the end of 2015.
In his most recent Facebook post, Martin Bell, Lamara’s brother, wrote that he still hoped to “get justice for my sister and John and make parliament and [Stephen] House realise that the cuts they have made and are continuing to make to an important service like the police isn’t a good idea.”
