Scottish Labour’s Community Policing Announcement
Scottish Labour will restore local policing and deliver a named community and crime prevention officer in every community across Scotland, Anas Sarwar has announced.
Across Scotland, there are 355 council wards. Scottish Labour will ensure that by the end of the next Parliament, every one of these has a named officer within local divisions who is tasked with building relationships in the community and gathering intelligence on crime within local areas.
Alongside their colleagues in the force, these officers will work with local councillors to identify opportunities to reduce crime and respond to local incidents.
We will also restore the specific role of crime prevention officers, ensuring that community policing teams have resources dedicated to working directly with schools, retailers, and community groups to advise on how to avoid or reduce crime in high crime areas.
A new Scottish Labour government will set our new Strategic Police Priorities within the first 100 days, establishing a new direction for Police Scotland to prioritise visible, community-based officers.
And we will make clear in the policing priorities that time freed up as a result of the actions taken by Scottish Labour should be directed to the frontline in order to boost community policing teams.
Scottish Labour will also ensure the police are locally accountable, with a statutory requirement for councils to be consulted on local policing plans and to take evidence from local policing divisions.
And a new trauma support service will be introduced to support officers working in our communities to get the help they need – and reducing sickness absence levels as a result.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “When the Scottish Government first announced the centralisation of policing in Scotland, ministers promised that communities would be ‘at the heart’ of services.
“But in 2025, we now have fewer officers than when Police Scotland was first established in 2013. That is a shocking indictment of the SNP’s failure to live up to that earlier pledge to put communities first.
“When I speak with communities across Scotland, one of the most common things I am told by people is that they used to know the names of their local police officers.
“Scottish Labour will restore community policing and get police back on Scotland’s streets. We will free up 360 police officers to join divisions on the frontline of policing in Scotland, cutting thousands of wasted hours in A&E departments and in our courts.
“The truth is that only two people can be First Minister next May. It’s John Swinney or me, it’s the past or the future.
“It’s chaos on our streets and police officers in court rooms and hospitals with John Swinney, or police officers on the street and backed to fight crime with me. That’s the choice in six months’ time.”
