Leader: It is hard to justify police away day

AUSTERITY may reign, but mice still nibble at the public purse. Eight senior officers from Lothian and Borders Police found it necessary to have an overnight stay at the luxury four-star Dalmahoy Hotel and Country Club.

The purpose? To thrash out “how to take the force through significant challenges of the police reform programme” in a period when £43 million is to be cut from its budget.

The Dalmahoy Hotel is a baronial mansion with “breathtaking scenery, incredible sunsets and views of Edinburgh Castle” and boasts a leisure retreat, two 18-hole golf courses, a PGA-approved golf academy, gym, indoor swimming pool, spa, tennis and an award-winning restaurant. The conference was believed to include senior officers and the director of resources Peter Thickett and Susan Mitchell – head of the force’s “transforming the service” cost-cutting drive. It is important, of course, for heads of an organisation to be able to hold meetings undisturbed by the pressures of daily work. But this seems to take “blue sky thinking” into another realm.

Whatever might have been said to a hapless desk sergeant who rang up to tell his chief a robbery was in progress on his manor and the suspect “had a big shooter”? “Listen, sonny, mine’s a No 9 iron”?