£8m wasted as force IT plan ditched

ALMOST £8 million of taxpayers’ money has been wasted, after senior officers scrapped a new computer system that was supposed to let the public know how their local police were
performing.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpos) has revealed the IT project, which was meant to allow people to compare their local police service with the rest of Scotland, had been aborted.

The money has been spent since 2007 on software and efforts to get the system online, but the project had technical problems and never got off the ground. The decision has prompted calls for an inquiry into how this happened at a time when public finances are tight.

Scottish forces are set to be merged into a single service and major changes are needed to IT systems. Acpos has set aside £12m over three years to manage that change.