LIB Dem leader Willie Rennie has raised concerns about how the policing of the Commonwealth Games impacted on other areas, including West Fife.

Mr Rennie, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, was unhappy about what he saw as an excessive burden being placed on local officers having to travel to Glasgow to cover the games.

“It was a combination of two things,” said Mr Rennie. “One was the overworking of officers and the second was the issue of leaving exposed other parts of the country.

“I was getting complaints from police officers including in West Fife who were saying that they were going off first thing in the morning for a long shift in Glasgow. They would go through in the police bus, get back late at night, have a few hours sleep and be back on the schedule the next day.

“They were doing that for 10 days solid. They weren’t complaining about working extra but were unhappy about the short notice they had received and there wasn’t the appropriate support from other areas.

“The bulk of the burden was being laid at the door of the police officers in Scotland when with other big occasions like the G8 summit at Gleneagles and the Olympic Games in London there had been full use of mutual aid from across the country to spread the load.

“My complaint was that the mutual aid provisions were not being fully exploited so therefore there was a heavy burden on the police officers. It had a knock-on effect on other areas. There was an example where they were closing the custody cells in Perth and moving those who had been arrested over to Dundee which took up a lot of extra hours.

“Initially I was just calling for an explanation but it became stronger as officers complained when I was out and about which showed there was a great deal of concern.

“It came on top of all the other issues, such as the extensive use of stop and search, the use of police guns, the pressure on officers after the centralisation which brought big changes at the local level.” Mr Rennie is a long-time critic of the merging of Scotland’s police forces and is unimpressed at how the unified body has operated in its first year.

He said, “I don’t think anybody thought it would be this bad. It’s turned out to be much worse than most people expected. Any kind of centralisation will result in change and imposing on top of that such a radical change in the way the police work with the top-down, target-driven cultural change that Stephen House has introduced as chief constable means that the well practised measures that have been used by police in Fife have been wiped away. They say that they are looking for best practice across the country, to adopt that and roll it out but usually that just means what happens in Strathclyde is rolled out.

“Therefore the unique character of Fife police has been obliterated by this change. You can’t go back. It would cause even more upheaval to go back to the way we were before but it does indicate to those who support this kind of big bang change that in future with other organisations they should be more canny and not to be so gung-ho for it.” Police Scotland Deputy Chief Constable Steve Allen said, “The welfare of every officer is important to the command team leading on the operation.

“A detailed resources plan has been developed to make sure that there are sufficient police officers policing the games as well as making sure that sufficient police resources remain in our communities to continue to keep people safe.”