The loss of the North East’s police and fire control rooms has been greeted with dismay by local Liberal Democrat councillors.

The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) met in Glasgow on Thursday (January 30) and rubber-stamped the proposal to close half of Scotland’s police control rooms, including two in Aberdeen. The work of the Aberdeen centres will be transferred to Dundee which will cover the whole of the north of Scotland from December 2015.

On the same day, the Scottish Fire & Rescue Authority (SFRS) met in Dundee and agreed to the closure of its Aberdeen facility, with the operation also being transferred to Dundee. Four other control rooms were also earmarked for closure.

News of the closures, likely to lead to the loss of several hundred highly-skilled jobs across Scotland, has been met by anger from politicians, trade unions and communities in the North East.

North Kincardine councillor Ian Mollison said: “This was a very dark day for the North East. It came as a direct consequence of the SNP’s centralisation of the police and fire services into single Scottish forces under direct ministerial control. The Justice Secretary boasted that the move would generate savings of more than £1bn from police budgets alone, through reducing duplication, while protecting the number of police officers in Scotland.

“The Scottish Liberal Democrats were the only party to vote against this measure, warning that the savings targets were unachievable and that there would be dramatic cut-backs over which local communities would have no say or influence. By moving to a system where chief officers and all the members of the SFA and SFRS  were appointed by the Justice Secretary and answer directly to him, more than 100 years of successful local, democratic accountability were swept away.

“We now see the chickens coming home to roost.”  

Stonehaven councillor Peter Bellarby added: “The process by which these decisions were reached was a disgrace. Both Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service are partners in community planning, along with councils, other agencies and communities. Community planning partnerships are legally established to ensure that the public and community sectors work closely together to deliver the best services for their area.

“I was surprised when it emerged that the Fire & Rescue Authority had deliberately chosen not to consult councils on their proposal to close control rooms and shocked that the first councils knew about the threat to the police control rooms in Aberdeen was through the media, less than a week before Thursday’s meeting.

“The SPA business case, which was supposed to justify the closures in Aberdeen, had all the marks of a document written to provide support for a decision already made. It ignored the strengths of the Aberdeen facilities, made light of the significant costs of upgrading the Dundee control room and ignored the risks arising from the loss of detailed local knowledge – of geography and of communities.

“The Justice Secretary has dismissed all of this, claiming that these are purely operational matters for which he has no responsibility. If this is the nationalist vision of how things are going to be done in an independent Scotland, through centralised decision-making with absolutely no local consultation or engagement, the prospect is seriously alarming.

“Local staff employed in these centres have been treated very badly. Local knowledge is of great importance and cannot be fully replaced by technology.

“We warned that this would be the sort of outcome to be expected from the creation of a single police force and a single fire and rescue service. Local democratic accountability has been replaced by diktat from the centre, a one-size-fits-all approach based on practice in the Central Belt and huge damage done to the legacy of the excellent Grampian Police and Grampian Fire & Rescue.

“The fact that no-one was surprised that the proposals were simply rubber-stamped speaks volumes. No other outcome was anticipated.”