Infrastructure investment plan 2015: 2016 progress report

Justice

Prison Estate

• Plans for Women in Custody - in June 2015, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice announced proposals to build a new small national prison at the Cornton Vale site, near Stirling, and up to five regional Community Custody Units ( CCUs), each accommodating around 20 women. Work to identify the locations for the CCUs is proceeding in dialogue with local partners. Plans for the development of the new national prison are progressing and are in line with the plans for the prison to be operational by the end of 2020.
• HM Prison Highland - a new site for the location of HMP Highland which will replace HMP Inverness was announced on 9 February 2017. The new site is at Inverness Retail Park and is approximately 7.2 hectares. An application for planning permission in principle will be lodged with Highland Council in the near future.
• HM Prison Glasgow - work to identify appropriate potential sites is on-going. Preliminary discussions have been entered into with the owners of a prospective site. These are progressing and draft heads of terms are awaited.

Inverness Justice Centre Project

• A suitable site which is close to the town centre and bus and train links has been procured and planning permission has been obtained. The main construction works will commence in October 2017 with a view to completion and occupation in June 2019.

Police Scotland ICT

• The Police Scotland i6 ICT project aimed to deliver an integrated and comprehensive suite of frontline police ICT capabilities covering crime reporting, missing persons, custody, vulnerable persons, lost property and criminal justice. The project was terminated on 1 July 2016 following an assessment that it could not deliver the required functionality within the contracted timescales.
• The conclusions of the Audit Scotland review of i6 published on 9 March 2017 highlight a number of areas where good practice was followed, including the procurement process and the effectiveness of contract arrangements as well as examining reasons why the project failed. The failure of the i6 project is attributed to an underestimate of the effort involved; to the method of development which meant fundamental flaws only became clear in the testing phase; and to a dispute between Police Scotland and Accenture which occurred early in the life of the programme, but which affected relationships throughout.
• The Audit Scotland review highlights that Accenture paid the Scottish Police Authority ( SPA) a settlement of £24.65 million, made up of a refund of £11.09 million and an additional compensation payment of £13.56 million.
• Police Scotland is now taking a more modular and incremental approach to ICT development to manage risk. The Policing 2026 strategy published by SPA and Police Scotland on 27 February sets out a future direction for various aspects of police technology, and this will be supported by more detailed implementation plans later this year. SPA have confirmed that they "are confident that improved relationships and trust between the SPA and Police Scotland would see issues raised and escalated for resolution at an earlier stage. There is stronger SPA strategic oversight of change programmes."
• Police Scotland have said: ""i6 was an important element of Police Scotland's ICT plans - but not the sole element. Since 2013, more than 30 national applications have been implemented successfully. This includes replacing or upgrading a significant amount of out-dated hardware and real progress has been made towards the delivery of a new national network and standardised modern national desktop computers. Within six months of the decision to end i6 a new National Custody System was successfully launched across the country which was one of the key requirements of the i6 project.

Emergency Services Future Communications

• Ahead of the decommissioning of the Airwave telecommunications system, which is currently used by the emergency services across Scotland and the rest of Great Britain, a Home Office-led programme is progressing the introduction of successor provision - the Emergency Service Network. Initials contracts for the central lots were awarded to Motorola (user services) and EE (mobile services) in December 2015, since then work on mobilisation has been taken forward by the contractors, with planning applications being put forward and the first of the new infrastructure beginning to appear. Work on supplementary related projects ( e.g. extended area services in remoter locations) is also being progressed. Region-by-region transition to the new network by the emergency services is now expected to begin in 2018, following testing and assurance work, and to conclude in 2020. Contingency planning is also underway, to allow for extension of the Airwave system (ownership of which transferred to Motorola early in 2016) in the event of delay to transition.