Your police

Results updated 7 Apr 2020

Police Scotland wanted to understand what issues you think we should prioritise. From 12 November – 31 December, Your Police survey invited the public and stakeholders to share;

• How safe you felt in your area;
• Your concern and how local police can help with these;
• Your priorities for local policing;
• The ways in which you currently engage with the police;
• How you would like to engage with us in the future.

We asked these questions to gain a more in-depth understanding into the needs in your area that local policing could assist with.

Survey responses

We received 11,656 responses from across Scotland, making this the largest public engagement for Police Scotland so far. Primarily, we received responses from individuals, with 316 local organisations responding to the survey.

It has been encouraging to see that many respondents (88%) felt either very safe or fairly safe within their area. It was also positive to know that almost half (48%) of respondents reported that they had confidence in the police in their local area.

Despite these positive findings almost a third (27%) of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that the police dealt with issues in their local area. This is something that we will try and improve on, and your responses to the survey will help inform how this is done.

Our survey asked respondents to identify their priorities for the police in their areas. The most commonly reported priorities were:

1. Road safety, including speeding and dangerous driving
2. Homes being broken into
3. Selling or using drugs
4. Rowdy drunken behaviour in public places
5. Violent crime, including murder, robbery or mugging.

You can view and download an overall data report on the bottom of this page.

What we’re doing now

We have carried out an initial review and analysis of the responses which has been shared with local police divisions to inform the design of their Local Police Plans.

Further to this, we have completed analysis to contribute to our understanding of responses by different groups. The large response number allowed us to conduct meaningful analysis on the views of different demographic and geographic communities.

The data is being used by your local police to inform the local police plan for the area. This will ensure that the police are able to understand and meet the needs of the diverse range of communities throughout Scotland.

It has been very encouraging to receive over 8000 of open text responses where many people provided a detailed and thorough feedback. We will now take some time to understand and reflect on this feedback.

Continue the conversation

Having your say in policing is a vital tool for the public and organisations in Scotland to be able to shape the way public services operate. We want to continue to listen to your feedback.

From April 2020, Your Police survey will re-open and will replace the previously run Your View Counts public survey. The Your Police survey will be open for a year and encourage ongoing conversations and engagement in local areas. These insights will be used by your local police to continue to listen to what is important to people in the community and use this opinion to inform our future approaches and focus.

Thank you

We are grateful to everyone who participated in our survey. Thank you for taking the time to provide such a wide range of responses and making this survey our most successful engagement yet.

Files:

• Your Police 2019 survey_engagement summary report, 533.5 KB (PDF document)