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Scotland’s police will not be trained to drive at night if draft legislation is enacted. This is the astonishing allegation made by one of the country’s most experienced police drivers.
Brian Jones has also accused Police Scotland of playing Russian roulette with the health, safety and welfare of the country’s police officers.
Mr Jones is Vice Chair of the Scottish Police Federation, a fully- qualified Police Advanced driving instructor, former member of the road policing branch with 17 years’ service in traffic and a former Senior Investigating Officer.
Mr Jones has repeatedly raised the issue of the lack of adequate training for police drivers. He says, “There are roughly 7900 front line cops working 24/7 on response policing. From that number I would suggest that nearly 30% are still awaiting their driving course – to enable them to use emergency sirens and blue lights and importantly exceed the speed limits legally if necessary to attend public emergencies. The current estimates to clear that backlog is currently somewhere in the region of 6-7 years.
“I know that some areas of the country have had instances where they have no officers trained to respond to emergency situations in a police car – legally ……. that is scandalous”
In a paper discussed by the Scottish Police Authority in February 2025, it was revealed that demand has risen for Advanced Driver Training from approximately 40 spaces a year to a current list of 350 officers requiring training. In addition, a further 470 officers now require Pursuit Management Training, with a further 2000-3000 highlighted in the paper requiring standard emergency response driver training.
Currently the service has a grand total of 27 driving instructors – 12 civilians and 15 officers.
“When Stephen House was appointed as Chief Constable, the service had 64 instructors as of 2013 but under his tenure that dropped to around 20. There is only one service with a greater driver training backlog, that is the Metropolitan Police in London,” said Mr Jones.
Mr Jones continued, “The UK Government has legal primacy over the road safety legislation much to the annoyance of the Scottish Government. New laws will demand national minimum standards for training emergency responders from all blue light services.
“That will include night driving – no one in Scotland has been trained during the night. Legally they will not be able to respond to emergency situations using sirens and blue lights and exceed the speed limit. This has been on the books for nearly 19 years and Scotland is still not prepared.
“More than 65% of all armed policing officers drive high-performance vehicles daily, without the necessary training or legal authority to attend emergency situations, i.e. exceed the speed limit with blue lights and sirens – but they do this every day out of a sense of moral duty to the Scottish Public.
“I have raised this issue directly with successive Chief Constables in Police Scotland but still no change, despite the fact we have sufficient additional driving instructors in Police Scotland who are not being utilised, which is also ridiculous. Our English colleagues are incredulous at how poor our standards now are in Scotland. When prior to Police Scotland they were recognised as being the best in Europe.”
Mr Jones added, “Of course the root cause of all this is that Police Scotland continue to be chronically underfunded by the Scottish Government and dangerous situations like this will continue to arise as long as the current financial provisions continue.”
