Security at the Scottish Police College is to be ramped up ahead of the site becoming interim headquarters for a single national force in April, according to director John Geates.
Speaking exclusively to The Courier, he said the picturesque 90-acre campus near Tulliallan in Fife could be off-limits to the public within weeks.
And the 50-year-old former assistant chief constable with Strathclyde Police has revealed he will vacate his plush office in Tulliallan Castle within days to make way for the as-yet unnamed chief constable of the single Scottish police force.
He said: ”By the end of August we’ll be decanted from the castle to another part of the estate. Everything that’s happening now within the castle will be moved.”
The sprawling college grounds are often enjoyed by locals, but that could also be about to change, Mr Geates has warned.
He said: ”We quite often see people wandering about the site. That’s quite a common theme. You see people here, walking their dogs. Now, will there need to be tighter restrictions on that? Quite probably.
”And that was one of the reasons we felt that, if there was going to be a joint site here headquarters and training rather than having them mixed and matched, one building would be headquarters and one building would be training, because you can secure the headquarters to a different level.”
The college director came under fire from a former gatehouse guard last month, who warned that it is ”only a matter of time before there’s a high-profile breach of security”.
Don Campbell (58), who was a security officer at Tulliallan for 10 years, raised fears moving guards from the gatehouse to the main building could compromise the site.
Mr Geates said: ”We looked at (the decision to move guards inside) and based on the risk assessment, it seems to generally work fairly well. Because we did that, we definitely increased the security on the building.
”What we did have to do is ensure anyone in the building is badged and there’s a record of them being there.
”However, it’s all being reviewed by ourselves and the headquarters team (ahead of the site becoming interim headquarters for a single Scottish police force) because there’s a different level.
”The kind of information and intelligence and confidential material in relation to training is unlikely to be on the same level that the new force executive would have.”
He added: ”Up until now, we’ve been quite comfortable with the fact the security arrangements have been fine.”
Mr Geates also said it ”makes sense” that the Scottish Police College will be interim headquarters for a single force and admitted the new chief constable’s stay could be indefinite.
He said: ”This is the heartland of policing. All police officers in Scotland have come through here. They generally do have a fondness for it.
”When all the debates were going on around whether there should be a national police force, this was regarded as a neutral ground where people could meet and there would be a level of independence. It’s ideal, in that sense.
”It might well be that, once the new police force is up and running, the feeling might be that the headquarters has to be in one of the major hubs whether that’s Glasgow or Edinburgh. But that would a decision once we see how it would work in practice and there’s no time frame for that just now.”