Ex-Caithness copper and MSP Tim Eagle ‘shocked’ by neglected police stations saying 113 police stations ‘are in need of repair or unfit for use’

A former Caithness policeman and MSP Tim Eagle has said that he is “shocked” by the condition of police stations across the Highlands and Islands.

Scottish Conservative Mr Eagle was speaking after a Freedom of Information Request revealed that 113 police stations “are in need of repair or unfit for use”.

Such is the issue that Police Scotland is still looking into shutting some bases while Highland Council may offer co-location of facilities through its investment programme.

Among the figures cited by Mr Eagle are:

• There are 333 police stations that currently require repairs. Every area of Scotland contains police stations in need of repairs, including 41 in the Highlands and Islands.

• 96 police stations have been sold since 2016. 26 were sold in 2019 and in recent years nine were closed in 2022, four in 2023, seven in 2024 and three in 2025 to date.

• There are over 900 fewer police officers today than there were before the pandemic with 16,508 police officers today compared to 17,431 at the start of 2020.

• 140 police stations have closed while the number of police counters fell from 340 in 2013, the year Police Scotland was established, to 253 in 2023.

• Recorded crime in Scotland has risen in the last two years by four per cent between December 2022 and December 2024.

• Crime has increased since 2020 – non-sexual crimes of violence have increased by 10 per cent, sexual crimes by 11 per cent, domestic abuse by 50 per cent and shoplifting by 89 per cent.

• The Chair of the Scottish Police Federation David Threadgold warned that underfunding has led to “policing deserts” across Scotland and station closures had left some areas with an ‘almost invisible policing presence, providing an utterly reactive service’.

Mr Eagle said: “A Freedom of Information request by the Scottish Conservatives has revealed that no fewer than 113 police stations across the Highlands and Islands, North East Scotland, and Argyll and West Dunbartonshire, are in need of repair or unfit for use.

“That is a truly dreadful figure and reflects a long period of neglect and under-investment. Frankly, I am shocked, and I can’t imagine what our police officers must be thinking when they are expected to operate from substandard stations.

“When the SNP scrapped the regional police forces and centralised them we were promised that things would improve.

“In fact, like so many of their botched centralising reorganisations, the opposite has happened and it is the areas away from the Central Belt that have suffered the most.

“John Swinney needs to urgently address this issue and provide our police officers with the resources that they deserve. The neglect must end.”