Force urges public to re-submit non-emergency crime reports

A service provider outage meant that for the second time in three months non-emergency crime reports were not saved for three hours according to Police Scotland

The fault with Police Scotland’s non-emergency report form saw more than 80 messages sent between 3pm and 6pm on Friday not received, with the force now urging people to re-submit their inquiries.

Assistant Chief Constable Emma Bond said: “We are taking this matter very seriously and are working with the supplier to put measures in place to significantly reduce the risk of this happening again.”

It is the second time in three months messages have been lost.

Between August 31 and September 1, some 15 hours worth of messages were not sent to the force’s service centre and Police Scotland said there was “nothing to suggest an ongoing fault”.

On Monday, when the force revealed the latest outage, it also said there was nothing to suggest an ongoing fault.

It added the issue was the result of a “technical issue with the processing of the mail on the supplier’s infrastructure and there is nothing to suggest it is the result of any malicious activity”.

Ms Bond said: “I would encourage anyone who sent a message through our online non-emergency reporting forms during this time to resubmit them if you have not received a response.”