Police Scotland Boss To Step Down Early

The Chief Constable of Police Scotland has revealed he is to step down by the end of the year - earlier than planned.

Sir Stephen House was the first chief constable to be appointed following the amalgamation of Scotland's eight regional police forces into a national force in 2013.

He was due to leave when his contract came to an end in 2016.

But following a series of high-profile incidents which saw him come under growing pressure, he has decided to go early.

Police Scotland was most recently criticised following the M9 accident in July in which Lamara Bell, 25, and John Yuill, 28, died after being in the crashed car for three days.

Sir Stephen apologised after it was revealed that a report to police had not been properly logged.

The force has also been criticised over its stop-and-search tactics and armed policing.

Officers are also currently under investigation over the death of 31-year-old Sheku Bayoh in custody.

At a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) in Stirling, Sir Stephen referred to both cases: "What I want to say is that every death quite clearly is a tragedy for the families and the friends of the victims.

"I cannot begin to understand, I don't think anyone who is not affected by it directly can begin to understand, what these families are going through, and we don't pretend that we do.

"But what I can do is give my assurance on behalf of the organisation that we continue to repeat our condolences to all those affected by the tragedies."

He added: "I also want to give my sincere commitment that, where mistakes have been made, we will learn from those mistakes, and any recommendations which will improve the performance of Police Scotland in relation to incidents like this will be taken on board without question."

Sir Stephen accepted there was "an understandable degree of frustration" that the issues have not yet been addressed.

"I want to make it clear that we are not able under law to answer fully at this moment in time," he said.

"We would like to give full and frank answers to the questions that are quite legitimately being asked, but we are not able to do that because there are independent investigations being run ... and it would be highly inappropriate for us to offer responses while these investigations are still going on."