Police Authority Minutes

The local authorities which supervised police forces between 1800 and 2013 produced minute books of their meetings. These local authorities were police commissioners and, later, town councils in burghs; and standing joint committees and police committees in counties; and police boards or joint police boards between 1975 and 2013. In 2013 these local bodies were replaced by the Scottish Police Authority.

Minute books of police committees, commissioners or boards contain information about the provision of policing in the county or burgh concerned. They should contain discussion of the setting up of the force, how big it should be and what the salaries of officers and constables should be. Policy matters will be discussed, such as whether constables should be recruited primarily from outside the county/burgh, or whether special constables should be enrolled during times of crisis. They may include annual and reports and statistical returns of chief constables (and other reports and returns of senior officers) and financial statements. It is quite common to find copies or summaries of reports by HM Inspector of Constabulary engrossed in the minutes. For the first few years, or where the force was quite small, there may be details of the appointment of personnel, even down to the level of constables, but as the force increases in size minutes from the second half of the 19th century onwards usually deal with the appointment of senior officers only, such as chief constables and their assistants or deputies.

Those communities in Scotland who claimed the right to be police burghs after 1857 in order to prevent control of the burgh police going to the commissioners of supply of the county, such as Stirling, created a body known as the commissioners of police, which sat alongside the town council and was made up of many of the same people. The powers extended to the commissioners included overseeing building standards regulations as they existed then as well as watching, cleansing and lighting.  As a consequence, the minutes produced by these commissioners include the discussion of matters relating to building standards as well as policing and other matters.

The primary value of the minutes of police authorities is for the academic study of policing or for local history. For researching the careers of individual policemen police authority minutes are not valuable, except in the case of senior officers.

In Scotland, minutes of police committees, commissioners or authorities are generally held by local authority archives and more recent minutes may be held as electronic records. As with any minute books they require many hours’ or days’ research, especially for 19th century minute books, which are invariably manuscript and not indexed.