‘We need time to address issues and find solutions’

But new head of law enforcement Ruari Hardy said at this point he was not prepared to detail work on each of the eight recommendations and 26 ‘areas for improvement’ in the report.

‘All I can say at the moment is that the recommendations are very much in the spotlight for us and are being addressed,’ he said.

‘Just to reassure – progress is being made. We just need to be allowed some time to address some of the issues and find solutions.’

Among the recommendations were the publishing of a document defining Law Enforcement’s and the Home Affairs committee’s responsibilities after concerns were raised about how the board was operating.

The inspectors also wanted Law Enforcement to implement an action plan to improve its victim care and evaluate domestic violence incidents and how they are dealt with.

HMIC’S report called for the recommendations to be addressed by the end of this month, but Mr Hardy said this was generally acknowledged as being impracticable.

‘I think there is a realisation that to achieve good outcomes from the HMIC recommendations the dates as set by the HMIC of 31 January are not realistic,’ he said.

Home Affairs and Law Enforcement had agreed that they wanted to address all the issues raised properly and it would not be possible to do this by that deadline.

Some of the recommendations made would take slightly longer than others, said Mr Hardy. ‘There is work ongoing across all of them, but there are things ongoing at the moment like Brexit and we have to balance a lot of priorities.’

As an aside, he praised the efforts of staff to prepare for Brexit: ‘The staff working on it have worked hard on looking at all the possible outcomes and scenarios and putting us in a position where we can be quite agile in what we have to do and where we have to go to ensure that we can continue to support the movement of goods, that people can get passports and can travel and also continue to ensure that we support our borders and keep them safe.’

With regard to HMIC’s report, he said initial indications from Home Affairs were that they were committed to working with him to address the recommendations: ‘They are as much up for resolving these issues and assuring the public that we have responded to and addressed those issues as I am.

‘We will certainly update the public when we have resolved the issues and addressed the recommendations.’