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The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) is to be allowed to directly recruit police officers into its ranks, under new regulations being considered by the Scottish Parliament.

The new arrangements are intended to provide a more flexible and sustainable workforce for the agency which currently uses seconded officers from Scottish forces. The agency would continue to work alongside Scotland's eight forces and remains answerable to Scottish Government Ministers as part of the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA).

The SCDEA recently announced it had seized more than £1 million in cash from serious organised crime gangs in a single year - more than six times the amount seized during the previous year.

On a visit to Tulliallan Police College to meet new recruits, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill confirmed that the new regulations (subject to Parliamentary approval) were likely to be in place on April 1.

The new recruits were beginning their training at the college after forces began the recruitment process following a deal struck between the Scottish Government and local authorities.

The new intake at the police college will be boosted further by an additional 124 probationers in the next intake - beginning next week - and 117 new recruits in April.

Mr MacAskill said:

"The SCDEA already does fantastic work taking on the gangsters and drug dealers that bring misery to communities right across Scotland, and we have seen in the last few weeks just how successful it is as a crime fighting unit, with £1.25 million in cash seized between April 2010 and last month.

"At present, its staff is entirely made up of secondees from police forces, but these new regulations will allow the Agency, for the first time, to maintain its own more flexible and sustainable workforce that it can deploy to tackle the scourge of organised crime.

"This move reaffirms our commitment to ensuring our police forces are given every help to tackle crime and continue their work in making Scotland a safer place.

"The additional officers now on Scotland's streets and the hard work of agencies such as the SCDEA have helped us make considerable progress over the past four years in making Scotland safer, with recorded crime down, homicide down and the fear of crime reducing in Scotland's communities."

The SCDEA (Scotland) Regulations 2011 will enable direct recruitment of police members to SCDEA, through appointment by SPSA, as provided for by the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2006.

The regulations will introduce a new route of recruitment for the SCDEA, from an existing pool of police officers, which in the medium to longer term is expected to provide a degree of financial savings for the Agency, as the number of secondees reduce and the number of directly recruited officers increases. It is anticipated that the first recruits to the SCDEA, under these new arrangements, could be in place before the end of 2011.

Between April 2010 and February 2011, a total of £1.25 million cash has been seized in SCDEA operations - more than six times the cash seized during 2009-10 (£207,000).

These 'working cash' seizures are in addition to the assets of criminals identified by the SCDEA through their operations for potential restraint under Proceeds of Crime legislation.

The SCDEA estimates that the cash seizures have prevented serious organised crime groups from potentially generating £10 million from drug dealing.

With £1.25 million cash, serious organised crime groups would be able to buy a total of 56 kilos of heroin, or 27 kilos of cocaine, which would be bulked with mixing agents to produce 270 kilos of low purity cocaine for supply - roughly equivalent to 448,000 street level deals of heroin with an estimated street value of £4,480,000, or 270,000 street level deals of cocaine worth approximately £10.8 million.

The majority of the cash has been seized in raids on property, and vehicle stops, including £40,000 seized from a goods vehicle on its way to France and almost £90,000 seized from the home of a drug courier in England.

The largest individual quantity of cash recovered by officers so far this reporting year is £200,000, and officers made three separate seizures of this size during 2010-11.

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