Local incidents matter to local people

A CAR drove into the side of a home on Lerwick’s North Road at lunchtime on Saturday.

Videos of the damage soon circulated around WhatsApp groups, along with images of the exterior wall almost caved in.

And yet Shetland News did not report on the incident until Monday morning, almost 48 hours after it happened.

Why? Because Police Scotland’s communications team, which is based on the mainland and fields enquiries from media across the country, did not respond at all when contacted over the weekend.

This may seem like a trivial occurrence, but it is the latest in a series of stonewalls from Police Scotland after a recent incident.

Three weeks ago, Shetland News requested information on a car fire in Wormadale on a Sunday afternoon.

Unexpectedly, we received an automated email back explaining that enquiries would now be “assessed against demand” and may not receive a response at all.

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We were also told that any request must include, as a minimum, the date and approximate time of the incident and a brief overview of what had happened.

Anyone familiar with how incidents in Shetland are brought to attention will know just how difficult it can be to get all of that information all at once.

But regardless of whether you have that information or not, the line that the enquiry will be “assessed against demand” still stands – and so far Shetland seems to be at the bottom of the pecking order.

Again, a car went on fire above the Cott junction on Wednesday afternoon, and again a request to the Police Scotland communications team went unanswered.

And then there was Saturday. Shetland News was able to provide the date, location, approximate time and a brief description of the incident, and yet is still waiting on a response from the communications team.

All of this begs the question – what will Police Scotland deem to be a high priority incident worthy of response?

Luckily in Shetland there is occasionally a helpful steer from local senior officers, who will give information if they can be reached.

However this can in no way be relied upon for quick answers, particularly at nights or weekends when officers may be enjoying a well-earned rest or are busy on the job.

Things have changed rapidly in recent years in terms of police communications. The local police used to do their own local communication, but that has ceased many years ago.

They continue to make themselves available whenever they can, but the national news desk has deteriorated from sporadic responses to seemingly nothing.

And that’s before you get onto the number of instances where the corporate communications team provided updates on incidents in Shetland where either the date, location, road or time was wrong or spelled incorrectly.

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Shetland News is a small news team of just three reporters – with one person on call every weekend to cover any major events or incidents.

Our weekend output is typically kept to a minimum, with the hope that the reporter on call will still be able to enjoy their weekend without being wedded to the laptop.

It’s therefore frustrating to end up in a scenario where that person finds themselves in a fruitless wild goose chase with Police Scotland, especially over a high profile local incident.

We understand that in the public sector resourcing – both financially and in personnel – can be challenging, and that the national news desk workload will be high.

We understand too that a car crash in Shetland may be viewed as less important by a communications team who may be dealing with enquiries from other media in the country about incidents such as fatal accidents or public disorder.

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But we are of the view that local incidents matter to local people.

Given how public Saturday’s crash was, realistically Shetland News could have reported it without the confirmation or comment from the police.

But in these incidents, in a small island community, we strive to ensure that we have all the official information we can get before publishing.

Shetland News aims to continue to be a community-led news website first and foremost, and to bring you stories that are relevant to Shetland and that our readers want to read.

It’s important to once again highlight that we are providing this access free of charge, without a paywall.

We also do so without the click-bait type stories that propagate other news websites across the UK, and without social media posts that purposefully aim to generate comments by stirring up division or anger.

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We will continue to do so. If you like what we do and want to support us, please feel free to sign up below. It’s not just important for us as a business but for local democracy and community cohesion.

The Shetland News team (Hans J Marter, Chris Cope, Ryan Nicolson and Clement Duncan)

Shetland News — free to read

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