M9 FAI: Police bid to 'protect reputation' after fatal crash

John Yuill, 28, and Lamara Bell, 25, were reported missing on July 5, 2015 – the day their Renault Clio crashed down an embankment.

The crashed vehicle was reported to police at the time but the call was not properly logged and by the time the couple were found three days later Mr Yuill was dead and Ms Bell died later in hospital.

The inquiry at Falkirk Sheriff Court heard a training officer had raised concerns about the working practices in the call centre.

Sergeant Brian Henry, the officer who failed to log the initial report of the crash, described being told what had happened as “the worst call you can imagine as a police officer”.

He was working an overtime shift as a call handler at Police Scotland's service centre at Bilston Glen, Midlothian, when he took a 101 call from a farmer reporting a crashed car beside the M9 at Bannockburn on July, 2015.

But he did not create an entry on the force's system and emergency services were not sent to the scene until three days later, after a second person reported the car.By then Mr Yuill was already dead, and Ms Bell a significant head injury. She was flown to hospital in Glasgow where she later died.

Mr Henry, 61, now retired, felt "physically sick" when he heard what had happened, the inquiry heard.

The manager of the Bilston Glen centre, Laura Henderson, said she had phoned the sergeant at Dalkeith Police Station on July 8, just after the couple were found. He was on duty in his normal role as a crime management officer.

Mrs Henderson said: "I gave him brief details and asked him if he could recall what action he took. I advised him I was trying to find the incident for it but I couldn't find anything.”

He checked his notebook and said he had not made any notes in the margins stating what action he had taken regarding the initial call regarding the crash.Mrs Henderson told him there had been a serious incident with missing people found in the car and that the same caller had contacted police to say he’d previously reported the vehicle off the road.In a statement – read to the inquiry as Miss Bell's father Andrew and one of her brothers sat in the public gallery – Mr Henry said he had received the phone call from Mrs Henderson on his mobile.He said: "It was the worst call you can imagine as a police officer – a call you would not want to receive. I was in a state of complete shock at that point."The inquiry has heard that police officers from local divisions had been brought in as volunteers on overtime to handle non-emergency calls at Bilston Glen, which had been suffering "critical" shortages of staff.

The centre had experienced a major increase in call volumes since the closure earlier that year of "legacy force" control rooms in Stirling and Glenrothes after the merging of Scotland's eight old police forces into one national police service.

But the volunteer officers were only given two to three hours training, and not taught to use contact management software in use at Bilston Glen, known as Aspire.

A Police Scotland training sergeant, Lindsey Hammond, 46, said she had earlier warned that three to four hours training was not enough.

She said it appeared to her that senior management had "miscalculated" the number of staff that would be needed at Bilston Glen, and she also felt that the closure of the Stirling and Glenrothes control rooms had taken place too quickly with not enough time to train staff.

She said: "I voiced my concerns that I didn't think three to four hours was long enough. Usually we take about a day and a half to do this, and also shadow a fully trained handler for a number of days. I told Laura Henderson I thought this was a huge risk."The inquiry was told that within hours of the discovery of Miss Bell and Mr Yuill's body, a directive was issued requiring all staff, including overtime officers, to be trained in Aspire in order to "minimise the risk and protect the reputation of the Police Service of Scotland".The inquiry at Falkirk Sheriff Court before Sheriff James Williamson, continues.