FIFE Council has told the Scottish Government it has a “specific concern” that it’s not ready to manage dangerous and violent criminals in the community.

It has a legal duty to monitor convicted sex offenders and is due to look after Category 3 offenders – classed as people who “may cause serious harm to the public at large” – from April.

But with no extra cash, the council wrote to Justice Secretary, Michael Matheson, to warn its Criminal Justice Social Work (CJSW) department will struggle to cope.

Fife’s criminal justice head, Dougie Dunlop, said, “The pressures and challenges faced by CJSW in the face of real-term cuts and increasing demand and expectation is significant.” Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) place a duty on Fife Council, the police, NHS Fife and the Scottish Prison Service, to supervise the risk presented by sex offenders in Fife. It has largely proved successful and last year the Scottish Government decided to extend MAPPA – from 1st April 2015 – to include Category 3 ‘dangerous offenders’.

However, Mr Dunlop said, “This has significant implications for CJSW in particular. The extension of MAPPA to include ‘dangerous offenders’ has not attracted any increase in grant allocation and the responsible authorities appear to be expected to absorb the increased workload within existing resources.” The safer communites committee “expressed specific concern” about the implementation of the new responsibilities “until and unless a clear assessment of their impact is undertaken and financial resources follow”. Committee chair, Kenny Selbie, said, “We will never fail to protect the public and always do what’s necessary to implement MAPPA, but if they want us to do the work they should pay us for it.

“Including dangerous offenders in MAPPA is the right thing to do but we have concerns about the impact the additional workload will have on social services.” Mr Matheson was told of “the council’s concerns in relation to the level of additional funding available to meet its new responsibilities”. Under MAPPA, the partners must work together to manage known offenders. They have the power to request that offenders are recalled to prison for breaching the conditions of their release. Sex offenders are monitored by police but the responsibility for ‘dangerous offenders’ will fall on the council.

The CJSW in Fife will receive more money, up from £5.74m in 2014-15 to £5.85m in 2015-16. But Mr Dunlop’s report said they will “have to review its current commitments given the financial challenges” posed by the new responsibilities. This includes a big increase in the number of community sentences and unpaid work orders imposed, while domestic abuse in Fife – which has “risen considerably in recent years” – is adding to the burden. The Fife team produce more than 200 reports a year and a 26-week domestic abuse groupwork programme, which courts are increasingly ordering offenders to attend, is “hugely oversubscribed” with more than 70 men on the waiting list. Fife Council has received just over £31,000 for fiscal work orders, another new initiative, but resolved to tell the procurator fiscal that once “the ceiling of 128 fiscal work orders has been reached” they will advise “this disposal will no longer be available”.