Police bosses have been quizzed over the control room “blunders” following the controversial closing of centres in the north-east.
MSPs questioned Scottish Police Authority chairman Andrew Flanagan just a week after a high-profile incident where police were sent to a Tesco store in Great Western Road in Glasgow after reports of a break in at an outlet in Aberdeen.
It took officers several hours to arrive at the correct scene.
Last month the Aberdeen control room was closed with emergency calls for the north-east now handled in Tayside and Glasgow.
Just days later concerned motorists told the Press and Journal that call handlers had “no clue” of the location of a crash on the Charleston flyover.
North-east conservative MSP Liam Kerr questioned what was being done to “re-establish trust” in the police and how that would be measured in future.
Mr Flanagan acknowledged the errors and said that he had asked for a report on the incident to come directly to him to investigate what went wrong.
Mr Kerr said: “There was an element of Keystone Cops farce to the reports last week that police officers were sent to a Tesco store in Glasgow instead of Aberdeen, but the incident has highlighted a serious issue.
“The centralisation of control rooms in Scotland under the SNP and the closure of the local facility in Aberdeen raised justifiable concerns about the loss of local knowledge.
“The next time that something goes wrong, we could be talking about the loss of life as a result.”
But chief superintendent Roddy Newbigging said the changes would result in an improved service.
He said: “The C3 integration and remodelling programme is underpinned by a robust quality assurance framework and is subject to significant internal and external scrutiny.
“The changes to call handling mean that the public now receive a significantly improved level of service when they contact us on both 999 and 101.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Police Scotland believe their call handling changes are key to the public receiving the full benefits of a single police service, and HMICS have confirmed they are satisfied that Police Scotland have prepared and engaged properly ahead of these changes.”
