Police Scotland disputed some of Unison’s claims in a statement provided to the Tele.
A spokesman for the force said: “It is inaccurate to suggest that police officers are backfilling for civilian positions in the Area Control Room (ACR) in Dundee.
“The deployment of police officers within Area Control Rooms is essential to the operation of the ACR and provides a number of operational benefits for the organisation.
“For example, officers with operational skills carry out a review of incidents prior to despatch — they interpret background/intelligence checks and they provide increased resilience in response to critical and major incidents.
“Opportunities within the ACR for police officer posts are advertised internally and all officers currently working in the ACR in Dundee applied for their positions.
“There are police officer and police staff roles in our Area Control Rooms across the country. The ratio of staff to officers varies across each location and is based on the demand profile of each particular area.
“Police Scotland has been working hard, and continues to do so, to address its financial challenge, including actively scrutinising all non-staff costs in order to achieve the required savings.
“This will involve working with trade unions and staff associations to build a sustainable model for the future.
“Our focus is to provide the best service and protection to all our communities within the finances available.
“Amongst our current priorities we are working to assess our future demand profile in order to shape the longer term model of policing in Scotland.”
