Recommendation FP78: Recommendation 78
From The Fingerprint Inquiry Report, published 14 December 2011.
Recommendation
The system of registration on the National Register of Fingerprint Experts should be reviewed. If it continues in use it should be revised to ensure that the criteria for registration and the records are kept up to date and that the records indicate competence. Should SPSA for any reason decide that an examiner is no longer competent to practise, it should notify the NPIA so that the examiner’s name is removed from the register and also the Scottish Government so that authorisation under section 280 is withdrawn.
Government response
No government response to this recommendation is on the record yet.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
The Scottish Government's news release of 14 December 2011, the day the report was published, is its only published statement on the recommendations. Its one sentence about them is given for all of them together and states no position. The Scottish Police Services Authority's release of the same day accepts "all of the recommendations made of it by the Inquiry" without listing them; the site records that on the recommendations addressed to its forensic service. The Authority no longer exists, and the site files its words under the Scottish Police Authority, which took over its forensic services in 2013.
Delivery
No statement on delivery from the addressee has been found in the sources searched (last checked 18 June 2026). This is separate from the response above.