Police Scotland is doubling the number of its officers trained to handle disorder as it gears up for this year’s world climate summit in Glasgow.

The national force a year and a quarter ago had around 1100 men and women with the skills to deal with mass protests or disturbances.

Last night it confirmed that figure had now risen to 2100 with another hundred officers to undergo training in coming weeks reports The Herald.

Police chiefs are not predicting trouble - they are preparing for what their planners refer to as “reasonable worst-case scenarios”.

The COP-26 meeting will take place on the Clyde in November and will generate huge media and political interest - with the prospect of demonstrations.

Some previous world summits, such as the G-8 in Genoa in 2001, have been marred with violence.

The news comes after The Herald yesterday revealed that Police Scotland was pronouncing the life an elite public order unit, the Flexible Response Unit, on standby till next year. The 225-officer strong FRU, pronounced Frew, was set up to tackle any potential trouble arising from Brexit and kept going to deal with Covid.

Mark Williams, assistant chief constable for operational support, said one of the reasons FRU would be maintained til April was COP-26.

This is also one of the reasons why more rank-and-file officers were also getting extra public order training. But not, he said, the only one.

“We have uplifted the number of our public order trained officers in Scotland quite significantly over the last 15 months in preparation for COP26,” Williams said, “but equally because what we have seen in recent years that there is an increasing requirement to deploy more highly trained officers.”

He added: “We used to have 1100 out of our 17300 officers with public order training. So not a huge amount, far less than if you were to benchmark with most forces in England and Wales. The Met have about a quarter trained.”

Police Scotland still anticipates it will have to borrow officers from other UK forces to handle Cop-26.“We have made a commitment to minimise the need for mutual aid,” he said.

Asked if there would be other public order costs, he added: “Yes, more equipment, more overalls, more vans, most vehicles and a significant uplift in costs as a result. The expectation is that we will reach a peak point in advance of COP-26 and then reduce thereafter as we move back to “business as usual” Scotland.

Business as usual in Scotland, however, has presented additional public order challenges.

The assistant chief constable talked about sectarian marches, counter protests and demos around climate change, Black Live Matters, independence, Brexit, and Covid over the last 12-24 months.

All this has been on top of football, domestic and international.

Williams was not suggesting that these events were violent - or that protestors or marchers were necessarily dangerous.

He said: “All of these events have shown us that they thankfully have been policed very well and there has been very little public disorder of any nature. Having those trained officers who are able to move from community policing to an enhanced state has been a contingency which has been necessary. It probably just reflects some of the environment now around politics, health, sport which is a combination of Brexit, Covid and other pressures.” Yesterday he described the continuation of FRU as a “product of the times”.

Scotland, however, has not experienced the levels of disorder seen in London and elsewhere in 2020 and 2021.

“That is a product of Scotland and it is not necessary reflected elsewhere in the UK in certain areas,” Williams said. “We enjoy a very positive relationship with the public and we have a level of peacefulness. There are protests and there is occasionally disorder, but it’s small and it’s ‘scale’.”