CIRCULAR: 2010HOC0336MW

14 May 2010

TO: ALL MEMBERS

Dear Brother / Sister

REGIONALISATION OF EMERGENCY FIRE CONTROLS – LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER

Members will be aware from our long running lobbying and campaigning that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have both expressed very clear opposition to the Regionalisation of Fire Controls in England. The two parties now form the new Government.

Attached is a letter to the Prime Minister seeking a commitment from the Government to honour the pledges made on this issue prior to the election; the text of the letter also appears below.

Yours fraternally

MATT WRACK

GENERAL SECRETARY

 Download the letter to the Prime Minister as a PDF

Text of letter to the Prime Minister:

14 May 2010

Dear Prime Minister

FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE – REGIONALISATION OF EMERGENCY FIRE CONTROLS

I am writing in regard to the new Government’s stance on the CLG FiReControl Project (Regionlisation of Emergency Fire Controls).

In the light of comments made before and during the election by Conservative spokepersons, firefighters will be watching closely the steps taken by the new Government. You may recall that you were asked by a Firefighter (Graham Donaldson) in Yorkshire on 24 April about the Fire Service. You said:

“One thing we would do to try and stop waste is the Regionalisation of Fire Service, the so-called ‘Fire Control Scheme; it was going to cost £100 million, it’s now costing £420 million. We will want to stop that in its tracks.”

We also noted comments on FiReControl in Conservative policy green paper, Control Shift: returning power to Local Communities (February 2010), which stated:

“We will… abandon plans to regionlise Fire Control (while providing new measures to enhance resilience in the case of a national emergency).” It added: “A Conservative government will follow the Scottish example and ditch this botched project, where such regional centres have not yet gone live. We will, instead, upgrade a small number of existing fire control centres to enable them to act as national ‘super centres’ in the extreme case of a national emergency.” (p.27, p.31)

We are also aware of Liberal Democrat opposition to Regional Controls. In March this year, the then Party Spokesperson Julia Goldsworthy told the FBU’s Firefighter magazine that the Government should think again over FiReControl. She said:

“The Liberal Democrats are opposed to the Government’s plans to centralise Fire Control. This project will  mean vital knowledge is lost and this could risk the response time to incidents. The project has already proved to be too expensive and is likely to make the Service less rather than more responsive. WE have called for the project to be stopped and for existing Control Rooms to be upgraded as necessary to ensure the communications benefits sought by Government are dleivered by local Fire Brigade Control Rooms, as they will be in Scotland and are in Wales, without the need for Regionlisation.”

Given the wide political agreement between both Government parties on this issue, we would like an understanding from you that the FiReControl project will be scrapped, with a timetable for this process and for the upgrading of existing Control Rooms.

Your faithfully

MATT WRACK

cc:

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No.10 Downing Street

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Liberal Democrats Party

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