The Conservative dominated Public Protection committee has endorsed the decision to move Suffolk’s Fire Control to Cambridge, in spite of the views of all opposition parties that the decision was premature and ill considered.
Liberal Democrats at Suffolk County Council challenged the Cabinet decision which was originally made on 7th December and called it in to be reconsidered a special meeting of the Public Protection committee. The control room, which is located at the former Colchester Road Fire HQ has to move to allow the County to sell the property. A number of options for a new control had been considered, including relocating to the former Police control room at Adastral Park or the secondary control room in Felixstowe. However these were dismissed in favour of the move to Cambridgeshire. Only 8 of the 23 control room staff will be required by Cambridgeshire and they will face a 150 mile round trip to work each day.
This was supposed to be an interim move until the Governments new regional Control, also in Cambridge was ready. However, while we were discussing the issue yesterday, an announcement was being made in Parliament that the Regional Fire Control project was scrapped. We understand that there was a briefing for all Chief Fire Officers last Wednesday. It is ludicrous that Suffolk have made such an important decision on the pretence that Regional Fire Control was going ahead.
Suffolk is the only Fire Authority in the region to go down this route. No value has been assigned to local knowledge, which allows Suffolk staff to identify incident locations from minimal information from people who are often very distressed. For instance, if you have an accident on a country road in the County, you don’t know the postcode, but can describe some local landmarks. Local control room staff can then locate the incident quickly and despatch fire appliances.
There are many questions still unanswered about the cost of the move and we don’t feel the options have been properly evaluated. Ther is just a desparate rush to ditch Suffolk jobs.
Group Leader, Kathy Pollard said “There seems to be no recognition in the paper that control room staff carry out many other tasks. For example, through Fire and Carers together they organise vital information which can mean the difference between life or death for a disabled person in an emergancy or for firefighters going to their aid. There are clearly many risks that go along with this decision, but nowhere have we seen a list of these. The loss of the control room, along with other proposed cuts to the Fire Service, looks to the public like a serious downgrading of the service in the County.”
Yesterday, after announcing the cancellation of the Regional Control, the Minister stated:
“We will, however, start to consult the fire and rescue sector soon on how best the Government can support them, if at all, in developing their alternative plans based on the principles of localism, ensuring public safety, building up national resilience and delivering value for taxpayers’ money. These continue to be our overriding priorities.”
Councillor John Field added “It’s clear that Government are willing to support Fire Authorities in whatever new arrangements they may need to put in place. So why on earth was this decision made today? We suspect it was purely a cost cutting exercise and an excuse to dispose of 23 dedicated control room staff.”
