News Concerns raised over fire plans
Plans to regionalise fire control services could make local flooding more difficult to tackle in future.
This was the message coming this week from prospective Conservative MP for Goole, Andrew Percy, as he told how, under Labour's ongoing regionalisation plans, the local fire-control room for Humberside is to be moved to Wakefield, covering a population of nearly five million people and an area of nearly 6,000 square miles.
He said that local knowledge and expertise would be lost and warned that the Government's plan to regionalise the fire service could undermine the effectiveness of the local emergency services in tackling future flood risks and other unforeseen events.
Areas that currently have Tri-Service centres, where the fire, ambulance and police are in one local command centre, will have the 'fire' element taken away. A cross-party committee of MPs warned last year that combined control rooms for the emergency services would do more to increase resilience than sprawling, regional fire-control rooms.
"The Government's expensive plans for the regionalisation of the fire control services are flawed," said Mr Percy.
"When I met with representatives of the Humberside Brigade recently, at a meeting to discuss the response to flooding in the East Riding, they explained that the move to regional control would mean a loss of control over the resources of the Humberside Brigade. For example, if we saw a repeat of the recent flooding, resources from the Humberside Force could be despatched anywhere in the country without any local veto by our Chief Officer."
Howden MP David Davis added: "Local Tri-Service centres could do far more to improve resilience than creating a distant call centre in Wakefield covering all of Yorkshire.
"The arbitrary government office regions are too distant and too big. These proposals prove that the Government's talk of localism and local accountability is nothing more than clever spin."
But the local Labour Party this week hit out against the claims made by Andrew Percy. A spokesperson told the Goole Times: "The recent flooding only helped to highlight the need for the regionalisation of the control rooms; during the height of the floods, the Humberside control room received 4,000 calls in 48 hours. With just five or six staff on duty at one time they were swamped with the number of calls.
"Under new plans, all the areas will be networked to deal with exceptional demand and they will be able to get in touch with local service control rooms and not have to waste time faxing through details to other control rooms.
"It is a dangerously complacent attitude to think this vital service cannot be improved. Fire stations will still be in the same place that they are now; all that will change will be that the nine regional control centres will be networked to improve the public with a faster, more reliable service."
Published on 16th August 2007 in News.
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