Dear All,

Your Fire Service is at Risk. If you ring 999 today for the Fire Service your call is answered immediately and a fire engine is despatched in seconds. The Fire Engine is sent from your Local County Fire Service Control Room, which, is staffed by a set minimum number of personnel providing 24 hour-a-day cover. This process has been described by the Government as ‘Excellent’, is cost-effective and provides the public with valuable local knowledge when they call 999.

However, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) who have the responsibility for the Fire Service want to change this. The ODPM want to introduce 9 Regional based Control Rooms across the UK. This process will:
• Reduce the total number of Control Staff
• Cost in excess of £1 Billion of Public Money
• Increase the time taken to answer a 999 call
• Increase the time taken to despatch a Fire Engine
The ODPM’s Business Case even states ‘the Project has a high – very high risk of total project failure’ – AND THIS WON’T SAVE A SINGLE LIFE OR PROVIDE ANY IMPROVEMENT TO THE EXISTING SERVICE – IN FACT IT IS LIKELY TO WORSEN THE SERVICE CONSIDERABLY.

Therefore, your help is needed. Their will be an Early Day Motion in the Government for MP’s to discuss these plans. If you e-mail your concerns to your Local MP they will represent those concerns in Parliament – and hopefully put a stop to this project. Please follow these directions and keep your Local Fire Control Room in your Local Fire Brigade.

• Visit www.controlcare.org.uk
• At the bottom right of the page click ‘lobby your MP’
• In the box enter your postcode to find your MP
• Complete the details and press send
• Your MP will acknowledge your response and make representations in Parliament on your behalf.

Perhaps if we didn't give 8billion or so to Brussels such issues wouldn't arise...

shut it captain scarlet

statements like that mean absolutely nothing and you know it

Originally posted by Carl_Malibu
shut it captain scarlet

statements like that mean absolutely nothing and you know it Kinda do really...

Anything remotely useful and costing money gets thrown down the trap due to monetary restriction like the one I've exposed above.

I have naturally lobbied my MP :) Thanks scott281178 for bringin all this to my attention.

cheers, have done.

Is there a copy of the final business case somewhere for us to view then ?

Merging the 46 offices into 9 sounds like a good idea :thumbsup:

Yes you can view the Outline Business Case.

Visit www.controlcare.org.uk

Click in the 'Publications' Section

'FireControl - Outline Business Case'
is available to download.

Recommended reading would also
be 'The FBU response to the Mott Macdonald Report'


Cheers.

Any help you can give would be appreciated - many thanks!

This needs your support help please!

Bet you wish you hadn't asked for that payrise now, don't you :P

I'm surprised this has not received more national publicity, but I have sent my email :thumbsup:

Originally posted by dan_999uk
Bet you wish you hadn't asked for that payrise now, don't you :P

Hahaha - think they call it karma!

On a serious note I have no idea if this is a good or bad idea - however I'm sick of various public sector unions thinking that they are owed a living by the tazpayer! Far too many people are employed by the government - anything that actually cuts their number is fine by me...

Having worked for South Yorks Fire & Rescue I can quite confidently say that the support staff could be cut to a quarter of what it is now with no noticeable effect on output.

Equally if it wasn't for so many fire sttaff working "off station" Community safety and other daft secondments then there would probably no need to cut control staff.

You might also wonder how much it cost to pay off the three senior officers who left last year and how much their pensions are costing the service. You'd be amazed!

This is a summary of the proposal to close local fire control rooms and the likely impact:

While the ODPM claims this will create a more resilient service in the event of a 9/11 attack
this is not the case. Current Control Rooms in themselves operate with many back up systems.
In South Yorkshire there are back-up power supply systems, computer systems have several
servers, the 999 lines are connected to different exchanges, if there is a major fault calls can
be transferred to West Yorkshire Fire Service (by arrangement, and vica verca). And in a serious
emergency there is a Standby Control Room based at the Brigades Training Centre.

In the case of dealing with a large surge of calls for particular incidents, South Yorkshire have
dealt with large/serious incidents on many occasions, (including the Hillsborough disaster),
with no loss of service to the public. There is arrangement so that if the Control Room in
South Yorkshire is busy calls will be transferred to West Yorkshire, however, this
happens very rarely, and affects only a very small number of calls.

Furthermore, in New York Fire Department (that which dealt with 9/11) is increasing the
number of control rooms they have in order to make the more resilient to the 9/11 type
of attack.

In South Yorkshire 999 calls have to be answered within 60 seconds before being transferred to
West Yorkshire Fire Service for processing. This happens on very rare occasions. In the ODPM's
plan for regional control rooms, 999 calls will be transferred to other regional centres as a matter
of routine. This will be due to the lower staffing levels within the regional centre (typically this will
be 8 staff per night, per region, currently there are approx 20 staff per night in the Yorkshire &
Humberside region). Therefore, call surges will be much more common, and the 999 call could be
answered by anyone in the country. While Local Knowledge is not required on every call, this is a
skill acquired by Control Staff over time, and is vital when dealing with a number of calls. This would
be effectively lossed under the proposals.

I must stress that the current process of taking a 999 call, obtaining and matching an address,
and despatching the required fire engine is currently deemed to be 'excellent' (quote from the
ODPM report). The Fire Service completes this process much quicker than other emergency
services.

The ODPM's proposals are not intended to improve the current service (and are likely to have the opposite
effect), this process wont save anyone's life, there is no other justification for these proposals other than
to make cost savings by reducing the overall number of control staff. But when you consider that the
implementation costs of such a proposal could be in excess of £1 billion (by the ODPMs own estimate),
and that the project has a 'High to Very High Risk of Total Failure' (ODPMs Business Case), how
can such sweeping plans be justified? Why spend £1 billion pounds of public money that wont make any
improvement to service delivery?

Further details of the ODPMs proposals and their risks can be found at www.controlcare.org.uk

It will take many years to recoupe any savings if the project costs in excess of £1billion.

If you feel you can support our campaign to prevent this happening I would urge you to
pursue the matter with your Local Councillors and your MP.

The Fire Service completes this process much quicker than other emergency services.

Yes, that's because it takes 30 seconds to say:
"Theres a fire at 1 Church Street"
"You say there's a fire at 1 Church Street?"
"Yes."
"Make sure everyone gets out, we're on the way"

Whereas the police and ambulance service needs to take a lot more details, for example getting description of offenders, the nature of problem, and giving treatment advice while the amb ulance is en-route. Please don't compare calls because they aren't like for like.

including the Hillsborough disaster
Wasn't really anything to do with the fire service was it?

Furthermore, in New York Fire Department (that which dealt with 9/11) is increasing the number of control rooms they have in order to make the more resilient to the 9/11 type
of attack.

The NYFD also co-ordinates ambulance responses so are a lot busier than UK fire control rooms.

In the ODPM's plan for regional control rooms, 999 calls will be transferred to other regional centres as a matter
of routine.

So? Modern technology allows control rooms to view incredibly-detailed local maps, data on hazardous premises, access local major incident procedures etc. etc.

Obviously, you'd like to protect your colleagues/members jobs, but you're probably on a losing streak with this one.

Yes, that's because it takes 30 seconds to say:
"Theres a fire at 1 Church Street"
"You say there's a fire at 1 Church Street?"
"Yes."
"Make sure everyone gets out, we're on the way"

Fire Control Operators give Fire Survival Guidance advice to callers trapped in Buildings on regular occasions. I have NO desire to compare the emergency services as they are all different. However it is the ODPM that began comparing not us.

Fire Control is very different to Police and Ambulance, we have far less staff by comparison, we do not require as much information, but we all have the same problems that people call 999 when they dont know where the problem is.


The NYFD also co-ordinates ambulance responses so are a lot busier than UK fire control rooms.

The decision to increase the number of Control Rooms has nothing to do with the fact that they co-ordinate ambulance response or call volumes. The reasoning behind this decision is 'dont put all yer eggs in one basket'


Modern technology allows control rooms to view incredibly-detailed local maps, data on hazardous premises, access local major incident procedures etc. etc.

Yes it does. And this data has to be maintained. The Control Room works very closely with other South Yorkshire Fire departments to ensure that staff are well trained is using such systems.


I am not opposed to modernisation! I think it is a good idea that all Control rooms have the same technological systems (which each brigade currently procures and pays for seperately) - an agreement to purchase this equipment under 1 contract would save a lot of money.

However, regionalisation of control rooms will cost in excess of £1 billion pounds and won't improve the service to the public - I fail to see the point.

Fair do's - I understand your concern regarding the waste of £1 billion, and the risk of failure - organising cock-ups seems to be what this government is good at!

I've always quite favoured combined control rooms between police, fire and ambulance services personally - this proposal would certainly knock any prospect of that on the head.

A combined control room would be a better prospect but is very unlikely i think.

Mainly due to the fact that in the UK - each service currently operates with different geographical boundaries.

thanks to every1 who replied:

responses from MP are going well:

any more help is always appreciated though!

Have a letter from Jim Fitzpatrick. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Dated 1st. July. Have you seen it. Very complicated for anyone with little knowledge of the set-up. Bye.

I'm confused :loopy: OK, I know there's nothing new there, but...

can anyone tell me what the ODPM actually add's to anything? What is it costing us, the taxpayer to run the ODPM? Does the ODPM only exist to consider change for change sake?

I would maybe understand why they are merging the control room functions into regional centres if it did in fact have an actual cost saving with no loss of service, but the cost of the mergers appear to be nothing other than change for changes sake?

I will be contacting my MP, and at the same time I will also be asking what the cost saving will be if we do away with the ODPM altogether (and what we will lose if we do).

A merged control room service would appear on the face of it to be a more sensible option. This would mean re-alignment of border areas, but that would seem to be a sensible option, so why was it not considered?