Letter: Fire service and budget cuts
Tuesday 9th March 2010, 8:00AM GMT.
Letter: Oh dear how is Shropshire fire service going to manage with the proposed budget cuts? I served the brigade in the 70s 80s and 90s and we were a lot busier than the brigade is now.
Well, let me try to help you. I served the brigade in the 70s 80s and 90s and we were a lot busier than the brigade is now. Then we had a chief, deputy chief and a third officer at the top. Now you have a load of assistant chief officers that seemed to arrive during an enlargement of the St Michael’s Street empire.
What the taxpayer does not know are the perks that go with these so-called senior management posts, ie they get extra pay for being on call (can you tell us how many incidents they attend, phone bills are paid (rental part) and they get generous mileage allowances. In fact some have not had their backsides on the seat of a fire engine at all.
I think a cull at the top would benefit the brigade and would save thousands of pounds.
There used to be the triangle of fire, heat, oxygen and fuel, take away one and the fire goes out, let there be the square of fire, heat, oxygen, fuel and assistant chiefs take away one and the assistants and the fire will still go out and there’s no need to touch the guys at the front line.
Name and address supplied
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As a retired station commander, I can only agree with this letter too many chiefs on generous allowances and not enough indians. Majority of officers get paid handsome allowances for sitting at home ‘on call’. and proberly attend only 2 or 3 fires a year and at incidents they do attend the difference they make is minimal, as the hard work and life saving decisions have allready been made by the first attendence crews. When a senior officer arrives it is a case of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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I would assume that the growth in senior officers is related to the rampant increases in public spending and over-administration over the last few years? I do note that senior administrative managers are now given job titles that I believe used to be only held by officers with operational fire fighting experience. North Wales for instance has a Deputy Chief Officer appointed last year and she comes from an administrative background.
There has been a huge increase in administrative posts in the Fire Service in Shropshire, and I presume this can only be attributed to the same increase in paperwork that seems to have been required in the last few years. Not to mention Public Relations staff, Diversity officers and so on.
A huge amount of money is being spent on upgrading Fire Service HQ (although, we are assured, not as much as they would have spent if they’d had an entirely new building. Even so, you can bet the costs will spiral. Would it not have been better to slim down the overabundance of admin posts.
With the move towards regional fire controls in the not-too-distant future, it seems inevitable to me (especially with the cost cutting that is going to come) that there will be a regional fire service before much longer anyway. And I suspect that a smaller HQ staff will result anyway, which makes you wonder why this expenditure is necessary. I am totally against any cuts in the operational side of the fire service, including the current control room. But let’s be honest, there are plenty of scope for cuts elsewhere.
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The front line people deserve every cash allowance and best type of equipment available. Each time they are called out they are putting their life at risk to save others. They must NOT be even considered for cuts.
Hangers on and administrators can be culled they don’t ride on the Fire Engine. If cuts are required then take them from this layer of the service.
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why dont the insurance companies hand over a small percentage of their income as they do take money for fire and crashes. it appears to me they are taking money under false pretences and gaining all the benefit–looks like fraud to me. also these companies do not do anything that the fire service,ambulance,police etc do. lets have your answers aviva,swinton,direct line etc, and the underwriting banks and building societies.
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What about the people who shoot up through the ranks just before they’re about to retire, spend a minimal amount of time in a this senior position, offer very little to the brigade and the tax payer, and then reap all the benefits with their heavily inflated ‘final salary’ pension as a result.
We’ve seen the MP’s expenses scandal, maybe some of the other public sector agencies should fall into the spotlight??
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With a election approaching this year, wouldnt it be better for the county people to be made more aware that their money is being wasted on a daily basis with the regional fire control room project which is swallowing up our money running empty buildings across the country and paying vast salaries to several people on running a white elephant. The money should be directed to avoiding such sweeping cuts in frontline services.
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