Fire chief fears rising costs of control centre
Thursday 26th August 2010, 11:29AM BST.
The chief fire officer of Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service today warned costs for a £23 million new regional control centre could spiral out of control – with county taxpayers forced to foot the bill.
Doubts have been raised about the future of the centre in Wolverhampton, which is still not fully operational and costs taxpayers £1.7m in rent, maintenance and security, despite opening three years ago.
Paul Raymond, chief fire officer for Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service, today said his brigade was already making contingency plans.
The coalition government is reviewing the contract with EADS Defence & Security Ltd (DS UK) which signed a deal in 2007 to supply the infrastructure for the network of nine regional control centres for the fire and rescue service in England.
Mr Raymond said: “If they (EADS) cannot deliver it to the quality we expect, on time and at a cost that’s affordable to local taxpayers in Shropshire then we will look very closely at whether we join the regional control centre or not.
“The original business case that was presented showed there would be a saving in moving to the regional control centre but that saving has disappeared and in the most recent business case, it actually was going to cost us more.”
Mr Raymond added: “At this moment we are working with a company on an interim solution that will keep us going if there are any delays.”
Nobody was available for comment from EADS UK today.
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You might want to take a read of the BBC news website how this is all part of an immensly wastefull failed project around computing systems – it seems computing suppliers once again fail to supply working project – let alone on time, the things don’t work. How do they get away with it –
Its our money we should be angry that computing companies sell software that is plainly not upo the job of shuffling data around the NHS or other services. Its the lure of huge money, I think, that makes them make promises they have no idea whether they can supply something that is capable of doing the job. Its like the fire service being sold a firetruck that is technically wonderfull – but is too heavy for our roads, oh, they did that already.
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Surely the costs HAVE spiralled out of control – there’s no real doubt about it!
These regional control centres *will* all become operational because of the huge amount of money that’s already been spent on them. And because supposedly there will be eventual savings from closing all the county-based Control Rooms (which have done an excellent job over the years…what’s that about not fixing something that ain’t broke?!)
The only good thing is that the Government claim that any moves towards regional fire brigades will not go ahead. That remains to be seen as the pressure to be ‘cost effective’ gets ever greater. I wouldn’t like to put bets on it not happening, whatever they are saying now.
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Interesting that the Chief Fire Officer says they may look closely at whether they join the regional Control Centre or not….
I suspect that the ‘local’ management will have absolutely no say in the matter. If they did, surely they would never have agreed to join a regionalisation plan in the first place. After all, despite all their PR, regionalisation hasn’t done the Ambulance Service many favours.
As I said – if it’s no broke, why fix it?
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This was a stupid idea of the kind loved by Gordon Brown and his cronies.
Get rid of it before it ruins fire and rescue services for a generation.
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