Profit-making plan to rescue Shropshire fire service
Shropshire's fire service will launch a profit-making company as it battles funding cuts of up to £1.6 million each year.
The ambitious plans to sell services to public and private sector firms have been approved by Shropshire and Wrekin Fire Authority.
A loan of £20,000 has now been agreed to cover the initial trading period and set-up costs.
To start with, the fire service will introduce a greater charge for fire regulation checks on commercial buildings as well as charging for health and safety, first aid and extinguisher training.
Fire service bosses expect to be making a profit within two years and by exploiting other areas of work the plans may, according to a report to fire authority members, help 'retain existing backroom staffing levels'.
It comes as the service aims to find annual savings of up to £1.6m, with more than £5m - 25 per cent of its £21m budget – axed from its annual running costs by 2019/20.
The company, with a small board of directors, will not employ staff directly and fire service staff will be seconded into the trading company to carry out individual projects when required.
But the company will be kept under review and staff could be employed directly in the future.
Deputy Chief Fire Officer John Redmond, who will take over the running of the service in July, said: "As a fire authority we have legal powers to provide services to other bodies but in the past we could only charge them what it cost us – so we were in essence recovering the cost.
"Now we have been empowered to charge on a commercial basis and make a profit.
"The main idea we have at present is around fire risk management. Every commercial building needs fire risk management services so one of the things we will be doing is selling that to different companies using either an existing local business or an ex-member of staff with the requisite skills.
"We've trained an awful lot of people only for them to then leave and they maybe don't use these skills, so we'll be utilising that and what we envisage is that our fire service staff will only be used when required. When that is the case they will be paid the going rate."
The new company is called Shropshire Fire Risk Management Services, under the Shropshire and Wrekin Fire Authority (Trading) Ltd.
Mr Redmond said: "The fire authority agreed a loan to the company which will be taken at commercial rates.
"We've got some ideas about how much profit we aim to make. I think we can be generating more than the cost to set up the company or at least be breaking even within two years."
