Fire control room cuts

Plans to close all 47 fire control rooms in England and replace them with nine regional centres are risky, according to a House of Commons Select Committee. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which supports a "better, simpler and cheaper" plan utilising the existing network, has welcomed the report.

General secretary Matt Wrack said: "The Committee has done the public a real service and exposed many of the problems to do with these plans. We now need an urgent meeting with the new team at the new Department to establish their intentions."

Key conclusions and recommendations from the Committee, highlighted by the FBU, include its doubts about government assurances on maintained or improved service quality; no evidence of any overall saving and a lack of information about the detail of the proposals: "There are considerable risks associated with the project, the greatest of these (being) the opposition to the project from the FRS (Fire and Rescue Service) itself".

The Committee report added: "The fact that the Buncefield incident was well-managed without regional control centres suggests that the existing resilience arrangements are potentially effective."

* The Office for the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), which previously dealt with policy on the fire service, was replaced by the Department for Communities and Local Government after the last government reshuffle.