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Fire and rescue
05/12/2007
No central action is to be taken to reduce the number of fire and rescue control rooms, Ministers have concluded.
Early in the New Year the Scottish Government will consult on the minimum standards of resilience for control rooms necessary to protect Scotland in the 21st century. Fire and Rescue Authorities - and their relevant local authorities - will determine how best to deliver these requirements within their local communities.
Minister for Community Safety Fergus Ewing said:
"The recent shocking events at Glasgow Airport provided a stark reminder of the need for fire and rescue services that have the capability to respond to the unimaginable worst case scenario as well as the day to day challenges.
"That's why we are investing over £50 million in the next three years to equip our fire and rescue services with a state of the art digital incident communications system.
"We will build on this programme to ensure that we have the resilience and flexibility at both a national and a local level to cope with everything from a terror attack or a Stockline, to localised flooding and fire prevention visits.
"Scottish Governments past and present have studied all the arguments about emergency fire control rooms carefully. There have been strong arguments for and against fewer emergency fire control rooms put forward.
"Good government is about preparing the country as best we can for the range of threats we face - from climate change to terrorism. But good government is also about listening and trusting those closest to the frontline - and also about making decisions. This issue has been clouded in uncertainty for too long."
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said:
"The view of a substantial majority of those who actually run the control rooms - Councillors, Chief Fire Officers and other staff - is that we should stick with the status quo. This view is also shared by the Fire Brigades Union. Cabinet has therefore agreed with my conclusion that we will not be taking any action centrally to reduce the number of emergency fire control rooms.
"However events in recent years - including the Glasgow Airport incident, the flooding in the Borders and England over the summer, and the warnings by the new Chief Constable of Strathclyde about the terrorist threat - have highlighted the requirement for enhanced emergency fire control room resilience.
"This is an issue which national and local government and the FBU and other staff representatives need to consider together.
"The Scottish Government will therefore publish for consultation with stakeholders in the New Year what it regards as a minimum standard of resilience for emergency control rooms. We will want to discuss this with stakeholders and reach a consensus on what needs to be done across Scotland to ensure that this standard is reached.
"Government is prepared to work with the Fire and Rescue Authorities on a strategy for achieving the required standard, including possible funding issues - but on the basis that operational decisions are for local not central government, subject to compliance with the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005."
On 8 July 2004 the then Scottish Executive published the Mott MacDonald report on the review of fire service control rooms in Scotland. Following a public consultation on the report and analysis of the responses, in June 2006 Scottish Ministers launched a wide-ranging review of Scotland's emergency preparedness, in particular the country's preparedness for dealing with simultaneous terrorist attacks in the light of lessons learned from the London bombings in 2005. The review was led by the previous Chief Inspector of Fire Services, Jeff Ord, and was asked to report back to Ministers in summer 2007. The review looked again at all the arguments for and against reducing the number of fire control rooms but in the wider preparedness context.
Scotland's eight fire control rooms are situated as follows:
Lothian & Borders - Edinburgh
Strathclyde - Johnstone, Renfrewshire
Grampian - Aberdeen
Fife - Thornton
Northern - Inverness
Central - Maddiston
Dumfries & Galloway - Dumfries
Tayside - Dundee