Fire brigade services to merge?
Proposals to create a Thames Valley region fire control room or outsource services will be discussed later in the month
EMERGENCY calls to the fire service may soon be answered in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire or London if plans being discussed by the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service (RBFRS) reach fruition.
Calls are currently answered by 32 telephone operators in Dee Road, Tilehurst, and the planned move of this control room has prompted fears that there will be a loss of local knowledge of the area when emergency calls are taken.
Under the plans, West Berkshire could either join forces with Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire to create a Thames Valley region fire control room, or outsource its control room to one provided by the London Fire Brigade, which could lead to job losses and the closure of the current RBFRS control room in Tilehurst.
Fire authority member and West Berkshire councillor Paul Bryant (Con Speen), said his preferred option would be to merge with Thames Valley: “There is a risk, if we go in with London, that we would be a junior partner and that our needs would not carry the same weight as theirs.”
Fire Brigades Union representative Paul Watts said: “What a fire control room needs is people with local knowledge, who live in the area and work in the area. West Berkshire in particular is a very rural area and often times, when people call the service, they have no idea what the name of a road is and can only give a description. A computer will only tell you so much.
“A call to the fire service may in some cases be the most important call someone will ever make, and you need someone on the other end who knows what you are talking about.”
RBFRS fire officer Bryan Morgan said that the proposed move was a result of the cancellation of the previous Labour government's plans to create nine regional control rooms that would have covered all of England, dubbed FiReControl.
He said that the modernisation of the control centres was essential, because of a lack of spending that occurred in anticipation of the now defunct plans.
“One of the main benefits the technological improvements and combined centres would bring is resilience - allowing us to cope with bigger events such as regional floods,” he added.
Mr Morgan conceded that job losses were likely, with staff across the Thames Valley region cut by half in the case of a merger with Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, or even more in case of a merger with London.
However, he said that it was possible that a Thames Valley control room could be based in Tilehurst: “The control room here was designed to serve as a Thames Valley Control room, it doesn't have the technology, but it does have the capacity.”
The full cost of the options have not been assessed at this stage, but should it go ahead, it will be partially funded by a government grant of £1.8m made available to all fire services in England to modernise.
The plans will go before the RBFRS authority on September 28.