VB readers who follow our tweets at full council meetings, may remember that at the September meeting (21 September), Cllr Vanessa Churchman asked cabinet member Cllr Barry Abraham a question about the control centre move to Surrey.
At the time we tweeted, “Cllr Churchman asked about cost implication of delay to merger of Fire Control with Surrey. Written response to follow from Cllr Abraham.”
Cllr Churchman did indeed receive a written response, three weeks later on 14 October from Stuart Love, Director of Economy and Environment.
Savings target will not be met this year
In response to the question of costs, he says that “although the overall business case and savings that will accrue from the merger remain valid”, the delay in the merger means that “the savings target for this year in relation to the merger will not be met”.
The council had planned to save £125,000 this year as part of the modernisation and now say there will be shortfall in this current financial year of £65,000.
What has caused the delays?
The delays have been caused by the need for installation of dedicated private lines between the Isle of Wight and the Surrey fire control centre.
Mr Love explains that it’d been hoped to rely on the GCSX government secure network, but, “work on this issue has shown that the GCSX network may not have the necessary resilience.” Hence the need to install dedicated lines.
He does go on to say that, “It should be noted that the other mergers and transfers taking place across the country are also adopting the use of private lines.”
Government bid for funding
In his response to Cllr Churchman, Mr Love went on to explain that the council would be taking advantage of the Government’s offer to Fire & Rescue Services across the country to providing funding to upgrade control room functions (as reported on VB back in July 2011).
The council plans to “replace ageing mobilisation hardware at each fire station at a cost of approximately £25k” and will therefore be putting in a bid to receive Government funding.
The council’s full response
For those interested in the full written response from Stuart Love, the full unedited version is copied below.
At September’s Full Council meeting you asked about the cost of the delay in merging our fire control centre with Surrey’s. Please accept my apologies for the delay in providing you with a response.
The first point that I should make is that there is no direct cost as a result of the delay. The savings target for this year in relation to the merger will not be met, however the overall business case and savings that will accrue from the merger remain valid; they will simply be delayed until such time as the physical cut over to Surrey’s fire control centre takes place. I appreciate that this may be a fairly pedantic point, however there is a distinction between additional cost and not achieving the projected savings.
There are 2 fundamental reasons for the delay to the cutover date. Firstly, central to the transfer of calls to Surrey was the need for a connection to Surrey Fire Control systems in order that we could command, report and monitor here on the Isle of Wight. The original intention was that this connectivity would be achieved by using the GCSX government secure network. This would have involved a relatively simple reconfiguration of council IT here and in Surrey that would have taken a few days. More work on this issue has shown that the GCSX network may not have the necessary resilience and the project team has decided to achieve connectivity through the installation of dedicated private lines between Surrey and the Island. These could take up to four months to install, hence the potential delay. It should be noted that the other mergers and transfers taking place across the country are also adopting the use of private lines.
Secondly, the Government has made available up to £1.8m for each fire service to address their future control arrangements. This is an opportunity for the fire service to address issues within the project now that would otherwise have been put off until a later date, eg the need to replace ageing mobilisation hardware at each fire station at a cost of approximately £25k. This would have had to happen regardless of the merger of fire control, however we now have an opportunity to draw down external funding to cover this cost as part of the merger project. The project team is therefore working with suppliers to develop a solution that that will deliver additional benefits over and above those originally envisaged. This work is adding to the timescales for completing the project, however it would be short-sighted not to undertake it now, particularly given the prospect of external funding.
A cut over in mid February 2012 will deliver in-year savings of around £60k rather than the expected £125k that would have been achieved had we cut over at the end of October 2011. We will therefore have a shortfall against the savings target of approximately £65k this year. In the worst case scenario this shortfall will be met from within the overall Economy and Environment directorate budgets and we are currently planning to do so, however it is hoped that our bid for funding will be successful which, if it is, will offset the shortfall. Based on what we are hearing from government, it is likely it will be March 2012 before we know whether or not our bid has been successful.
Apologies once again for the delay in responding and I hope that this answers your questions. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any further comments or queries.
