The local representatives of the FBU came over to VB HQ at the end of last week to record an interview (listen to podcast at bottom of article).
They shared their extreme concerns about the council’s plan, now at the final decision stage, to move the Isle of Wight Fire control centre (the people who answer the phone when you report a fire) off the Island to Surrey.
One of their concerns was the very limited time that Islanders had to express their feelings about the decision-making – given it fell over the Bank Holidays we’ve just had. In fact, you’ve only got one day to get in touch with your councillor about it.
Decision under delegated powers
As the Full Council has already voted to allow the decision to be made under delegated powers (ie it will be made only by Cllr Barry Abraham, not debated in public), the only path left open for Islanders is for them to contact their county councillor and let them know how they feel.
(If you don’t know who your county councillor is, this map should help.)
Local knowledge paramount
The FBU feel the local knowledge of those answering the phones is vital to reduce the amount of time between a fire being reported, to the arrival at the scene of the fire tender, to a minimum. They say that many firefighters on the Island share their concerns.
They say that the technology, which works out where your mobile phone is located, isn’t accurate enough, particularly in the rural areas of the Island.
The council argue that technology negates the need for local knowledge and using this, phone operators in Surrey will provide the same level of service.
“Significant flaws” in the report
A report on the move to Surrey has been compiled by Paul Street, the Island’s chief fire officer, and we suggested to the FBU’s Paul Watson that with 33 years of service in the Fire service, it’s likely that Paul Street would have written the report to the best of his abilities. Paul replied, “With the greatest respect to the Chief Officer, we dispute the findings of the report. There are significant flaws in it. We don’t believe it’s in the interest of the Island.”
Costs hidden from the public
He continued, “It seems to be driven by cost factors. They’ve stepped back from that and now say it’s resilience, but I think that’s because their costs are wildly inaccurate – they are all assumed and estimated.
“We want to the costs to be in the public domain, which they’re not. We want a discussion about them, we want the public to see them, we want councillors to see them, we want to see them in the public domain, where they can be fully debated and challenged.”
VentnorBlog has today asked the council to release the details of the costs. They tell us that they anticipate responding within twenty days.
They didn’t explain why the information isn’t available immediately (we suspect that they’ve kicked it into a FoI request). What is certain is that the public won’t get to learn what the costs of doing this will be before the
delegated decision is made.
Have a listen
Have a listen to the FBU’s points and an insight into how fire control works on the Isle of Wight currently …
[audio:http://otw-audio.s3.amazonaws.com/fbu-iw-control-room-move.mp3]
