Police and Fire Collaboration Committee meet today to discuss consultation response and shared services
The Police and Fire Collaboration Committee, which met last month and was adjourned is meeting again today to consider two items.
The first item is a response to the government’s Enabling closer working between the emergency services consultation, a consultation I previously wrote about on this blog under the headline Why is the government consulting on abolishing fire and rescue authorities in England?
The proposed responses to the consultation questions are part of the papers for the meeting. The same report and consultation response is also on the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority (agenda item 9).
Consultation question 2 deals with whether the functions of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority should be transferred to the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside. However in the proposed response to the consultation Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority have made it clear that they are against this.
I am quoting from a longer proposed response to consultation question 2. FRS means Fire & Rescue Service. PCC means Police and Crime Commissioner.
The second substantive item on the agenda of the meeting is what’s called the Emergency Services Collaboration Programme which according to section 13 of the report there is “the potential for significant impact on the staff of
both organisations”. The organisations that refers to are Merseyside Police and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service. Appendix 1 (Blue Light Collaboration Opportunity Assessment) to the report implies that some of the savings from shared services between the two organisations will come from staff costs within the two organisations.
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About and why not in other Countries the Police and Fire services have dual roles especially Ambulances. The NHS can’t afford to run an effective services any more, we are lucky that we are not out in the sticks where an average response time can be in excess of 30 minutes!
G’day John
They are now putting their stupid women out to show they don’t have the sole rights…….on S T U P I D.
In the local rubbish propaganda sheet
Cllr Chris Meaden, Cabinet member for Leisure, Sport and Culture, said: “I am at a loss to describe my feelings at this latest senseless, criminal act at Birkenhead Park. I condemn the people responsible in the strongest possible terms and we will be doing everything we can to assist the police in catching them and bringing them to justice.”
What’s this big mouths view on asset stripping at Wallasey Town Hall?.
We had better explain John that asset stripping isn’t the clubs that AdderleyDadderlyDooDah and “Phil the Very Very Deluded Dill” go to when visiting Shanghai or Reno.
You “Muppet Meddling” what do you think about the £2,000,000.00 knocked off by Wirral “Funny” Bizz and the Lockwood/Harbac asset stripping approved by you know who.
I presume John The Kitchen Cabinet Leisure Sport and Culture is all about dog poo.
Ooroo
James
They will keep hearing about it until they do something to suit all.
Because they didn’t do everything to assist the police in catching them and bringing them to justice means she approves of Wirral “Funny” Bizz?
The boys will be sitting back laughing at her in “Hooligan’s Bar”.
G’day John
Word on the street is that Wirral “Funny” Bizz are sniffing around on tinternet from Portugal.
Must be Mrs Wirral “Funny” Bizz because he can’t use a computer or do simple sums so how did these muppets get Wirral for £2,000,000.00?
How are they in Portugal sunning themselves and getting new gnashers and the new CEO is as impotent as the previous.
Come on the 66 do you know how S T U P I D you all look.
Four and a half years on and you can’t catch a couple of decrepit old thieves.
Ooroo
James
Impotent Eccles Cakes anyone?
Hi John,
What a costly affair the Prescot merger has turned out to be!
I’m assuming that an FOI request for a pre-planning application would be refused by Wirral Borough Council and MFRS. Would the Environmental Information Regulations allow for this, or are pre-planning applications just top secret information?
Kim
Pre planning advice on a planning application is chargeable. So why go for something that’s chargeable when you can get the same advice for free?
If pre-application planning advice was given as it’s to do with policies to do with land, then it would fall under the Environmental Information Regulations.
What I am puzzled by though, is why the planning application for a fire station in Saughall Massie hasn’t been published yet.
Me too!
Lengthy negotiations with the police? I doubt they want to make the same mistakes as they did with Prescot and the NWAS.
Maybe they’re reconsidering the other site?
Merseyside Police and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service get on much, much better than relations between those two bodies and the North West Ambulance Service.
I have heard Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s politicians and other politicians at public meetings be really cross about NWAS (North West Ambulance Service) and frustrated with the speed at which NWAS responds (I’m not talking about ambulance response times but how an organisation deals with outside organisation and third parties).
From a public perspective (and a government perspective) there’s a lot to be gained by different parts of the public sector actually working together.
However, politicians can be fiercely parochial. Take Cllr Hanratty’s oft repeated phrase stating that MFRA is the most efficient part of the public sector. I realise that’s opinion, but how do you measure efficiency?
Is this how efficiently you can try and hoodwink the public that councillors (including Cllr Hanratty) are spending ~£6k less on expenses than they really are? Then how efficiently (with no right to reply for myself at a public meeting) you can criticise a person who is paid for his journalism by referring to it as a hobby? 😉 Or am I being scurrilous?
However I’m only doing my job right if politicians are attacking me.
The problem is that these sorts of issues should be raised by the opposition politicians on the MFRA (from memory there are two of these of different politician parties compared to the 16 Labour councillors). With a 16:2 majority thanks to an unfair first past the post system used to elect councillors, is it any wonder that problems arise from such an imbalance?
If the message you’re putting out to other public sector partners is we’re much better and efficient than you (as Cllr Hanratty oft repeats), it’s hardly a conducive environment to joint working if your opening gambit is we are better than you are or your senior politicians have spent the last few years criticising the organisation you know want to have joint projects with!
Ultimately though I think some of this comes down to a certain degree of turf wars in the public sector, power and control. If organisations tie themselves in to joint projects they have to give up a bit of power and control.
Politicians and some senior managers (although some of both groups see the merit to cooperation on some matters) in some cases don’t want to tie themselves into a long term joint project that could cause problems years down the line and personal accountability and criticism.