Fire Brigades Union (FBU) General Secretary Matt Wrack met fire crews across the East Midlands on Friday, to warn them about twin government threats to cut frontline fire services and to close brigade emergency fire controls.
It is part of a 12-month campaign which will involve a lobby of Parliament on October 21.
Wrack was in Derby, Nottingham (Stockhill Fire Station) and Lincolnshire (LFRS HQ) to meet fire crews from across those counties.
Wrack told the fire crews they face:
• an increasing attack on frontline fire services, led by the Treasury;
• attacks on employment conditions;
• pointless, but distressing meddling with working hours, including shift changes;
• the continuing threat to close all brigade emergency fire controls in the East Midlands and to move to a region-wide fire control only.
Under the new system, all 46 brigade emergency fire controls in England would be closed and replaced by a national network of nine region-wide control centres.
The FBU says the new system is unwanted, unnecessary and is draining money away from frontline services.
The Fire Brigades Union has accused the government of leaving a disastrous legacy, with fresh delays to the regional FireControl Project set to be announced by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
So far, a total of 72 cross-party MPs have signed Early Day Motion 1800 calling for the Project to be halted.
These latest delays will push up already spiralling costs even further.
In the East Midlands it has cost a total of £2,355,080 in rent and other costs from the date the building was completed until February 2009 (Lease commencement date: June 6th 2007; Rent commencement date: January 20 2008).
The government estimates that on-going monthly costs are £154,038.
Based on those figures, the costs to July 2010 (now facing another 10-month delay) will be £2,464,608.
This amounts to a grand total of £4,819,688 in rents and other costs from completing the building until it was meant to go live in July 2010.
The latest set of delays means no fire service would move to the new system until May 2011 at the earliest.
It adds to the nine months of delays the government announced last November when it cited serious problems with the technology.
In 2004 the government promised a state-of-the art control system would be in place by 2007 and originally estimated the cost at £100 million.
It would save so much money, the Government claimed, it would pay for itself within five years.
The last business case put the Project costs at £1.4 billion and rising; there will be no savings and no genuine timetable for completion.
Many technology problems remain unresolved.
The delays will leave the government paying another £15 million in rents to keep the new regional control centres empty for longer.
There will be more to pay for the army of consultants, civil servants and project managers needed to try and deliver the project, pushing the costs of the delay, the union estimates, above £30 million.
FBU general secretary Wrack said: ‘This is the latest government IT disaster in a long line of IT disasters.
‘This is a scandalous waste of public money when fire brigades are looking to make major cuts because of a lack of cash.
‘Taxpayers are propping up another failing IT project because the government is too embarrassed to admit how bad things have become.
‘If they want to save money they should shut this Project down before it gets worse.
‘These plans are becoming like the Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch.
‘Everyone knows the parrot is dead apart from government which insists, in the face of all evidence, that it is still alive.
‘These latest delays push the project very firmly to the other side of the general election.
‘They are leaving a disastrous legacy for a future government to have to deal with.
‘Government continues to be seduced by promises about technology and databases.
‘They have ignored warnings from across the fire service that this project is collapsing.
‘It is years late, massively over budget with no completion date in sight.
‘To top it all they can’t get the system to work properly.
‘We would have been the first to congratulate the government if it had ended the project today.
‘Instead they are letting it limp on, doomed in all but name, spending cash that should be going to pay for frontline services.’
• Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber Rosie Winterton has acknowledged the anxieties caused to firefighters and their families in South Yorkshire by the threat from their fire authority to sack them.
In a letter to the Fire Brigades Union the minister says she hopes an agreement can be reached to resolve the dispute, in which the authority is threatening to sack 744 firefighters next New Year’s Day if they don’t accept unilateral changes to their contracts of employment.
‘The South Yorkshire fire authority is adopting the worst sort of bully-boy tactics rather than seeking to resolve the dispute in a reasonable way,’ said Fire Brigade Union regional secretary for Yorkshire and Humberside Ian Murray.
He added: ‘It is showing a callous indifference to dedicated firefighters and their families by seeking to impose a new shift pattern which would seriously disrupt childcare and other family arrangements for the firefighters of South Yorkshire.’
The underlying dispute is about shift changes sought by the fire authority which wants firefighters to work four consecutive shifts of 12 hours.
At every stage it has sought to impose changes rather than negotiate.
Longer day shifts of 12 hours, up from the current nine hours, would also create changes to start and finish times, damaging family life and causing problems with childcare.
If the changes were imposed, firefighters with children would be forced to start at 8.00 in the morning and finish at 8.00 at night. This could mean children having to spend as many as 13 hours daily in childcare, if places are available.
Under the proposals, existing childcare arrangements would be disrupted and new arrangements would have to be found. Before and after-school clubs can’t fill the gap, and there is little formal childcare available at weekends, public holidays or school holidays when firefighters are working as normal.
When similar changes were introduced in West Yorkshire it resulted in a worse service to the public.
The fire authority had to re-negotiate its original plans to unravel the changes introduced.
Those fire crews who work shifts do so in 48 hour blocks of two nine hour day shifts (9am to 6pm) followed by two 15 hour night shifts (6pm to 9am). Firefighters in South Yorkshire voted three to one in favour of industrial action short of a strike in opposition to the changes.