THE Police and Crime Commissioner’s (PCC) proposal to take control of Norfolk fire service will put ‘public safety at risk’, a councillor has said.
Norfolk county councillors have voted for the fire service to remain in local authority hands.
PCC Lorne Green said one commissioner could mean more joint working and £10m could be ‘saved’ over a decade.
But Margaret Dewsbury, chair of the communities committee, said the service was ‘safe in our hands’. The Conservative-led county council will formally submit its response to the Home Secretary after the committee met for the first time to discuss its response to Green’s plans.
The Norfolk PCC previously said he was not interested in merging the two services, and each service would keep its own budget. The council, which has run Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service (NFRS) for 44 years, said a number of concerns had been raised about the ‘reliability’ of the business case put forward.
Conservative councillor Dewsbury said it was filled with ‘assumptions and inaccurate information that just don’t stack up’. She said: ‘Based on many years of experience, NFRS is managed efficiently, effectively and economically. It is safe in our hands. We are worried that the PCC is putting public safety at risk if he continues to pursue taking control over our Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service.’
The eight-week public consultation ends on 5th September. In a statement, Green said he was ‘profoundly saddened’ by the council”s comments that he was ‘somehow putting public safety at risk’. ‘I am consulting widely on a set of proposals which, I believe, would improve our emergency services with the aim of making Norfolk even safer,’ he said.
‘I firmly believe a change of governance would allow us to do more to protect the vulnerable and make our communities safer, but I think it’s important for people to make their own minds up and to have their say’.
The plans by Norfolk’s Police and Crime Commissioner to take over the fire service are being opposed by King’s Lynn trade unionists. The town’s trades council said it was opposing what it called a ‘power grab’ by Lorne Green. A public consultation has been under way and Mr Green said he would do a better job if he took over from the county council.
King’s Lynn and District Trades Council secretary Jo Rust said ‘This is some kind of power grab. The cost of testing his argument is going to continue to use much needed vital funds that could have gone towards frontline services.’ Green has argued combining the governance of the police and fire services would end a ‘duplication of time, effort and resources’.
