The Chief Fire Officers Association

Publicity Line

The government's 'FiReControl' project which aims to deliver a network of nine regional fire and rescue control centres is considered to be a significant step in improving fire and rescue resilience.  CFOA recognises that this project amounts to a substantial investment in the fire and rescue service across England.  The Association supports the project on the basis that it will bring to all FRSs a level of service currently enjoyed only by those who operate the best performing control centres and provided that ongoing funding for the solution is both adequate and fairly apportioned.

England

Wales

Scotland

Northern Ireland

• As one strand of the government's National Resilience programme (the others being Firelink and National Assurance), CFOA maintains, that to be truly effective, the FiReControl solution needs to have end to end resilience.

• CFOA considers it essential that central government retains a significant stakeholder interest in the long term (steady state) governance of the national aspects of the FiReControl project.

• That failure to invest in meaningful and consistent end user engagement represents a significant threat to the success of the project and ultimately the quality of the service provided to the public.

• FiReControl must be able to support mobilisation in accordance with FRA's local integrated risk management plans (IRMPs) and legal agreements made between FRAs across the UK.

• The FiReControl infrastructure solution must support, or adequately replace FRA investment in its own ICT infrastructure and strategy.

• The Association would expect that all FRS control room staff are transferred to the respective LACC in accordance with appropriate legislation and good HR practice.

• CFOA believes that all incident and incident based resource data must be provided to the host FRS in real time in a form that maybe used to support locally based incident commanders.

• CFOA is insistent that a detailed project plan is made available so that the FiReControl Project Board can better manage progress against key milestones.  It is essential that a project decision log is established.

• CFOA is becoming increasingly concerned that the lack of detail in the project requirements at this late stage will jeopardise the project meeting the recently revised timescales.  Moreover, further delays will threaten the operational continuity of existing FRS control rooms.  On both these issues, we will continue to advocate to CLG that there must be acknowledgement of these threats.

• CFOA continues to be concerned that the lack of capacity within the fire and rescue may lead to an inability to meet the transitional requirements within the declared project timescales.

  CFOA is adamant that the responsibility for future provision of national resilience capability continues to lie with central government and that its funding should be both adequate and transparent to both the public and FRAs.