Sparks fly over fire centre costs

MORE than £55 million of taxpayers’ money is being spent on consultants working on plans to create regional fire centres — which could have paid for 300 new appliances.

The staggering cost was revealed by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to MPs.

The change will see England’s 46 local control rooms replaced by nine regionalised centres.

The shake-up will close Manchester’s centre, which the Government believes can no longer cope with modern emergencies on the scale of the London terror bombings.

All North-West emergency calls will be shifted to Warrington. A new state-of-the-art control room fielding calls from across the county, Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and Merseyside is expected to be up and fully operational by May, 2011, and will allow firefighters to respond more quickly to incidents, it is claimed.

It was previously claimed the move would save up to £20 million a year — but is now expected to cost Government about £3 million a year.

And new figures have revealed the staggering costs of consultants with £38.5 million spent as of the end of June with a further predicted spend of £16.9 million for the “advice”.

An average fire engine costs about £180,000, according to a sales company which sells the vehicles. It would mean an additional 308 fire appliances could have been purchased.

But a DCLG spokesman defended the high costs.

He said: “Total staff costs of around £60 million average out at about 17 per cent of the overall project costs of £360million.

“We believe this represents good value because the Fire Control project will deliver significant benefits and improvements to public and firefighter safety through the delivery of fire control services.

“It will benefit all frontline firefighters providing them with site plans, water location and hazard handling information direct into their cabs, information that they currently do not have.

“Central Government is paying all of the set up costs before handing over the network to the Fire Authorities to run.”

Only last month, ministers defended the controversial merger claiming Manchester lacked state of the art computer equipment needed to respond to emergencies.

The new centre will be be able to meet eight key capabilities, compared with the three currently met by Greater Manchester.