The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has said a new report that calls for Staffordshire Fire and Rescue to be merged with the police is a threat to the independence of the service.
Entitled Is there a case for full integration?, the report was commissioned jointly by the Staffordshire police and crime commissioner Mathew Ellis, Staffordshire Police, Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service and Staffordshire and Stoke fire authority.
Rich Williams, secretary of the FBU in Staffordshire, said: “There is virtually no support for PCCs and certainly none to enable them to take over the fire and rescue service, such a move risks undermining public confidence in the accountability and governance of our emergency services.
“PCCs pose an intrinsic threat to the independence and effectiveness of the fire and rescue service. Although the emergency services work together effectively at many incidents, there is no operational reason for police and fire services to merge. Police officers and firefighters perform very different roles - police officers have the power of arrest whereas firefighters do not. This distinction is an important aspect of firefighters’ relations with local communities. The worry for firefighters is that mergers will undermine the public’s trust in the impartiality of the fire service, which they rely upon to gain access to people’s homes for vital fire prevention and emergency rescue work.
“Enabling PCCs to take over fire and rescue service under the auspices of “efficiency savings” is the next step in the government’s ideologically driven, cost-cutting agenda. Regrettably, merger proposals do nothing to invest much needed resources in fire and rescue services, or develop the role of firefighters to better meet today’s challenges and deliver safer, healthier and more resilient communities. Increasingly, firefighters are responding to new and emerging risks such as the threat from terrorism and the impact of climate change.”
The union has criticised the report for failing to address concerns around the future of the fire control room operated by Staffordshire and West Midlands fire services that cost £3.6m to set up just three years ago. The report also makes no mention of the cost of work required to make any takeover viable.
