Cumbria police and crime commissioner Peter McCall has refused to respond to a letter from the local Fire Brigades Union on his beleaguered and controversial attempt to take over the fire and rescue service. The union has now made a formal complaint to the Cumbria council monitoring officer.
After the plan was rejected by the public in a consultation, Fire Brigades Union North West regional secretary Ed Burrows wrote to McCall asking him to drop the plan. However, on 23 June McCall’s office wrote back to Burrows with a message that read:
“Thank you for your emails of 25 May and 17 June respectively, I can confirm that the Commissioner has seen your letter and will not be responding.”
The union has since made a formal complaint to the monitoring officer on 5 July 2022, on the grounds that in his actions following the consultation result the PCC had “not acted with honesty, integrity, accountability, openness, and having respect for others”, all requirements of the PCC’s code of conduct.
Les Skarratts, Fire Brigades Union executive council member for the North West:
“Peter McCall must surely know that the game is up, and this refusal to even respond to a letter from firefighters’ representatives only confirms that. Having lost a consultation on his own plans he’s running scared and has shut up shop. Cumbria deserves better than this. It also deserves to have its fire and rescue service outside the Police and Crime Commissioner structure. Amongst other things this will likely protect the fire and rescue service budget, helping avoid the very real threat of three fire station closures McCall’s plan could bring.”
“We will await the complaint outcome from the monitoring officer, and we are sure they will treat Peter McCall’s actions with the seriousness they deserve.”
The Fire Brigades Union has criticised McCall’s plan to create a PFCC on various grounds, including the fact it may lead to three fire station closures, putting 18 jobs at risk.
The union also has concerns about the accountability of PFCCs, which are only subject to a weak scrutiny panel. Within a PFCC, fire would form only part of this assessment, instead of having its own accountability structures and the union is concerned that fire would not maintain the separation needed with the police. Firefighting is a humanitarian service, unlike the police.
The station closures are thought to be a possibility for a variety of reasons. The stations – Frizington, Arnside and Stavely - have previously been threatened with closure, and there are financial concerns over a future PFCC having the latitude to implement cuts that impact fire disproportionately relative to the police, and requiring funds to bulk up his office to administer the fire and rescue service, which could come out of the fire and rescue budget.
You can read more detail about these various concerns here.
To date, no financial assessment for viability of a change to a PFCC has been produced.
Photo credit: Graham Mitchell.
