Privatisation

This Conference welcomes the Governmentʼs decision to provide additional funding over and above the allocated Government grant in order to build several new fire stations across North West England. However, Conference condemns the fact that this much needed new money will only be released through private finance initiative funding (PFI). Conference believes that this Government is continuing to pursue a policy of privatising many of the public sector services by the back door by the use of schemes such as PFIs, privately sponsored schools (academies), privately run clinical assessment treatment and support centres (CATS) and most recently, the setting up of Local Authority controlled private limited companies (LACCs) to run the proposed regional control centres (RCCs). Conference re-affirms its opposition to the use of PFI within the Fire Service and reminds all officials, representatives and members of the Fire Brigades Union to continue to support national and/or local trade union campaigns that fight to protect the public services from these ongoing attacks.