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CHIEF FIRE Officers’ Association (CFOA) president Tom Carroll called on the UK Government to set ‘reasonable expectations for the speed of change’ and to continue to provide suitable funding to enable fire and rescue modernisation to continue.
Making his presidential address at the Fire 2005 conference, Mr Carroll warned that if the pace of change in the fire service is too fast, it could damage operational efficiency or reduce staff morale, which could cost lives. ‘We must temper our impatience to show results with the balance that recognises that change must happen simultaneously while running a failsafe operating system,’ he said.
Mr Carroll admitted that rationalising the structure of the fire and rescue service, developing regional control centres and achieving economies of scale through collective procurement will free up resources, but claimed that this was not enough.
‘Efficiency savings alone will not allow us to deliver the stretching targets in this increasingly complex and operationally demanding landscape, which is the new reality in which we operate. This is not only about cutting the cake into bigger slices but also about creating a bigger cake,’ he declared.
While offering CFOA’s wholehearted support for the moderisation process, Mr Carroll stated that there would be a significant time delay before the benefits of change show financial results. He said that if fire and rescue services were forced to pay back transitional funding to central government in the near future, it would be ‘impossible to deliver the programme of change we are all committed to.’
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