|
 
THE GOVERNMENT and the Chief Fire Officers’ Association (CFOA) have both emphasised the need for fire and rescue services in England to take greater responsibility to drive through further improvements in terms of community safety and service performance.
Speaking at the Fire & Rescue conference in Liverpool in late August, Communities Minister Hazel Blears MP and CFOA president Charlie Hendry agreed that fire services are a key part of local area agreements and community strategies, and should look to take more control at local level.
Ms Blears paid tribute to the achievements of the service over the past year, and recognised the desire of fire authorities to go further in the devolutionary direction. ‘Government is there to give clear direction,’ she said, ‘but when the sector can help itself, it often finds the solutions faster and more effectively than Whitehall. The more you step forward, the more you give the government the confidence to step back.’
The Minister also urged the service to be more vocal about its influence and achievements, and ‘say them louder and clearer’.
In his conference address, Mr Hendry called for a ‘more mature and enabling relationship’ between the service and government to drive further improvement. Government has provided much of what the service asked for in terms of funding and equipment but, he argued, it is now time to set a new course characterised by clarity, investment and trust.
While government should retain certain national strategic responsibilities, it should also ‘let go and trust the fire service to continue the progress without a centrally directed one-size-fits-all proposition’, he said.
A full news report from the Fire & Rescue conference is available in this month's Articles section
|