Nov 25 - Delays And Inertia Leave Fire Service Wanting Say GSD
The GSD notes that it is already a year since the Fire Brigade Audit Report was completed, with, they say, still no word from Government on the way forward for the service and the relocation of the Fire Station. This, say the GSD, is despite the GSLP’s concern when in Opposition, of the ‘urgent necessity of such a review’, ‘real concerns fire fighters had over serious deficiencies they faced’ and the priority for a ‘badly needed new fire station’.
The GSD reminds the public that the Government commissioned Sir Kenneth Knight, the UK Government’s Chief Fire and Rescue adviser, to conduct a SCOPE Study of the local Fire & Rescue Service, which was completed last November. A year later, and the GSD says it is still waiting for the contents of the report to be made public, with the Minister responsible, Stephen Linares, stating last month in Parliament that: “I cannot state at this stage when the report is going to be made public...we are not in a position to go out public with the report.” This is not, say the GSD, the first Government report that has suffered delay in going public.
For a year now, a chosen select committee and the Union have been discussing the report and how its recommendations are to be implemented, but, according to the Opposition, no other stakeholders in the Fire Service have yet seen the report. The GSD describes this as the Government’s “inertia” in progressing matters and argues that this means that all aspects of the management structure, overdue promotions and grades, plus the re-organisation and transformation of the Gibraltar Fire Service, leaves fire officers out on a limb. The GSD say that among the questions it needs answering are: What will be the recommended modern working and shift patterns be and what will the terms and conditions of service for the fire-fighters be?
Furthermore, say the GSD, there continues to be no word on the relocation of the fire station, in respect of which Sir Ken Knight will have surely had a view and in respect of which no commitment has once more been made by the Government by way of financial provision in this year’s Budget.
Isobel Ellul-Hammond, Opposition Spokesman for Civil Contingencies, said: “Such a delay in informing the public makes one think that Sir Ken Knight’s recommendations may not be what the Government was expecting. Will the Minister responsible now be cherry-picking recommendations from the report so as not to upset the apple cart, or are issues being moved in private by Government activists, as has become the practised norm of the GSLP?”
