Fire and Rescue Centres (North-West)

Debate between Tim Farron and Lord Walney

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to discuss the future of Cumbria’s fire and rescue control centre. The proposal to close the control room and regionalise it in Warrington is of deep concern to my constituents in south Cumbria. It is a threat to public safety and a waste of public money.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, and to see the Minister in his place. After our discussions about Cumbria county council’s botched single-status project, he might think that this is the latest in a long line of concerns over which he has no direct jurisdiction that I have brought to him. To add to his consternation, I am here in part to praise his actions and those of the coalition Government in this matter.

The previous Government proposed a centralised series of regional control centres for fire and rescue services, which would have led to a programme of forced closures and amalgamations of fire control centres, but after the coalition formed in May 2010, the new Government called off the project after a Public Accounts Committee report labelled it an expensive white elephant. That wise decision by the Government was welcomed in Westmorland and throughout Cumbria, and it should have been the end of the matter.

Sadly, however, Cumbria county council decided to ignore the Government’s sensible conclusions and proceed with the project anyway, planning to close the excellent control room in Cockermouth and keep faith instead with the white elephant in Warrington. The county council proposes in 2014 to merge all north-west fire and rescue service control centres into a single control room in Warrington, although the plans have received a severe setback after the announcement that the Merseyside services would be withdrawing from the project.

Merseyside’s decision does two things. First, it undermines even further the viability of the regional model and plays havoc with the project’s finances. Secondly, it provides an entirely sensible alternative model. Merseyside has chosen instead to pursue a merger within the county with the control rooms of other Merseyside emergency services. Merseyside has recognised, as must we, that there is a financial imperative. It is completely necessary to make efficiency savings in a time of financial crisis, but Merseyside, unlike Cumbria, has demonstrated a bit of lateral thinking by choosing an option that saves money and keeps the service securely within the area, protecting public safety.

Although many are concentrating on the proposal to set up the regionalised centre in Warrington in 2014, we must remember that the closure of the Cockermouth control room will come much sooner, in June next summer. The county council plans pre-emptively to close its control centre in Cockermouth and outsource its work to the Cheshire fire authority. From next summer, 999 calls from Cumbria for fire and rescue emergency support will be answered in Winsford, more than 100 miles from most places in Cumbria—that is, if we are lucky. The Cheshire service, like many other authorities, has a resilience partner, its neighbouring service in north Wales. However, as hon. Members might be aware, the Welsh services plan to co-operate in a single service, meaning that Cheshire is looking for a new resilience partner. The favourites at the moment are Humberside and Buckinghamshire. That is where Cumbrians can expect their emergency calls to be answered by next summer, unless the county council changes its mind.

That is desperately worrying for all of us who believe that there are extremely good reasons for having a local control centre. I have no doubt that the people and technology in Winsford, Warrington, Wycombe or wherever Cumbria’s 999 calls might be answered will be excellent. I am in no way suggesting otherwise. However, it is also the case that the team at the Cockermouth centre are outstanding professionals who have shown immense dedication to our county week in, week out, particularly recently, when they have made an amazing difference by responding to catastrophic floods in 2009, the Grayrigg tragedy in 2007 and various other tragedies and near-tragedies off Cumbria’s coast, especially in Morecambe bay. It is peculiar for Cumbria county council to say thank you to those who have played a huge part in saving lives by outsourcing their jobs and moving their entire operation to the other end of the region.

The main reason why we must resist centralisation is that it will damage public safety. In more than 90% of cases, the regionalised system will provide an excellent response to people in emergency situations. Capable call handlers with a modern mapping system will scramble the right team to the right address swiftly and with the right result. However, some occasions seriously require local knowledge. For example, there are two Staveleys in my constituency and two Troutbecks and a Troutbeck Bridge in the county of Cumbria. Finsthwaite, where I was on Saturday, has three houses in the same postcode called Rose Cottage. A person sitting in Warrington or wherever, taking a panic-stricken call from someone in one of those places who cannot give an exact postcode or grid reference, will not know to ask critical supplementary questions such as “Which Staveley?” or “Is that the Rose Cottage by the church?” Such questions could save a life.

Even the best systems can only pinpoint a grid reference based on the nearest mobile phone mast when someone is out of range, which means that a grid reference given to the fire crew could be up to 18 miles away from the address where the emergency is taking place. I am not sure whether you have visited the Lake district recently, Mr Howarth, but getting a mobile phone signal is not always simple. Having a human being at the other end of the line who knows that there are two Staveleys 20 or so miles apart will save lives. There is no training like on-the-job training. Working in a control room where 100% of work relates to Cumbrian emergencies provides call handlers with the expertise needed to ensure a safe, specific and speedy response.

If Cumbria were to follow Merseyside’s lead and consider creating efficiencies by consolidating the control rooms of Cumbria’s emergency services, it could improve safety by exposing call handlers to the full range of Cumbria’s communities and to the geographical uniqueness of a county teeming with mountains, lakes and mountain passes, some of which are misnamed, being impassable. Meeting the needs of people in distress in our county involves understanding the county, the nature of road communications and the time distances as well as mileages involved.

This week, we started the inquest into the tragic death of Mrs Margaret Masson, who died in the Grayrigg derailment in February 2007. The emergency services’ response to that tragedy was instant, and one reason was that the Cumbria-based control room staff knew the nature of the area and, crucially, that it was right, for instance, to call out volunteer mountain rescue teams, which had the kit and the expertise to respond the most quickly. That is why the mountain rescue teams got there first. Would a call handler in Warrington have pictured the scene in their mind’s eye and have had enough experience of our area to know automatically that it was a job not just for the professionals of the fire service but for the expert volunteers of mountain rescue? I am not sure, but I am sure that that quick response, based on the call handlers’ local knowledge, prevented a worse tragedy and saved lives.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my neighbour, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), on securing this debate. He makes some strong points. Does he agree that part of the problem is the impossible position in which local authorities such as Cumbria county council have been put by the scale of the reductions that they are being forced to make across the piece? They are being forced to consider efficiencies such as the £300,000 saving that the proposals will generate.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Without doubt, all local authorities face huge pressure, because of the pressure on public finances. I simply make the case that the situation in Merseyside is no harder than that in Cumbria, and Merseyside has thought of an intelligent way through it. I am sure that all involved are not jumping for joy at having to make a difficult decision—merging control rooms is never easy—but, even at the hardest of times, whoever is to blame, it is possible to think laterally and to try to ensure that the service in the county is protected. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but that does not let Cumbria off the hook, given Merseyside’s rather more intelligent response.

Having spoken to members of the Fire Brigades Union in Cumbria and to other fire and rescue staff, I know that they strongly oppose the proposals, because, as I am sure we all know, it is the firefighters themselves who rely more than anybody else on the accuracy and professionalism of the Cumbrian-based call handlers to get them to the right place, with the right information and at the right time. They know that a control centre 100 miles away, however fantastic and professional it will be, cannot be as reliable or responsible as a centre committed to Cumbria, focused on our county and understanding its quirks.

This is a rare opportunity for me to be critical of the coalition—the Labour-Conservative coalition in Carlisle that runs Cumbria county council. I will qualify that, however, by saying that I am proud to represent a county where six MPs—only two of us are present—from all three parties work closely together, not just on this issue but on others. I know that my colleagues share my deep concern on the issue, even if we might not always come to exactly the same conclusions. I think that there is exasperation across the county—including all three parties and, more importantly, in the community—about the county council’s decision to resist all attempts to get it to rethink.

The recent decision of the Merseyside authority to turn its back on this wasteful project seems to have been ignored. Only a fortnight ago, the county council’s own overview and scrutiny committee, chaired by Jo Stephenson, the county councillor for Windermere, discussed the project, objected to it, for the reasons that I have outlined—the objections came from all three parties—and strongly recommended that the cabinet of the county council think again. The cabinet responded in less than 24 hours, without any time to consider the committee’s recommendations, and obstinately proclaimed that it was not for turning. I am sure that the Minister will understand our extreme frustration. There are intelligent, safer and more efficient alternatives, yet the county has so far refused to countenance them.

As someone who believes that decisions such as this should be taken at a local level—not least because it means that voters know exactly who to blame at the next local election—I do not want the Minister to intervene and override the county council. He could not, even if he wanted to, and even if he could, he absolutely should not, in the interests of democracy and localism. I would, however, like him to help us all the same.

The Government rightly withdrew their backing for the national programme of regionalised control centres. The logic behind that decision was right. I would be immensely grateful if, as a result of this debate, the Minister wrote to the leader of Cumbria county council to explain why he feels—indeed, why this Government feel—that such a move is inefficient, wasteful and a threat to public safety. If it wants to ignore his advice, as well as that of many of the county’s MPs and the vast majority of Cumbria’s citizens, it can do so, but it will, of course, face consequences. An intervention by the Minister would do no harm and would be very welcome, especially given that all I am asking him to do is restate what he said about this flawed proposal last year.

We are not saying no to any reform or restructuring, but we want the county to use its imagination and value the unique nature of our county. It is a county where fire and rescue means a lot more even than our excellent fire brigade—it means mountain rescue, such as the teams in Kendal, Ambleside and the Langdales, and inshore rescue, such as the bay search and rescue team in Flookburgh. Ours is a county in which understanding all that is essential in responding to people in acute distress. By all means, let us look at how we can consolidate our emergency control centres in Cumbria, but do not go down a route of regionalisation that will cost more money and could easily cost lives.