Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-183)
MR PAUL
YOUNG, COUNCILLOR
DAVID BROWNE
AND MRS
SUE SMITH
31 JANUARY 2006
Q180 Sir Paul Beresford: Would
you include your gearing, please?
Mr Young: Yes.
Q181 Mr Hands: Just coming
back to the operational service, would you have preferred it to
have included those considerations?
Mr Young: From a personal point
of view, I should have liked to have seen an holistic approach
to the assessment which actually dealt with all aspects of the
service. That is purely a personal point of view.
Q182 Sir Paul Beresford: Is
that not likely to come? Yesterday we had a group of officials.
We had the Director of Fire Resilience, we had the Head of the
Fire Service Inspectorate, we had the Head of the Fire Service
Improvement Team and we had the Head of the Fire Service Effectiveness
Division. They sound like a bunch of hornets coming down on you
in addition to CPA.
Mr Young: We are quite used to
being inspected and we have been inspected for many years. There
are some advantages in actually it taking an holistic approach
because, frankly, from a practitioner's point of view on the ground,
it gets it done and finished rather than repeating the inspections
over time.
Q183 Sir Paul Beresford: They
ought really to all come together and come to see you for less
time.
Mr Young: We have always had the
view that the degree of inspection from all sorts of different
organisations has been excessive. Of course we would say this
would we not? The more that can be rationalised and the impact
on staff time minimised, from an organisational standpoint, the
better.
Mrs Smith: I think I would emphasise
that we are a fairly small organisation as a combined Fire Authority
and yet we are subject to the same regimes as a large county council.
In terms of audit, that is an issue.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed.
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