Examination of Witnesses (Questions 317-319)
MR TOM
CARROLL, MR
PHIL TOASE
AND MR
STEVE MCGUIRK
6 FEBRUARY 2006
Chair: May I welcome you
as well and make the same points I made with the previous panel
that it is entirely up to you which one of you answers which questions;
we leave you to decide.
Q317 Mr Betts: Regional
control centres—looking at the evidence provided to us,
it seems that you are fully in support of regional control centres,
fully in support of the FireLink Project. You have some concerns
about the costs and you are not really sure that the benefits
have been proven. Normally I would expect senior officers in local
government to first of all assess the costs of a project and then
see whether the benefits are proven and then decide whether they
support it rather than the other way round.
Mr Carroll: I think that is a
very fair question. Firstly, yes, we do support the principle
of both regional control rooms and FireLink and we have said that
from the beginning. We can see the very definite benefits they
can bring. We are also very keen to see the successful implementation,
not just to talk about it being good, but to see it in action.
We have outlined in our submission a number of concerns also which
includes the fact that there is absence of a business case for
us to qualify that situation and also that the financial figures
have not been made fully available. It is not within our domain
to calculate or qualify because it is an ODPM managed and run
project.
Q318 Mr Betts: How can
you support something when you do not know how much it is going
to cost and presumably if that money is around it might be spent
on something else, it would be even more beneficial, and there
is not actually a business case because some of these benefits
have not been proven either? How can you support something which
is as vague as that?
Mr Carroll: We support the principle
on the grounds of resilience and on the grounds that with the
greater user of personnel we believe there will be the opportunity
to perform and to provide a much better service.
Q319 Mr Betts: In what
sense? Can you explain precisely what level of improvement of
performance you expect to see?
Mr Carroll: First of all, a far
better level of equipment, hopefully with that the greater use
of technology, faster response times.
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