Fears over future of 999 call handling service in Highlands
Fears that 999 calls could be handled outwith the Highlands by the incoming Scottish fire service have been expressed by a former MSP.
Next April will see the Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service scrapped along with eight other brigades from around the country and a single organisation formed, which will be headed up by the new fire chief Alasdair Hay.
Mr Hay spoke to councillors today at one of the region’s last ever fire board meetings in Inverness ahead of the major shake up, which mirrors similar changes faced by the police.
Mr Hay said his priorities would be community and firefighter safety and looking after staff.
But board member and Councillor Jamie Stone told Mr Hay that he was worried about the potential for serious mistakes if the control room for emergency calls was ever shifted from Inverness.
"In the Highlands there are two Tains, two Miltons, two Kilmuirs," said the former Lib Dem MSP. "Local knowledge is absolutely crucial and essential when you are fielding these calls, it has to be based locally."
Councillor Stone said even the best 999 operators in the world could make mistakes if they did not possess that geographical understanding and even the pronunciation of placenames was vital.
He said it was vital councillors kept up the pressure in the future to insist a command centre always stayed in the Highlands.
Under the new set up, the region will become part of a huge "north hub" which will include Grampian and Tayside.
Aberdeen is understood to be the favourite to become the hub’s headquarters and an announcement is imminient, while various brigade departments are expected to be dispersed around the hub in a bid to avoid duplication and reduce costs.
Mr Hay said calls would still be answered in Inverness after the change over on 1st April but stopped short of giving an assurance that the command centre would remain in the city indefinitely.
"There are eight fire services, each of them have their own command centre at the moment," he said.
"If you look at Strathclyde, it covers half of the population, with Scotland’s biggest city Glasgow and Argyll and Bute and the islands, it provides an excellent service to the communities. What we need to do is take a look at all the different models. It is not where a control room is placed, it is the people that are in that control room who are important."
The Scottish Government has offered an assurance that there will be no compulsory redundancies for non-uniform staff but voluntary redundancies, early retirement and retraining will all be offered to workers who find their posts under threat.
