Tayside Fire & Rescue Board

On Monday morning I was at a meeting of Tayside Fire and Rescue Board. You can see the agenda here. The main item was the budget for 2012/13. I asked a number of questions about the staff costs assumptions on which the budget is based these are found in section 3.1 of the report. There is an assumption that there will be no increase in pay either for firefighters or support staff although the negotiations have not yet been completed.

The Quarterly Activity Report highlighted a lot of work being done by Tayside Fire & Rescue. There was a lot in information about the works which are on-going towards the establishment of a Single Fire and Rescue Service in Scotland. I congratulated the service on the on-going improvements in dealing with problems around Bonfire Night. This is a result of good partnership working, even across Tayside the partnerships are different between Dundee, Perth City, Perth & Kinross and Angus. It takes local knowledge to develop these partnerships, it is crucial that issues such as this are at the forefront of the thoughts of those who are developing the new single fire service. How will local knowledge be factored in?