It's time to fight for Wiltshire's frontline fire services

IT’S a brave man who suggests reforms that might cost him his own job.
My instinctive reaction is to respect the integrity of someone who does that.
Take, for example, Wiltshire’s fire chief, Simon Routh-Jones, and his Dorset counterpart, Darran Gunter.
Clearly these are blokes who know what they’re doing. Lives depend on it.
And one thing they agree on is that without drastic action, their respective services will collapse in a couple of years under the weight of deficits that our government will not permit them to address by raising money through council tax.
They’ve been doing their best to economise. Under the present setup they will have little left to cut except firefighters, fire engines and fire stations.
So they’ve undertaken a great deal of work and produced a detailed consultative document that fully justifies what they see as the best possible solution – a merger producing economies of scale.
I’ve read it, and you might have done, too, if only the plug hadn’t been pulled on the public consultation.
Trouble is, there’s nothing much in the plan for Wiltshire Council, which is desperately seeking new roles for itself as the government keeps trying to slash through the layers of bureaucracy hampering our economic recovery.
Wiltshire’s already taken over some of the police force’s back office functions, and there are some who are not altogether delighted about the way that’s been working.
Now it wants the fire service’s backroom boys and girls, too.
The fire chiefs aren’t saying there’s no room for co-operation with local councils. Quite the opposite.
But first, in their combined view, there must be a merger because that’s where the big savings lie, and time is short.
Until very recently, Graham Payne was chairman of the county’s fire authority.
He said the fire chiefs were quite right, and he stuck to his guns. So he’s been got rid of by his Tory colleagues who are busy examining ‘other options’. Because of course, they know best.
They promise they will resurrect the consultation when they’ve had time to poke their noses in a bit more. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with, and whether they show any sense of urgency about it.