Fire Services
Communities and Local Government
Written answers and statements, 2 November 2009
Jamie Reed (Copeland, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what progress has been made on the implementation of the FiReControl programme; and what difficulties have been encountered in that implementation.
Shahid Malik (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government; Dewsbury, Labour)
Good progress has been made on a number of fronts: eight out of nine regional control centres (RCCs) buildings have been built, fire and rescue authorities have come together to form regional local authority controlled companies to run the RCCs and equipment installation in local fire stations is on track.
However, in July we rescheduled the implementation timetable. It became clear that technical problems with developing the IT system in a way which met all our and the fire and rescue services' requirements meant that further time would be needed to complete the project. The first RCCs are scheduled to take calls from May 2011.