Fire Brigade Control Rooms

Some time ago (http://aemblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/fire-brigade-regional-control-centres.html) I posted about the regional control centres been established for the fire brigade with the one for the East Midlands been established at Castle Donington near East Midlands Airport.

At the time of posting in 2007 it was in response to concerns raised by the fire brigade union with regards to the centre been built on a flood plain.

Now over 12 months later concerns are still been raised, but now the concerns are due to a number of the centres including the East Midlands one still been empty with the likelihood been that they won’t be fully in use until 2010, with rental costs currently of £750,000 a month (rising to a £1000000 in the New Year) been spent on centres which the FBU advise are receiving little use aside from meetings and according to the government training.

This means that according to the FBU over the course of two years the Government is spending more on keeping these empty buildings than the £15 million given to local authorities across the country for the massive task of ensuring that arrangements are in place to assess and manage local flood risk.