A damning report this week from Parliament’s Public Accounts’ Committee (PAC) condemns one of the greatest wastes of public money in recent years.
I’m referring to the last government’s proposal to scrap 46 local fire and rescue centres across England and set up nine regional control centres instead.
The plan was dropped last December.
By then, it had cost us all £469 million.
The report calls it ‘a complete failure,’ and ‘flawed from the outset’.
We know now that the new IT systems were never installed and the fire brigade never properly consulted.
Today, eight of the nine centres remain empty.
The General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union says that the fallout is still being felt.
‘There needed to be proper oversight,’ says Mark Wrack, ‘not the closure and merger of control rooms.’
I can’t help thinking there are similarities with Government’s current plans for our coastguard service.
Despite an extended public consultation period and many representations made by South Dorset residents, Portland Coastguard is to be closed and its operations moved to the Solent.
The shake-up calls for fewer, centralised call centres, reliant on new technology and intended to ‘increase resilience’ within the service.
In my view, the new centres will lose specialised, local knowledge – gained over years of experience - which can never be replaced by IT systems.
More importantly, the local co-ordination of the rescue services will be lost in many parts of the country.
Like the fire brigade proposals, we are promised a better, more efficient service.
Instead, I am concerned centres will suffer information overload, leading to confusion and delays.
And I am not alone in thinking this.
A petition, asking the Government to keep the Portland coastguard centre, has already gathered more than 21,000 signatures.
It’s to be delivered to Downing Street on Monday, 26 September.
I have also called an adjournment debate on the issue, to be held in Westminster Hall on 11 October at 1pm.
Let’s hope the minister will listen to our argument.