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Search forFire chief in war of words with union
Wednesday, August 06, 2008, 10:00
A war of words has broken out between Chief Fire Officer Paul Young and the Fire Brigades' Union (FBU) after an interview in which fire safety officer Dave Chappell said the service was “creaking along” because it was struggling to find enough crew to man fire engines due to a high number of vacancies.
And in a sideswipe at the WMN, Mr Young said the authority had become “quite used” to the paper being “highly critical of the service”.
But FBU officials insisted the article was correct, and accused Mr Young of purposefully trying to weaken the union's reputation.
They also poured scorn on his claim that the union stepped into the row over the controversial regional control centre “too late to influence the Government position”.
In an e-mail sent to all staff, and seen by the WMN, Mr Young said: “They (the FBU) have now seriously undermined their ability to represent the interests of their members and we will have to recover a lot of ground to build a constructive relationship for the future.”
Mr Young said he “completely rejected” claims that the service was “falling apart”, and said there had been significant improvement in some performance areas.
He pointed to a reduction in fires and false alarms – with some types of blaze down by more than 20 per cent – as evidence that the service was doing well.
In the e-mail, Mr Young said he did not want to discuss employment relations in the media, and would contact the FBU direct.
“Sadly they appear to spend much of their time looking for ways to attack the reputation of our service. In this latest case, I have to say that local officials have dangerously damaged their standing not only in the eyes of management but also the fire and rescue authority as a whole.”
He went on to talk about the FBU's campaign against the controversial regional control centre, which will mean six authorities across the South West being co-ordinated from Taunton.
Mr Young said the FBU “entered this debate when it was already too late to influence the Government position and must now realise that the Government has invested far too much money to allow the project to fail”.
He said the project would go ahead, despite delays, and said previous FBU claims that it was in “disarray” were untrue.
“Simply to criticise the project without understanding the full picture is a grave mistake”, he said, claiming that it would be a “major financial burden to combine the recently merged Devon and Somerset fire controls without the regional project”.
John Drake, regional secretary for the FBU, said the regional control centre claim was “disingenuous”, and that the union had fought from the beginning, and had put forward two alternative proposals which were “dismissed out of hand” by the Government.
“It's downright wrong for him to say that,” he said, claiming the plans were in disarray because there was no confidence in them on the ground.
He claimed union members were satisfied with the way they were represented, and said looking after them was the union's “top priority”.
He said the union was right to air the issues published by the WMN, and added: “Paul Young is trying to weaken our standing in Devon and Somerset.”
When asked to comment further on the e-mail, Assistant Chief Fire Officer Trevor Stratford said: “These issues were raised in an internal e-mail intended for staff.
“A meeting has been arranged with representatives of the Fire Brigades' Union to discuss their concerns and there will be no further comment.”
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