Cheshire's three senior fire officers have bagged thousands of pounds in one-off bonuses for extra responsibilities associated with a delayed regional control centre which won’t go ‘live’ today as planned.
Chief fire officer Paul Hancock, who earns £144,430, has received £2,800 because of additional duties associated with the North West Fire Control project which was taken over by four of the region’s fire brigades after the failure of a national programme which wasted £482m.
The launch, scheduled for today, has been postponed for a second time this year due to IT problems as control room staff at Winsford wait to find out when they will relocate to the Warrington centre.
Mr Hancock has also been given £2,000 in recognition of the service becoming the community safety lead for Cheshire and supporting change to the service nationally.
His deputy Mark Cashin, who earns £123,186, has been awarded an extra £5,380 – including £2,380 linked to the new control centre.
This is the fourth consecutive year the two top bosses have had extra money totalling thousands of pounds.
Meanwhile, assistant chief fire officer Richard Ost, who takes home £106,050, has received a £3,100 bonus, including £2,100 associated with the control centre.
Dave Williams, secretary of Cheshire Fire Brigades Union, said: “It’s outrageous. It’s nothing short of a scandal as far as firefighters are concerned who are facing pay restraint and massive cuts and top of the agenda is job losses.”
The Warrington-based centre, due to have gone live in 2009, was the brainchild of the last Labour Government which planned to replace all 46 local control rooms in England with just nine regional control centres.
This original scheme was scrapped after being declared one of the worst cases of project failure ever seen, according to the House Of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, wasting at least £482m of taxpayers’ money.
A Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service spokeswoman explained the new North West Fire Control project was launched in 2012 by four out of the five fire and rescue services in the North West.
She said: “It is due to go live on May 31, 2014, and will bring savings of £19m to the four services over the next 12 years, while improving call handling and mobilising systems.
“Cheshire’s chief fire officer has been the North West Fire Control project director since the outset of the current project.”
Members of the Brigade Managers Pay and Performance Committee decided in January to award the one-off recognition payments as well as a 1% pay rise in line with the national increase for all operational staff.
