Fire service has ‘little choice’ in tax share hike
END OF SHARED CONTROL ROOM TO HIT HARD
CAMBRIDGESHIRE Fire and Rescue Service (CFRS) plans to increase its share of council tax by 2.99 per cent from April 2024.
For a Band D property this is an annual increase of £2.34, totalling £82.26 per year or £1.58 a week.
Raising the CFRS proportion of council tax is not a decision taken lightly, said Councillor Edna Murphy, chair of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Fire Authority, who added: “However, we sadly have little choice if we want to continue to deliver the same service we do now.
“We have a great track record of being an efficient and effective fire and rescue service and in our government-commissioned inspection last year the service received an ‘outstanding’ for its use of resources, something we are incredibly proud of.
“We will continue to review and scrutinise how the budget is spent and ensure we continue to deliver the best service we can to our communities.”
CFRS said the financial challenge will come when Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service withdraws from the Combined Fire Control collaboration. The control room based in Huntingdon currently takes 999 calls for Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, as well as mobilising fire engines and other resources.
Last year Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service gave notice that they would be withdrawing from the partnership in January 2025 to set up their own control room. The collaboration saves each fire service more than £500,000 a year, CFRS said.
Chris Strickland, chief fire officer, said: “Suffolk withdrawing from our effective partnership is potentially going to cause us a significant financial issue next year.
“We haven’t yet done the full cost analysis yet to understand where that leaves us, but basing it on the £500,000 we save now, it is a massive amount of money for us to suddenly have to find.
“We will be pleading our case to the Home Office for next year’s budget setting but we have a lot of work to do this year to look at contingency plans for how we find that sort of money if we need to – and we can’t promise that won’t mean cuts to our operational service as we are already a very lean fire and rescue service. I also can’t say that asking more from taxpayers, if we are given permission to, won’t be an option if we want to retain the level of service we provide now. We have some tough planning and decision-making to do this year.”