Scotland’s top police officer has made the case for creating combined control rooms in five to 10 years – sparking anger from politicians opposed to existing closure plans.
Sir Stephen House said it would “make sense” to share emergency call handling centres with the fire service and potentially ambulance staff in the future.
The chief constable made the comments on a visit to Aberdeen amid fierce criticism of plans to shut several facilities and move to a new model of three – with Dundee serving the whole of the north.
Last night, north-east Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald said the statement added “insult to injury” for staff affected by the shake-up – and said if there was “any truth” in what Sir Stephen was saying, work would be under way to put in place a joint service.
But Sir Stephen insisted that Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) were not ready for that step yet.
He said: “I speak regularly to the head of the fire service, Alisdair Hay, and we both agree that in the long-term future, maybe in the next five to 10 years, we could well see combined control rooms across Scotland, and it would make sense.
“But we are just not there yet, we have to rationalise our estates first and make them as effective as possible individually.
“Then we will look at, when it comes to new buildings, we will make them big enough so we can look at combining fire, police, possibly ambulance and possibly other agencies as well.”
Sir Stephen would not speculate on where any new facility might be located, but Mr Macdonald said workers in the north-east affected by the closure of centres such as the one at Bucksburn would be “very angry” about the comments.
Public sector union Unison is balloting its members for possible strike action over the plans, which have put about 200 jobs at risk nationally.
Mr Macdonald said: “This is a red herring. If there was any truth in what he is saying, he would be sitting down with the head of the fire service today and working out a plan for a combined control room in the next few years.
“It is just an attempt to divert criticism that has rightly been levelled at both heads of service for their failure to defend their staff through this plan to close facilities and withdraw from the north-east – this is just adding insult to injury.”
Aberdeen Central SNP MSP Kevin Stewart said: “I think if this is something that could be planned for in the future, why leave it off until then and not just do it today?
“Beyond that, I think Aberdeen has missed out hugely because of bad decisions made in the past which could have led to a joint police and fire headquarters here, which in terms of business plans, if that had existed, I am quite sure Aberdeen would have been a priority for retention.”
Highlands and Islands Labour MSP David Stewart said: “The issue is about centralisation of services, as we have found in Inverness with the loss of the control room here. What would the geography be?
“History has seen a trend towards centralisation of police and fire and that would be a concern to me.”
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