The additional funding is part of the Government's commitment - both regionally and nationally - to ensuring that Fire and Rescue Authorities have arrangements in place to deliver the Regional Control Centre programme. This will create a resilient state of the art network that will help to save more lives.
The Fire Minister Angela Smith has announced additional funding for the financial years 2006-07 and 2007-08 to be shared among England's Fire and Rescue Authorities to deliver the their part of the Fire Control Project. The FRAs had already been advised that they were to share nearly £7.5million in total for the two years. This announcement brings the total to nearly £17.5million for the two years 06/07 and 07/08.
Fire Minister Angela Smith said:
"Despite the excellent work of control staff, existing fire control rooms are not purpose built to respond to large scale natural disasters, industrial accidents and terrorist attacks. That is why Regional Control Centres are at the heart of the Government's drive to create a resilient network and enable the Fire and Rescue Service to respond to incidents more effectively and save more lives.
"The network of Regional Control Centres will deliver faster response times and better information about the nature of incidents and how to deal with them helping to save more lives. This funding will help the local fire and rescue services deliver their part of this project. This is a nationwide team effort."
