Police Commissioner backs PMs call to merge Police and Fire support services

Julia Mulligan, Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire, has today welcomed the Prime Minister’s speech setting out plans to encourage emergency services to share some of their services including  IT support, human resources, logistics, control rooms, procurement, legal services and finance.

In North Yorkshire, the two services have been working closely together for some time, including sharing premises in Beadle, and proposals for joint transport facilities near Thirsk. A collaboration called the ‘safety service’ has also been operating for approximately 2 years, which provides community safety advice and reassurance to local people, especially those in most need.

The Prime Minister made his comments today about a ‘smarter state’, and promised legislation to allow emergency services to combine their back-office functions.  The option will allow services to be merged with the police and for PCCs to replace Fire Authorities.

Julia Mulligan, North Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, said “I very much welcome this announcement. PCCs have for some time been making the case to combine support services and take over the powers of Fire Authorities. This makes complete sense – we can save considerable amounts of money, cut out bureaucracy and improve accountability to the public. There is also a clear principle for me here. By combining these functions we can make significant savings, which in turn will help us protect front line services. It is vital we collectively harness this opportunity as I object to potentially having to reduce police officers, when there are savings to be found in other ways.

These proposals rely on local agreement, so it is heartening to see North Yorkshire’s councils expressing the same desire in their recently submitted devolution bid. Clearly we are starting out on the same page, and I am sure we can move forward as quickly as possible.”