Fire brigade control room closures were backed by executive

Ministers in Holyrood’s last Labour-led administration believed it would “make sense” to close down local fire service control rooms, but they delayed the move amid fears of a backlash.

Cabinet papers from 2006 show how the Scottish Executive grappled with the controversial issue – and envisaged saving the Aberdeen site instead of Dundee. Uncertainty surrounded the future of Scotland’s eight fire control rooms from 2003 to 2007, when the newly elected SNP government temporarily abandoned reform plans.

But the battle was soon reignited amid the drive to create a national Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. In 2014 it was decided the Aberdeen, Inverness, Dumfries, Fife and Falkirk control rooms would shut, while Johnstone in Renfrewshire, Edinburgh and Dundee would remain open.

Labour and Lib Dem politicians were among the most vocal opponents of axing control rooms in local campaigns across the country.

But the newly released Cabinet papers show how close the parties came to rubber-stamping the closures while in their final period in power.

In February 2006, Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson took a report to the Cabinet discussing how the executive should proceed on the issue, after a 2004 study by consultants said the number of control rooms could be “rationalised’’ from eight to three, two or one.

She highlighted another report that had been prepared by the chief inspector of fire services on the lessons for Scotland in the wake of the 2005 London bombings.

“I am persuaded it would make sense to reduce the number of control rooms to three – one in the north-east, one in the west and one in the south-east,” she said.

Ms Jamieson said people were likely to be “pleased in Strathclyde, Lothian and the Borders and Grampian, but broadly unhappy elsewhere”.

The report also suggests the Labour-lib Dem executive was not ruling out a move to a single fire and rescue service.

“A decision to reduce the number of control rooms would mean that money could begin to be saved sooner and would not significantly close off other options,” it said.

A note of the Cabinet discussion of the report said: “Fire room closures would need to be handled carefully in terms of public presentation, parliamentary handling and their potential impact on an already unsettled industrial relations climate and it would therefore be appropriate to take more time to consider how these issues might be addressed successfully.”

Fire engines at the control room in Inverness.