Firefighters’ dispute inquiry in doubt as cost becomes issue

Friday 23rd October 2009, 2:29PM BST.

Chief Minister Lyndon Trott, centre, arrives for a meeting with airport firefighters, which led to their dispute being resolved and triggered the resignation of the Public Sector Remuneration Committee. (Picture by Adrian Miller, 0779310)A £250,000 probe into the airport firefighters’ dispute may be dropped just months after it was approved.

Officials have already been selected to sit on the tribunal of inquiry, but deputies are concerned about the cost and feel the money could be better spent elsewhere.

A States petition was published this morning which, if approved, would scrap the tribunal.

There is also an amendment proposed to the States Strategic Plan which would use the money for the inquiry on instead funding a domestic abuse strategy and a disability officer.

But Deputy Mary Lowe, who led the move for a full inquiry, is opposing that by seconding an amendment by Deputy Sam Maindonald to use money from the contingency reserve to fund the review instead.

Deputy Jan Kuttelwascher will lead the petition to scrap the tribunal of inquiry.

He said the situation had changed since the States supported the inquiry in July.

‘The cost is not basically disproportionate and got up to an initial £250,000. That’s not capped. I understand it could be less, but I don’t believe it will be,’ said Deputy Kuttelwascher.

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1
kevin

October 23, 2009 at 7:37 pm

At last some of our deputies are seeing the light, I can’t think of a bigger waste of money, there are plenty more pressing projects that could benefit from £250k.
They would be better off diverting their energy into finding a permanent solution to the firefighters dispute rather than embarking on what would essentially be a ‘muck-raking’ exercise.

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2
Molly

October 24, 2009 at 3:27 pm

I agree – the current House of Deliberation appear to be hell bent on wasting public money on review after review. It happened – we need to move on. What they should be doing is ensuring that it never happens again.

The fundamental States Spending Revue (FSR) is something else i don’t understand. I would be grateful if someone could explain to me how spending millions of pounds to tell States members and Senior Civil Servants how to do their jobs will help? In today’s GP there is yet another advert for a Deputy Programme Director for the FSR – at a cost of circa £70,000 per year for 3 years! £210,000 wasted – and goodness knows what the Director is earning, then add on the rest of the team and the hours which the current staff are going to have to spend justifying their jobs. Surely the Chief Officer of each department has this information to hand and they should be doing this – IT IS THEIR JOB! If no one local applies (or are not deemed competent to undertake the job) then no doubt it will be advertised further afield, and then the island will have to pay other allowances!

The island really has gone barmy.

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