Nigel Rock Refused Opportunity to Speak at Kenilworth Fire Service Meeting

9.17.00am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 15th Oct 2009

Nigel Rock

In the face of anger from the citizens of Kenilworth, confusion and party politicking reigned supreme at the fire service consultation meeting of 15th of October. In an apparently orchestrated plan, Chairman Alan Cockburn (Conservative) called on a succession of Conservative councillors, and commencing with Conservative MP Jeremy Wright, who all distanced themselves from the proposals tabled by the Conservative administration to close fire stations in Warwickshire. Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate Nigel Rock was refused the opportunity to speak, presumably because the Conservative Cabinet were fearful of what might be said. Nigel has led the charge to have the secrecy surrounding the fire station closure proposals lifted.

Nigel said "I have been campaigning for all the documents leading up to the present situation to be made be released so that the public can make their minds up from a position of knowledge. Any reasonable person would want to see a robust justification as to why a principal Warwickshire town like Kenilworth could possibly manage without a fire station. These plans had been in the offing for months -- it seems before the re-election of the current Cabinet - no wonder they want to keep things under wraps. We still don't know what is in consultants' report analysing risk - of course it is risk that the public are concerned about."

"It is clear that the Conservative portfolio holder and Cabinet have overseen a process which is discredited to the point of disbelief and lacks all credibility. The new Chief Fire Officer, Graeme Smith, has only been in the job a week and has been set up to take the flak for a plan dreamed up behind closed doors by the Conservative administration. He has been asked to defend the indefensible."

"Listening to the public at Kenilworth last night, and at Fenny Compton the week before, it is obvious that the current consultation process sets should be abandoned. The Tory Cabinet should go back to the drawing board and do it properly."

Reasons to start again with the review of the fire service:

1. The statistics and travel times presented are in conflict with known data including those from the fire services' own records and are not credible.

2. The quality of the consultation document fails to meet government standards, is ambiguous and no meaningful conclusions could be drawn from responses in the format set out.

3. The county council cabinet appear not to be behaving in a constitutional manner and have made conflicting statements as to how the decision will be taken - either by the Cabinet all by all the Council members -- this gives rise to legal and probity problems.

4. Council papers, particularly the DNV risk report are still held in secret and the public are being asked to comment on information that they are not being allowed to see. Information continues to dribble out in an ad hoc manner and the public still don't know how much more there is to come out.

There was booing of the Cabinet member for the fire service Richard Hobbs at the Kenilworth meeting when he suggested that the silent majority of residents not present at the meeting would be content with not having a local fire station. Nigel Rock said "I'm afraid Richard just doesn't get it. The public want to keep their local fire stations. There is a pretence that attaching greater priority to prevention rather than reacting to fires is somehow absolutely linked to closing fire stations- this is quite wrong and misleading."