Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, has seized £50 million from London’s fire budget reserves in two years, to give to the police in a desperate attempt to meet broken crime pledges in the run-up to next May’s elections.
The Conservative Mayor, who is facing a tough battle with Labour’s Ken Livingstone for his job, is taking a second tranche of £30 million cash from next April – only a year after saying that taking £20 million was a “one-off” grab to meet a police cash shortage. Police numbers in London are set to fall by 2014 to their lowest since 2003, according to figures released last week.
Without the money, it appears that London’s police force will be under strength in the year of the Olympic Games – and Mr Johnson will be vulnerable to Labour claims that he has broken pledges over policing in the capital.
The move has been criticised by the Fire Brigades Union because it means that plans to modernise London’s outdated training facility at Southwark – using public money not now available – has instead led to the privatisation of the training facilities.
The 25-year contract will go to Babcock who will build new training facilities in outer London but will be able to sell them on in 2037 – meaning the authority will not own any training facilities for fire services in the capital. In return, it is believed that Babcock will be paid a very proftiable £450 million for the 25-year deal.
Babcock was the only bidder after Serco withdrew and AssetCo, the troubled company which runs and maintains the capital’s fire engines, was forced to withdraw from a consortium at the end of September. The company’s shares are still suspended and it has not published interim accounts for last year.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, said: “The privatisation of firefighter training in London is a bad move for firefighters and a bad deal for the public. Training is critical to those who work in very hostile environments such as the fire service and this move is of great concern. There are long-term financial risks involved with privatising training where we could be left with privatising the profits but the public picking up the mess if it goes wrong. It seems nothing has been learned by the fiasco of AssetCo and the privatisation of all London’s operational fire service assets.
“Every political party says it has concerns over the cost of some privatisations which have lumbered the taxpayer with huge bills. These concerns appear to go out of the window when it comes to making decisions about fire service privatisation.”
London Fire defend both moves, saying there was spare cash in the reserves, and the private bid was the best scheme – despite strong opposition from Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
