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On Thursday 19 August 2010 we had the Director of Fire and Resilience - Shona Dunn - spend the day with us.

Shona is the most senior civil servant responsible for Fire and Rescue (and Resilience ) matters.

During the morning she met senior officers and elected members and learned a little about 'who we are' and 'what we are about' - this was her first visit to Greater Manchester.  She was also able to discuss and understand not only some of our concerns about future challenges - not least financial - but also talk to us about her thoughts and ideas about the future direction of the Service through the 'Fire Future Strategic Review' now starting to take shape.

In the afternoon she went to Whitehill to see some of the work we are doing with the young people on the Firefly programme as well as the borough staff and search and rescue team.

She then went to see the work of the team at the Moss Side Boxing Gym and Manchester Borough staff.

She took away an impression of an organisation that is now accustomed to dealing with change and realistic that more is to come but not complacent and also prepared to put a strong point of view forward.  But also a hugely impressive organisation doing some great things in the community with a lot of talented and passionate people.

I am not going to pretend Shona or anyone else can wave a magic wand and make all our problems go away  - and even though we put forward credible and powerful arguments and cases that funding cuts will be painful and difficult - and even if senior officials like Shona can 'intellectually agree' - it doesn't mean they can materially affect Treasury views.  To be fair I suspect even Treasury would prefer not to have to think about how to save millions - but we are where we are. Nevertheless I still feel it far better to have people think highly of us.

On Friday we hosted a visit from the Chief Executive of the Fire Service College.

For those not aware the College is a unique facility in the Cotswolds,  with a replica or in some cases the real thing - of virtually every disaster or catastrophe you could imagine.  It's got a concrete ship (you can't sink no matter how much water you fill it up with), train crashes, plane crashes, collapsed buildings - it's where we go to to 'practice' managing emergencies.

It's a fantastic facility and well worth a look at their web site - but the CEO was here to talk about its development and - yet again - its challenges.

I really do view the College as part of the country's infrastructure for coping with disasters and really is unique and it would equally be a disaster (a big word I know - but appropriate I feel) if we were to lose such a facility as part of a 'cost cutting' exercise.  Few things are irreplaceable but for our sector this is one of those things.

We are some way off that yet but it's clear we can't take the College for granted or ignore a need here too to think innovatively about how we secure this national asset on a sustainable basis.

Last update: 13/06/2011 09:13:32