Chamber and committees

Good afternoon. I have a few questions. On that last point about the sharing of buildings, which has been mentioned before, the Scottish Ambulance Service has been mentioned, but are you thinking about police control rooms as well?

That is helpful, and it makes sense. I do not know how practical it is to incorporate police stations into that model, given the need, in some cases, for detention facilities and so on.

You have answered a lot of questions about decontamination and the three-year capital programme, and you have said that it will be decades before the service is fit for purpose. I have noted all that. In relation to decontamination, is there a staged plan for the roll-out as the capital becomes available? Do you know where you would start and where you will roll out from? Is the work done to that extent, albeit that you will not be able to do it for some time?

We know that there are hundreds of stations where there is a lack of the proper shower facilities, and that it will take a long time to get round them all. Is there a phased plan? Should the money become available, would you be able to say that you would roll it out here and then here and so on, so that all the places that are deficient would be covered in time? Does that make sense?

I will put the question to the next panel because I am interested to know exactly what progress has been made, but thank you for that.

Secondly, on the same theme, the discussions that you are having with the Scottish Government on extending the role seem to be interesting and helpful. You said that there have been three years of missed opportunity, but has any progress been made at all? Are there on-going talks with the Government on extending the role?

That is helpful, because in the context of how you and the FBU have presented this, it is not a lot of money to get considerably more change for the better.

Good morning. I have two questions on the same theme. I am trying to establish what progress has been made in the past two or three years. My first question is on decontamination. I think that we are all familiar with the report. We debated it in Parliament in Katy Clark’s members’ business debate and the minister made some commitments. What progress has there been since then? I will need to put the same question to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service itself, but can you say what progress has been made?

That would, however, cover only a proportion of the stations that are deficient. Albeit that you cannot do it within three years, is there a long-term plan for every station in every area that is required to be compliant? Let us say that you had another three years and you got another £10 million, would you know where that would be spent? That is what I am asking.

Do you have any idea at all of what amount of money we are talking about to kick that off? I presume that it is tens of millions.

Is there any point in having further discussions without any money on the table?

Can you furnish the committee with exactly what you are going to do in those three years? You have set out some of that to the committee. I ask because, for those who are working in a station and do not know at what point they will have the new facilities, it would be helpful to at least be transparent about that. I can understand why, as you say, you have to look at the priority and that it is not easy because a number of stations are not compliant. We know that. It would be helpful to have some transparency about where stations are in the programme for the next 10 years. It would be helpful if you could furnish the committee with information on who is on the list for the three years.