Yesterday Mark Garnier MP, and many of his Herefordshire and Worcestershire MP colleagues, held a meeting with the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Brandon Lewis MP. The meeting was held to discuss the funding of Hereford and Worcester Fire Authority (HWFA) and comes as a result of the current fire provision consultation across the two counties.
Representatives from HWFA including Chief Fire Officer Mark Yates, Chairman Derek Prodger and the HWFA chief financial officer Martin Reohorn attended the meeting with Hereford and Worcestershire MPs and the Minister. Concerns were raised about the continuing low level of funding that HWFA currently receives. It was highlighted that historically HWFA receives an extremely low level of funding per capita. Whilst this situation was addressed recently, as a result of pressure from Worcestershire’s and Herefordshire’s MPs, the inequality of funding still persists – to HWFA’s detriment.
Mark Garnier said “This meeting provided an excellent and timely opportunity for both local MPs and HWFA to raise their concerns directly with the Minister and to push for a reconsideration in how government funding is allocated. It is vital that funding is distributed more fairly across authorities in England.
“It is important to get across that HWFA have both a low level of actual resources and have a low level of government grant. The combination of these two factors could clearly have implications for the safety of Worcestershire residents which is unacceptable. It also leads to an unfair level of precept being levied on Worcestershire residents in comparison to other regions.”
The meeting is part of a wider effort by local MPs to secure a better financial settlement for HWFA. Earlier, Harriett Baldwin MP coordinated a letter from MPs to Derek Prodger putting forward their concerns and suggestions for the resource reviews, whilst Mark Garnier coordinated a letter seeking to secure a better funding settlement from central government.