999 fire control petition to be heard in Scottish Parliament 9/4/14
A petition from the Western Isles and the Highlands against the closure of the Inverness Fire Service Control Centre is to be heard in the Scottish Parliament later this month.
About 75% of the 4000 or so signatures gathered came from a campaign within the Western Isles.
Local organiser Charlie Nicolson presented the signatures to the chairman of the Public Petitions Committee, MSP David Stewart.
The committee will consider the petition on 22 April in Edinburgh.
Charlie Nicolson said: The response to the petition in the western Isles has been absolutely amazing.
“The Scottish Fire Service made this decision to close and we saying to them we need a control centre in the Highlands and Islands.
“Having only Dundee as our nearest base is not fair in any way for community safety.”
David Stewart said: “When we had the petitions committee meeting in Stornoway last year we had three termendous petitions all originating from the Western Isles
“So, I really want to encourage everyone from the Western Isles who has an interest in nay policital issue to make sure there’s a petition on it
We can’t guarantee there’s any magic solutions. What we can do is ensure that there will be an rigorous analysis of what is coming up for petitions, hopefully evidence is given and then we’ll take it to the next level which is normally to the government.
The petition points out the Highlands and Islands are an “unique geographical area, with a mountainous terrain and landmass with hundreds of miles of extremely remote coastline, the area involved covers a landmass larger than Belgium.”
It says “our communities are far and wide and each fire station and retained fire station are very diverse in its requirements.
“The Inverness Control Room provides us with a unique understanding and knowledge of the areas and communities they serve, the region’s communities have one of the largest range of dialects anywhere in the UK.
“We also have many native Gaelic speakers, who also have unique dialects. Many roads and house names throughout the region are in Gaelic encompassing unique spellings and phonetics. Its is essential therefore that the people serving this area, know and live here,they have an unequivocally unique empathy for the areas they are providing cover for.”