| North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service has issued its statement related to the grants and expenditure |
The settlement statement from North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service gives complete details about grants it has received.
The settlement has been broadly in line with planning assumptions but there are a number of issues on which further information is required before the full extent of the settlement is known.
Firstly it is disappointing that only the first two years figures have been announced which keeps them guessing when they would rather be planning. For next year, 2011 / 2012, they have seen a reduction of 5.9% in their Grant to £12.208m. A second year of no pay increases and a number of efficiency measures put in place by the Authority will deliver both a marginal reduction on the current year's income and expenditure plans and provide savings in future years. Added to that the fact that extra grant support is available to support a freeze in Council Tax next year, then as things stand, the 2011/12 year will be manageable providing planned efficiencies are delivered. For the year after, 2012/13, the company is set to receive a small increase of 0.7% to £12.295m.
Clearly there is still a lot of uncertainty around those future numbers but on the basis of the Government's current plans we remain of the view that reductions in expenditure of over £4m will be required over the three years 2012/13 to 2014/2015 with the bulk of these falling in the last two of those years. This is very much in line with the Government's stated aim of "backloading" the Spending Review reductions for the Fire Service.