Letter of resignation as Chair of LFEPA resources Committee
10/3/16
Ed Williams
Clerk to the Authority, LFEPA
Dear Mr Williams,
Please take this letter as my resignation as chair of LFEPA Resources Committee with immediate effect.
Working within the Mayor’s financial envelope, I spent a lot of time and effort with Fire Brigade officers over many months developing a budget for the Fire Brigade that both balanced the books and ensured no loss of front line fire engines. This set of proposals won huge support from Londoners in the public consultation in January: 70% backed my plans and rejected the Mayor’s scheme to cut unnecessarily 13 fire engines.
In his typically most dictatorial and undemocratic way, the Mayor has now seen fit to issue his edict to overrule the budget plan I prepared and which was approved by the people of London and Fire Authority. The Mayor’s direction was accepted last night by the Authority’s Urgency Committee on that Committee Chair’s casting vote.
I am not prepared to preside over the implementation of such a budget as the Mayor’s, which will be so damaging to the London Fire Brigade and the safety of Londoners, with his axing of 13 fire engines and the loss of 188 firefighters’ jobs, cuts we do not have to make to balance the books even under the Mayor’s stringent demands for savings.
He has made his decision. I have made mine. Let him and his Conservative cronies on the Fire Authority get on with implementing his Conservative cuts to our emergency services and let the people of London decide in the ballot box next May as to who has the best interests as to their safety really at heart.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Dismore AM
