Posts tagged: News

The large dome of a grand mosque in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta has collapsed as a result of a large fire. No casualties have been reported.

The grand mosque, located inside an Islamic centre complex, was undergoing renovation.

The cause of the fire is under investigation. According to reports, police said they suspect it started from the sparks created when workers tried to cut waterproofing membranes for the dome. Four construction workers have been questioned in connection with the fire, the police said. 

Footage from social media show the dome’s collapse:

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) has unveiled its plan to help keep Scotland’s communities safe. The Strategic Plan for 2022-2025 sets out SFRS’s strategic intentions for the next three years, detailing seven objectives to achieve them. 

Over the next three years, the Service will look to reduce its carbon emissions and increase resilience to respond effectively to the impact of climate change in Scotland.

Initiatives will be deployed to ensure community safety and wellbeing improve throughout Scotland including working with partners to refocus preventative activities to address issues of social, economic and health inequalities.

The plan, informed by the SFRS Long Term Vision, will ensure delivery of the strategic priorities set out for the Service by the Scottish Government in the Fire Framework 2022. The outcomes of the Strategic Plan 2019-22 review report and the views of SFRS staff have been considered as the plan has developed.

It also follows the previous launch of a draft plan first published in May, now finalised after recognising the feedback from the associated public consultation.

SFRS Director of Strategic Planning, Performance and Communications, Mark McAteer, led its development. He said: “Our plan sets out what we want to achieve as a Service by 2025, identifying attainable goals within this timeframe as we continue to recover from the impact of COVID.

“This is the first plan that aligns with the SFRS Long-Term Vision and is the next step in realising our ambitions to be a progressive organisation, centred around people’s needs, inclusive of all and better connected to communities. 

“Achieving the outcomes we’ve set out will help us realise our vision and fulfil our mission of working together for a safer Scotland.”

The final plan has now been approved by Community Safety Minister, Ash Regan MSP, and laid before the Scottish Parliament.

Speaking about the plan, Ms Regan MSP said: “I am pleased to approve the 2022-2025 Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Strategic Plan. This SFRS plan aligns with the priorities in the recently published Scottish Government Fire and Rescue Framework 2022.

“The people of Scotland are well-served by the officers and staff of SFRS, who work alongside partners to make communities safer.”

The strategic plan can be found here.

Nearly 9,000 firefighters are set to receive a pay out of £3,750 after a government pensions debacle caused them “total uncertainty with regards to their financial futures”, the Fire Brigades Union has confirmed.

The money is said to be compensation for anxiety, distress and related feelings in relation to a pensions case which has involved firefighters receiving, or being set to receive, less money in their pensions than they should.

Claimants with “additional reasons for being aggrieved” will receive £7,250 in total.

Further to this ruling, pensions are in the process of being adjusted accordingly, with further legal disputes ongoing. This compensation is separate from the pensions themselves and is compensation for the distress caused by the government’s actions in 2015.

The situation arose after the government attempted to bring in public sector pension reforms in 2015 and included provisions that protected only older firefighters. The Fire Brigades Union argued that this amounted to age discrimination, with the eventual result ruled that the pre-2015 pension scheme applies to time served between 2015 and 31 March this year.

The government agreed to settle the compensation case for firefighters with the Fire Brigades Union, which has represented firefighters throughout the process.

Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, said: “We are pleased to have been able to win this for our members. Today’s agreement on starting the process for making those payments to our members underlines the amount of distress our members have been under. Some had significant uncertainty with regards to their financial futures.

“Our members work long careers saving the lives of others and risking their own in what is often a very stressful job. They do not deserve to be treated like this and be caused unnecessary distress. This is a significant step on the road to putting the situation with regards to firefighters’ pensions right but there is still further to go. This is a mess of the government’s making.”

The Fire Brigades Union has announced it will hold a consultative ballot of members on the revised 5% pay offer from Monday 31 October to Monday 14 November in the next step of the pay campaign, with the the Executive Council recommending that members reject the offer.

Prior to the revised 5% offer, the union’s leadership had rejected a 2% offer following consultation with members and began preparing a ballot for strike action.

This ballot is a consultative ballot on the pay offer itself and rejection not automatically leading to strike action, however if members reject the offer, the union will move to formally ballot on strike action.

In this consultative ballot, members can vote online or by post. Members will receive the consultative ballot via email, or via post where we don’t hold members’ email addresses.  

Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union general secretary, said: “A 5 per cent pay offer means a significant real terms pay cut. Inflation is currently around 10%. We cannot go on like this. We are a democratic union and our members will decide, but the executive council could not in good faith recommend that members accept this offer.

“Firefighters and control staff are being forced to go to food banks and are struggling to pay for energy. We were part of the key workers who the prime minister stood outside every week and clapped for. We took on extra duties and helped protect our communities. A real terms pay cut is a disgusting way to thank us.

“The government and local authorities have to invest enough money into the fire service so that it works – this is not up for debate. Firefighters need a significant pay rise and the fire and rescue service must have enough resources.”

London Fire Brigade’s new Deputy Commissioner, Jonathan Smith, has called for an end to abuse towards staff as new figures show firefighters and Control officers are increasingly suffering from regular incidents of offensive behaviour.

New data from London Fire Brigade, released on Emergency Services Day today, shows there have been more than 870 reports of physical and verbal assaults against our staff from 2020 to date. That’s a rise of more than 8% on the previous three years – there were 801 incidents from 2017 to 2019.

Last year there were weekly reports of abuse towards firefighters and Control – with 353 incidents in total reported during the year. So far this year, there have been 69 occasions when crews have been physically or verbally abused, including a spike in July, when firefighters were dealing with one of the busiest periods in the Brigade’s history during the summer heatwaves.

Control Officers have also dealt with more than 140 abusive phone calls so far in 2022, and abuse to Control reached a five year high last year with 248 incidents recorded – almost 50 more calls than each of the previous four years.

The Brigade’s new Deputy Commissioner for Preparedness and Response, Jonathan Smith, has said the figures are shocking and that any attack on an emergency worker is abhorrent, calling for an end to abusive behaviour against fire service staff and their blue lights colleagues. He said the Brigade won’t hesitate to take action and support the police to bring criminal charges against perpetrators.

He said: “It’s always disheartening to hear when a member of staff has been abused while doing their job.

“Any attack on an emergency service worker is abhorrent – whether it’s physical or verbal abuse.

“These people dedicate their lives to saving and protecting people and it’s appalling when they are ever hampered in doing this by aggressive members of the public.”

Deputy Commissioner Smith added: “We take all attacks on our staff incredibly seriously and have already put our weight behind the Assaults on Emergency Workers Act which increased sentencing guidelines for such attacks.

“If staff are on the receiving end of abuse, they are always supported by their manager and our Counselling and Trauma team if needed. “I want to remind Londoners that whenever they see us or our blue light colleagues out and about – in what are often very difficult circumstances – please be kind and don’t make a tough job even harder.”