Daniel Zeichner – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Daniel Zeichner on 2016-04-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of adequacy of the level of transparency in the recruitment process for Chief Fire Officers.

Mike Penning

Matters of recruitment are for individual fire and rescue authorities as employers. However, Ministers have been clear that payments for senior fire officers who return to employment immediately after retirement are an unacceptable use of taxpayers’ money, especially when fire authorities need to be making sensible savings.

That is why this Government has issued explicit guidance on the re-employment of senior staff who have previously been in receipt of a redundancy or severance payment, or who are in receipt of a local government or fire service pension. Fire and rescue authorities have the ability to deal with this problem and should do so. The public have a right to know when, and on what basis, these decisions have been made, and we have made provision for this.