The government has allocated £81 million for fire and rescue authorities across England following the cancellation of the FireControl scheme.

It comes after a public consultation exercise involving fire and rescue authorities and services and suppliers in the fire and rescue industry which, said fire minister Bob Neill, showed a positive response to the government's localism agenda.

"The great majority of those responding to the consultation agreed with the government's preferred approach of achieving improved resilience and efficiency through encouraging increased collaboration in a locally determined way – with some government support," said Mr Neill. "Our strategy for the future is to build national resilience through local solutions.

"I have...announced that total funding of £81million will be made available to England's fire and rescue authorities to help them develop their own solutions for improving resilience and efficiency – as a guide, that's up to £1.8million each.

“More may be available where plans offer exceptional benefits but within the £81 million total. A further £1.8 million will support cross cutting initiatives that enhance resilience and efficiency, such as the development of common standards."

Last week, an independent study into the FireControl scheme said the project – which aimed to replace 46 fire and rescue services control rooms with nine regional control centres – had been a ‘£469m failure’.

New measures will see the creation of a national framework which will ‘define national and local resilience roles’, including issues arising in the context of cross-border working interoperability, and multi-agency interoperability, Mr Neill said.

Discussions will include considering a national communications capability and standards for data exchange.

However, while he welcomed the changes, councillor Brian Coleman, chairman of the Local Government Association’s fire services management committee, said it was vital that fire and rescue authorities ‘salvaged’ as much as they could from FireControl.

“Although there remained fundamental problems with the infrastructure of the [FireControl] project, there are elements which are of value to the service. In the interests of the taxpayer it’s vital these investments are not wasted and authorities can now consider how the equipment can best be used," he said.

“We’ve long been calling on government to end the uncertainty about what would replace FireControl and to let fire authorities make decisions about what they need locally. It is good news Bob Neill has finally set out its proposals. This £81 million should go a long way to ensuring authorities can build resilience by putting together alternative upgrades, and it's cash which will stretch even further where they combine efforts to find savings.

“The sector is determined to use political and professional leadership to ensure that we salvage as much as possible from the FireControl project and we are confident that, once in place, the nation will be better protected.”

Government response to consultation