Letter: Emergency planning role in peacetime

Sir: Paul Gosling rightly concludes 'Emergency planning is too important to be a matter of dispute or confusion . . .' It is also too important to wither on the vine. Yet the Home Office is setting out to do just that by cutting local authority grants.

Of course civil defence has had to carry its share of the peace dividend. Between 1993-94 and 1994- 95, the Home Office civil defence budget will reduce from pounds 42.5m to pounds 37.5m. Local government grants also go down pounds 5m from within the same budget. Thus town and county halls have to carry 100 per cent of the cuts or find the balance.

I do have an axe to grind because grants pay my salary. I also believe the jobs my 600-plus colleagues do up and down the country are valid for what we give to public safety and social purpose.

Yours faithfully,

SIMON TURNEY

Chief Emergency Planning

Officers' Society

Barnsley,

South Yorkshire

22 February