An audit report on the funding of Western Australia’s volunteer Emergency and Fire Services has been tabled in Parliament, recommending changes in some areas for the State’s four entities.
Auditor General, Caroline Spencer said the funding of WA’s volunteer services by State and Local Government entities was vital to help reduce the impact of events like fires and natural disasters on communities.
“The Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) wholly funds two of the services, the Volunteer Fire and Rescue Service and the Volunteer Fire and Emergency Service, and does so using clearly-defined funding objectives and expected outcomes,” Ms Spencer said.
“However, administrative improvements are recommended to better support funding decisions for the two services jointly funded by DFES and Local Government entities, the State Emergency Service (SES) and Bush Fire Service (BFS).”
She said DFES’s Local Government Grants Scheme ensured predictable and recurrent funding to the SES and BFS, based on prior expenditure, with an opportunity for improvement existing to periodically review funding to ensure it was linked to current and emerging risks to the community.
“Pleasingly the Local Government entities and volunteer association representatives we interviewed believed the DFES and Local Governments together provided enough funding for the volunteer services to continue to respond to emergencies and fires, as they have done for decades,” Ms Spencer said.
“We recommended the DFES better document its funding decisions and procedures and work with the Local Government sector to inform a strategic State-wide approach to funding based on volunteer services’ long term operating and capital costs.”
She said there was also room for improvement around Local Governments’ strategic asset planning and understanding of their own costs to support their local volunteer services on which to base their funding requests to the DFES.
The Auditor-General’s 43-page report Funding of Volunteer Emergency and Fire Services can be accessed at this PS News link and the audit team was Aloha Morrissey, Jacqueline Richards, Justin Fairhead and Dan Franks.
