Fire Brigades costs and organisational arrangements

Abstract

Basic cost curves for fire brigades in England and Wales are presented. The relationships are used to investigate the financial consequenoes of enlarging present brigade responsibilities in terms of the scope of service at present provided. The result indicate that small adjacent County Borough brigades are intrinsically uneconomic, and in addition, the advantages stemming from amalgamations involving County brigades arise mainly from the centralisation of common faoili ties.