Fire services in the United Kingdom
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty agencies; these are known as a fire and rescue service, the term used in modern legislation and by government departments. The older terms of fire brigade and fire service survive in informal usage and in the names of a few organisations. England and Wales have local fire services which are each overseen by a fire authority, made up of representatives of local governments. Fire authorities have the power to raise a Council Tax levy for funding, with the remainder coming from the government. Scotland and Northern Ireland have centralised fire services, so their authorities are committees of the devolved parliaments; the total budget for fire services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. Central government maintains national standards and a body of independent advisers through the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser, created in 2007, while Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services provides direct oversight.
The devolved government in Scotland has HMFSI Scotland. Firefighters in the United Kingdom are allowed to join unions, the main one being the Fire Brigades Union, while chief fire officers are members of the National Fire Chiefs Council, which has some role in national co-ordination; the fire services have undergone significant changes since the beginning of the 21st century, a process, propelled by a devolution of central government powers, new legislation and a change to operational procedures in the light of terrorism attacks and threats. See separate article History of fire safety legislation in the United Kingdom Comprehensive list of recent UK fire and rescue service legislation: Fire services are established and granted their powers under new legislation which has replaced a number of Acts of Parliament dating back more than 60 years, but is still undergoing change. 1938: Fire Brigades Act 1938. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain and made it mandatory for local authorities to arrange an effective fire service.
1947: Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. 1959: Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act. It was repealed in Wales along with the 1947 Act. 1999: Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of national fire strikes, with much of the discontent caused by the aforementioned report into the fire service conducted by Prof Sir George Bain. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the industrial action still ongoing. Bain's report led to a change in the laws relating to firefighting. 2002: Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004: Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 only applying to England and Wales. 2006: The Regulatory Reform Order 2005 This piece of secondary legislation or statutory instrument replaces several other acts that dealt with fire precautions and fire safety in premises, including the now defunct process of issuing fire certificates.
It came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises: 2006: The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on "Fire and rescue services. Promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation." But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries. There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association, its website outlines future changes, specific projects: "The aim of the Fire Modernisation Programme is to adopt modern work practices within the Fire & Rescue Service to become more efficient and effective, while strengthening the contingency and resilience of the Service to react to incidents. " The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee. In June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report.
Committee report The committee's brief is described on its website: The Communities and Local Government Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure and policy of the Department for Communities and Local Government and its associated bodies. Government response This document, the subsequent government response in September 2006, are important as they outlined progress on the FiReControl, efforts to address diversity and the planned closure of HMFSI in 2007 among many issues. Both documents are interesting as they refer back to Professor Bain's report and the many recommendations it made and continue to put forward the notion that there is an ongoing need to modernise FRSs. For example, where FRSs were inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office. Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Governm
Georgian era
The Georgian era is a period in British history from 1714 to c. 1830–37, named after the Hanoverian kings George I, George II, George III and George IV. The sub-period, the Regency era is defined by the regency of George IV as Prince of Wales during the illness of his father George III; the definition of the Georgian era is extended to include the short reign of William IV, which ended with his death in 1837. The term "Georgian" is used in the contexts of social and political history and architecture; the term "Augustan literature" is used for Augustan drama, Augustan poetry and Augustan prose in the period 1700–1740s. The term "Augustan" refers to the acknowledgement of the influence of Latin literature from the ancient Roman Republic. Georgian society and its preoccupations were well portrayed in the novels of writers such as Henry Fielding, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen, characterised by the architecture of Robert Adam, John Nash and James Wyatt and the emergence of the Gothic Revival style, which hearkened back to a supposed golden age of building design.
The flowering of the arts was most vividly shown in the emergence of the Romantic poets, principally through Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, John Keats, Lord Byron and Robert Burns. Their work ushered in a new era of poetry, characterised by vivid and colourful language, evocative of elevating ideas and themes; the paintings of Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young J. M. W. Turner and John Constable illustrated the changing world of the Georgian period – as did the work of designers like Capability Brown, the landscape designer. Fine examples of distinctive Georgian architecture are Edinburgh's New Town, Georgian Dublin, Grainger Town in Newcastle upon Tyne, the Georgian Quarter of Liverpool and much of Bristol and Bath; the music of John Field, Haydn, Johann Christian Bach, William Boyce, Mozart and Mendelssohn was some of the most popular in England at that time. It was a time of immense social change in Britain, with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution which began the process of intensifying class divisions, the emergence of rival political parties like the Whigs and Tories.
In rural areas the Agricultural Revolution saw huge changes to the movement of people and the decline of small communities, the growth of the cities and the beginnings of an integrated transportation system but as rural towns and villages declined and work became scarce there was a huge increase in emigration to Canada, the North American colonies and other parts of the British Empire. The evangelical movement inside and outside the Church of England gained strength in the late 18th and early 19th century; the movement challenged the traditional religious sensibility that emphasized a code of honor for the upper-class, suitable behaviour for everyone else, together with faithful observances of rituals. John Wesley and his followers preached revivalist religion, trying to convert individuals to a personal relationship with Christ through Bible reading, regular prayer, the revival experience. Wesley himself preached 52,000 times, calling on men and women to "redeem the time" and save their souls.
Wesley always operated inside the Church of England, but at his death, it set up outside institutions that became the Methodist Church. It stood alongside the traditional nonconformist churches, Congregationalist, Baptists and Quakers; the nonconformist churches, were less influenced by revivalism. The Church of England remained dominant, but it had a growing evangelical, revivalist faction the "Low Church", its leaders included Hannah More. It reached the upper class through the Clapham Sect, it did not seek political reform, but rather the opportunity to save souls through political action by freeing slaves, abolishing the duel, prohibiting cruelty to children and animals, stopping gambling, avoiding frivolity on the Sabbath. All souls were equal in God's view, but not all bodies, so evangelicals did not challenge the hierarchical structure of English society; as R. J. Morris noted in his 1983 article "Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 1780-1850," "id-eighteenth-century Britain was a stable society in the sense that those with material and ideological power were able to defend this power in an effective and dynamic manner," but "in the twenty years after 1780, this consensus structure was broken."
Anglican Evangelicalism thus, as historian Lisa Wood has argued in her book Modes of Discipline: Women and the Novel After the French Revolution, functioned as a tool of ruling-class social control, buffering the discontent that in France had inaugurated a revolution. The Georgian period saw continual warfare, including the Seven Years' War, known in America as the French and Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the Napoleonic Wars; the British won most of the wars except for the American Revolution, where the combined weight of the United States, France and the Netherlands overwhelmed Britain, which stood alone without allies. The loss of some of the American Colonies in the American War of Independence was regarded as a national disaster and was seen by some foreign observers as heralding the end of Britain as a great power. In Europe, the wars with France dragged on for nearly a quarter of a century, 1793–1815. Victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Waterloo under
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
Public housing in the United Kingdom
Public housing in the United Kingdom provided the majority of rented accommodation in the country until 2011. Houses built for public or social housing use are built by or for local authorities and known as council houses. Before 1865, housing for the poor was provided by the private sector. Council houses were built on council estates, where other amenities, like schools and shops, were also provided. From the 1950s, blocks of flats and three- or four-storey blocks of maisonettes were built. Flats and houses were built in mixed estates. Council homes were built to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at reasonable rents to working-class people. Public housing in the mid-20th century included many large suburban "council estates" and numerous urban developments featuring tower blocks. Many of these developments did not live up to the hopes of their supporters, now suffer from urban blight. Since 1979, the role of council housing has changed. Housing stock has been sold under Right to Buy legislation, new social housing has been developed and managed by housing associations.
A substantial part of the UK population still lives in council housing: in 2010, about 17% of UK households. 55% of the country's social housing stock is owned by local authorities – of which 15% is managed on a day-to-day basis by arms-length management organisations, rather than the authority, 45% by housing associations. In Scotland, council estates are known as'schemes'; the history of public housing is the history of the housing of the poor. That statement is controversial, as before 1890 the state was not involved in housing policy. Public housing became needed to provide "homes fit for heroes" in 1919 to enable slum clearance. Standards were set to ensure high quality homes. Aneurin Bevan, a Labour politician, passionately believed that council houses should be provided for all, while the Conservative politician Harold Macmillan saw council housing "as a stepping stone to home ownership"; the Labour government of Harold Wilson built houses and flats to the point where there was a surplus in the late 1960s.
The Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher transferred the public housing stock to the private sector to the point where councils had to rent back their own houses to house the homeless, with the Right to Buy scheme being introduced in 1979 and the millionth council house being sold within seven years. In the stable medieval model of landowner and peasant, where the estate workers lived at the landowner whim in a tied cottage, the aged and infirm needed provision from their former employer, the church or the state; the documented history of social housing in Britain starts with almshouses, which were established from the 10th century, to provide a place of residence for "poor and distressed folk". The first recorded almshouse was founded in York by King Æthelstan; the public workhouse was the final fallback solution for the destitute. Rural poverty had been increased by the Inclosure Acts leaving many in need of assistance; this was divided into outside relief, or handouts to keep the family together, inside relief, which meant submitting to the workhouse.
The workhouse provided for two groups of people – the transient population roaming the country looking for seasonal work, the long-term residents. The two were kept separate; the long term residents included single elderly men incapable of further labour, young women with their children—often women, abandoned by their husbands, single mothers and servant-girls, dismissed from residential positions. The pressure for decent housing was increased by overcrowding in the large cities during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century; some industrialists and independent organisations provided housing in tenement blocks, while some philanthropist factory owners built entire villages for their workers, such as Saltaire and Port Sunlight. The City of London Corporation built tenements in Farringdon Road in 1865, but this was an isolated instance; the first council to build housing as an integrated policy was Liverpool Corporation, starting with St Martin's Cottages in Ashfield Street, completed in 1869.
The Corporation built Victoria Square Dwellings, opened by Home Secretary Sir Richard Cross in 1885. That year, a Royal Commission was held, as the state had taken an interest in housing and housing policy; this led to the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890, which encouraged the London authority to improve the housing in their areas. It gave them the power to acquire land and to build tenements and houses; as a consequence, London County Council opened the Boundary Estate in 1900, a'block dwelling estate' of tenements in Tower Hamlets. The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1900 extended these power to all local councils, which began building tenements and houses. In 1912, Raymond Unwin published, he worked on the influential Tudor Walters Report of 1918, which recommended housing in short terraces, spaced 70 feet apart at a density of 12 per acre. The First World War indirectly provided a new impetus, when the poor physical health and condition of many urban recruits to the army was noted with alarm.
This led to a campaign under the slogan "Homes fit for heroes". In 1919, the Government first required councils to provide housing, built to the Tudor Walters standards, under the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919, helping them to do so through the
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom provide emergency care to people with acute illness or injury and are predominantly provided free at the point of use by the four National Health Services of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status; the NHS commissions most emergency medical services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other emergency services, the public access emergency medical services through one of the valid emergency telephone numbers. In addition to ambulance services provided by NHS organisations, there are some private and volunteer emergency medical services arrangements in place in the UK, the use of private or volunteer ambulances at public events or large private sites, as part of community provision of services such as community first responders. Air ambulance services in the UK are not part of the NHS and are funded through charitable donations.
Paramedics are seconded from a local NHS ambulance service, with the exception of Great North Air Ambulance Service who employ their own paramedics. Doctors are provided by their home hospital and spend no more than 40% of their time with an air ambulance service. Public ambulance services across the UK are required by law to respond to four types of requests for care, which are: Emergency calls Doctor's urgent admission requests High dependency and urgent inter-hospital transfers Major incidentsAmbulance trusts and services may undertake non-urgent patient transport services on a commercial arrangement with their local hospital trusts or health boards, or in some cases on directly funded government contracts, although these contracts are fulfilled by private and voluntary providers; the National Health Service Act 1946 gave county and borough councils a statutory responsibility to provide an emergency ambulance service, although they could contract a voluntary ambulance service to provide this, with many contracting the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance or another local provider.
The last St John Division, to be so contracted is reputed to have been at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire, where the two-bay ambulance garage can still be seen at the branch headquarters. The Regional Ambulance Officers’ Committee reported in 1979 that “There was considerable local variation in the quality of the service provided in relation to vehicles and equipment. Most Services were administered by Local Authorities through their Medical Officer of Health and his Ambulance Officer, a few were under the aegis of the Fire Service, whilst others relied upon agency methods for the provision of part or all of their services.” The 142 existing ambulance services were transferred by the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 from local authority to central government control in 1974, consolidated into 53 services under regional or area health authorities. This led to the formation of predominantly county based ambulance services, which merged up and changed responsibilities until 2006, when there were 31 NHS ambulance trusts in England.
The June 2005 report "Taking healthcare to the Patient", authored by Peter Bradley, Chief Executive of the London Ambulance Service, for the Department of Health led to the merging of the 31 trusts into 13 organisations in England, plus one organisation each in Wales and Northern Ireland. Following further changes as part of the NHS foundation trust pathway, this has further reduced to 10 ambulance service trusts in England, plus the Isle of Wight which has its own provision. Following the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, commissioning of the ambulance services in each area passed from central government control into the hands of regional clinical commissioning groups; the commissioners in each region are responsible for contracting with a suitable organisation to provide ambulance services within their geographical territory. The primary provider for each area is held by a public NHS body, of which there are 11 in England, 1 each in the other three countries. In England there are now ten NHS ambulance trusts, as well as an ambulance service on the Isle of Wight, run directly by Isle of Wight NHS Trust, with boundaries following those of the former regional government offices.
The ten trusts are: East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust London Ambulance Service NHS Trust North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS TrustThe English ambulance trusts are represented by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, with the Scottish and Northern Irish providers all associate members. On the 14 November 2018 West Midlands Ambulance Service became the UK's first university-ambulance trust; the service was operated before reorganisation in 1974 by the St Andrews’ Ambulance Association under contract to the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Scottish Ambulance Service is a Special Health Board that provides ambulance services throughout whole of Scotland, on behalf of the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government.
Due to the remote nature of many areas of Scotland compared to the other Home Nations, the Scottish Ambulance Service has Britain's only publi
Pollok House
Pollok House is the ancestral home of the Stirling Maxwell family, located in Pollok Country Park, Scotland. The house – built in 1752 and thought to be designed by William Adam, but who may only have been consulted on the design, was subsequently extended by Rowand Anderson in the early 20th century – was gifted to the City of Glasgow in 1966 by Dame Anne Maxwell Macdonald, whose family had owned the estate for 700 years, it is open to the public. The house was modernised internally in 1899 by Alexander Hunter Crawford. Displayed within the Pollok House is a large, private collection of Spanish paintings, including works by El Greco, Francisco Goya and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. There are paintings by Rubens and William Blake as well as glass, silverware and antique furniture; the house features servants' quarters downstairs, which include two shops and a restaurant. The house has an extensive garden, boasting a collection of over 1,000 species of rhododendrons; the gardens behind the main house contain the Pollok Park Beech, thought to be 250 years old.
This tree has an unusual form with a swollen trunk (7 metres girth at grade and (10 metres girth at and a gnarled mass of branches. The heraldic lions on the gate piers were carved by John Marshall to a design by Huw Lorimer in 1950. Glasgow Museums & Art Galleries National Trust for Scotland details Photographs of Pollok house In Glasgow Pollok House Arts Society
Peillac
Peillac is a commune in the east of Morbihan department of Brittany in north-western France. The canal de Nantes à Brest forms all of the commune's northern border. Inhabitants of Peillac are called in French Peillacois. Communes of the Morbihan department Mayors of Morbihan Association INSEE commune file Map of Peillac on Michelin
