The Emergency Services Administrative Unit (ESAU) is an Administrative Unit established pursuant to section 7(2) of the Public Sector Management Act 1995. It incorporates within its structure the State Emergency Service and most of the non-incident management services and staff of the Country Fire Service and the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service.
The primary objectives of ESAU are:
to provide strategic, corporate and support services to the South Australian emergency services, namely the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service, the Country Fire Service and the State Emergency Service;
through the State Emergency Service, to provide local incident emergency response service, and significant participation in State Disaster emergency management, planning and training. The State Emergency Service was previously an Administrative Unit in its own right during the period 1 July 1996 to 30 June 1999.
The funding of ESAU is derived through recharges to the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service and the Country Fire Service Board for services rendered. The Community Emergency Services Fund (the Fund), established by the Emergency Services Funding Act 1998 (the Act), assented to in September 1998, provides funding direct to those organisations.
The Act replaces the former arrangements for funding the emergency services agencies through insurance premiums and State and Local Government contributions, with a new system that provides for the collection of a levy on fixed and mobile property, which applied on 1 July 1999. The funds collected from the levy are credited to the Fund.
The State Emergency Service (SES) is directly financed by the Fund for the cost of its operational services in the protection of South Australian citizens and their property. SES also receives funding from the same source for the cost of strategic and administrative services delivered to it by ESAU.
The strategic and administrative services delivered by ESAU include financial, human resources, asset management and procurement, risk management, volunteer management, occupational health, safety and prevention and strategic and knowledge management services. These deliverables are funded by the Country Fire Service Board and South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service under service level agreements.
The organisation structure and funding arrangements are overviewed in the following diagram:
The Emergency Services Administrative Unit complied with the Public Finance and Audit Act 1987 by submitting financial statements to the Auditor-General within 42 days of the end of the financial year. The audit, which involves the verification of accounts, has not been completed at the time of preparation of this Report. The audited financial statements of the Emergency Services Administrative Unit for the year ended 30 June 2000 will be included in a Supplementary Report to Parliament.