Promoting the fire and rescue service

Professional Development

Promoting the Fire and Rescue Service

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Sharing Effective Practice The conference provided a forum for sharing case studies about how communications has been used in all areas of Fire and Rescue Service work. Sian Corrigan from Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service talked about the use of communications during the response to the Bosley mill fire where four people tragically lost their lives on July 17, 2015.

Reputation management was one of the key learning points for Cheshire from this incident, the biggest in its history. Current CFOA President and Cheshire CFO Paul Hancock took news crews to the incident site and showed them the extent of the destruction caused by the explosion. Held at a distance from the incident location, it was hard for the camped out media to really understand why it was taking time to locate missing people.

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hearing directly from

Using this small group of journalists as messengers to record what they saw and relay it to their colleagues, saved time, improved understanding and helped relationships to develop over the course of the few days following the tragedy.

There is something rather gripping about hearing directly from the communications teams working during incidents like Bosley.

It is a perspective that is not often heard and Alex Flahive, who looks after photography and video at Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS), reinforced this. Alex provided a humorous, bordering on ghoulish, account of his experience of being right in the heart of incidents. Alex showed how he manages to get all those amazing shots that are freely available on the GMFRS Flickr site.

From the dramatic to the more prosaic, Leanne Ehren, from Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service, spoke with huge enthusiasm about her service’s approach to improving the diversity of new recruits. With representation of women in the Fire and Rescue Service at just 4.5 per cent, it is no surprise that work like this still goes on. When Leanne spoke in November 2015, it felt like not much had changed in ten years, or more.

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f the energy and passion on display at last November’s FirePRO conference is anything to go by, then the state of communications in the Fire and Rescue Service is strong.

The conference took place against a backdrop of blue light collaboration and austerity, compounded by government officials reminding delegates of the lack of resource and money from central government. But there were some brighter moments in the form of smiley faced smoke alarms and risque marketing campaigns along the way.

Representatives from 26 out of 51 UK fire and rescue services attended the two day conference held in Birmingham in late November 2015. This conference is not new: the community of communications professionals working in fire and rescue services has a long history of bringing like minds together to reflect and look for improvement across all communication channels.

It is striking that so many of the communication functions in fire and rescue services are really small. Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service has just one member of staff focused on communications. The combination of Dorset and Wiltshire from April 2016 will result in a new team of five. In the larger services, communications functions have been cut back as part of wider efficiency drives, with the move to digital creating a need for different skills and a reduction in the use of more traditional communication channels.

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FIRE Correspondent Catherine Levin reports on the recent FirePRO conference and the enduring value of communications in the Fire and Rescue Service

Reputation Management And then there was Essex. The cultural review commissioned by Essex County Fire and Rescue Authority and published in September 2015 is a tough read. Irene Lucas, formerly of DCLG and on a consultancy rate of £1,250 per day, pulled no punches in her hard-hitting report. She said in the Executive Summary: ‘Culturally, ECFRS is a failing organisation’ going on to assert ‘the organisational culture in ECFRS is toxic’.

Andy Allsopp, Head of Communications for Essex County Council, shared his experience of handling the publication of this challenging report. It was a “complex, nuanced and difficult exercise,” he cautioned. It must have been hard to deal with the insistence by Irene Lucas that everyone saw the report at the same time.

Interim CFO Adam Eckley and Andy (who took over running communications for the fire and rescue service as well as his role at Essex County Council) have a close working relationship and in the run up to the

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Video and Snapchat Video, advised Dan Slee from comms2.0, not only killed the radio star way back in 1980, but is now set to dominate the Internet too.

Citing statistics from tech giant Cisco, Dan said: “Seventy per cent of Internet content is going to be video by 2017”. With the optimum length of video at a shockingly short 22 seconds, it says much more about attention spans than about the quality of output.

With videos of cats – and particularly cats being rescued by the Fire and Rescue Service – likely to form the bulk of that total, there are great opportunities for fire and rescue services to engage with the public, showing the diversity of work that goes on every day.

Just before President Obama gave his annual State of the Union address on January 12, the White House announced it would be using Snapchat to provide new insight into the life of the President. While there are those who have no idea what Snapchat is, it is a reminder that to reach certain groups, you have to know how they are communicating.

No one mentioned use of Snapchat at this FirePRO conference, but it is very likely that the 2016 conference will include examples and other new tech that no one has heard of yet. Keeping pace, being prepared to try new tools and new approaches are all critical to communications functions remaining relevant within fire and rescue services.

Shelley Wright, Director of Corporate Communications at Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, echoed this point at the close of the conference when she implored FirePRO members to make sure fire and rescue services valued their communications team. And at times of great change, this advice is particularly relevant. Manchester will be the first Fire and Rescue Service to go through the devolution process as part of the government’s push for the development of a Northern Powerhouse.

There is no doubt the passion and enthusiasm on show at this conference is enduring. The commitment that FirePRO members have to Fire and Rescue Service communications is impressive. There is a need for these teams, irrespective of size, to be visible and at the heart of each service.

The value that Shelley talked about means sometimes actually stopping doing things, or changing the way things have always been done, because it makes sense and is one of the demands of working in the modern digital world.

Communications teams are easy to cut, so if the state of communications, like the Union, is to remain strong, FirePRO members need to experiment and innovate to continue to be relevant.

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FIRE Correspondent Catherine Levin says FirePRO members need to experiment and innovate to continue to be relevant

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‘News Jacking’ In stark contrast to these fascinating case studies, London Fire Brigade provided some light relief. Rob McTaggart talked about the Fiftyshadesofred campaign launched at the same time as the release of the Fifty Shades of Grey film. So-called ‘news jacking’ captures the public imagination and aligns amusement with serious messages about behaviour change.

With over 100,000 Twitter followers, the London Fire Brigade communications team already has a ready audience for its output.

The campaign used real life examples of some of the Brigade’s more embarrassing and frankly unbelievable call outs, but at its heart its objective was to reduce unnecessary call outs. In doing this, the communications team garnered substantial national and international media coverage.

Continuing on the topic of behaviour change, the Fire Kills campaign has been given a makeover (see next issue). The DCLG (as was) marketing team gave the conference a sneak preview of the new visuals focused on smiley faced smoke alarms reminding the viewer to test their smoke alarm. It marks the end of an era for the campaign that has for so long focused on the biannual clock change.

It was exciting to learn that the campaign will soon make its first foray into the world of the Internet of Things – the safe, smart home that tells the householder to test the smoke alarm when they are near it is a simple idea. Using technical wizardry called an i-Beacon stuck on the smoke alarm and aided by an app on a smartphone, the Fire Kills Alarm Buddy may well be everyone’s new BFF in the future.

Like Fire Kills, communications teams are experimenting with new technology and they need to stay on top of what tools each demographic group is using. West Midlands Fire Service is already making good use of video with Periscope and, along with London and Essex, also has a presence on Vine. It

would be great to see more services trying these out.

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publication met weekly. Andy was aided by the services of an external crisis management consultancy and briefed journalists “about the uncomfortable truths” within the report and post publication met all bids for interviews with the CFO. Andy’s openness and honesty was refreshing. He spoke about the interaction with the Fire Minister and DCLG and dealing with the “blizzard of letters that followed the publication of the report”. Andy has a long history of working in local government communications and his experience shone through as he spoke.

The fire authority has now accepted the report and appointed a Cultural Review Panel chaired by ex GMFRS CFO Steve McGuirk and includes Jim Barber and Sir Ken Knight. There will be more on this work in a future edition of FIRE.

communications is impressive”

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