Inspection and diversity back in vogue

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here in ensuring best practice and innovation at a local level gets shared nationally.

The findings from the Thomas Review with regards to bullying and harassment were unacceptable. These findings also echo conversations I have had myself with the sector.

No bullying and harassment at any level should be tolerated. I ask everyone here to do all you can to support a culture that does not encourage bullying and harassment, and where it does occur, it is robustly challenged. I was pleased to hear recently that CFOA has a social media policy and that the NFCC will be looking at ways to drive out bullying and harassment. But we still need to go further.

I also want to see progress made to further professionalise the Service. The public expect a professional Fire and Rescue Service, which has effective management at all ranks.

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Minister for Policing and the Fire Service Brandon Lewis

There needs to be investment in the talent pipeline ensuring managers are skilled and robust to encourage a competent and well supported workforce that can adapt to the changing role that firefighters now play. We must look towards developing managers early on in their Fire Service career. I see this as an investment as it will ensure we have a wider pool of talent to recruit the future leaders of the Service.

However, I want to make clear, professionalism is not just to be expected at senior levels – it is about raising standards across the workforce.

I previously asked for the reform of the Grey Book and the National Joint Council to be delivered at pace and I am pleased with the progress that the Task and Finish group led by Nick Chard have made in responding to this.

It is essential that this gives each fire and rescue service the flexibility to adapt roles in ways that meets local needs. And we need to achieve an outcome that means national negotiations do support a modernised and flexible Service.

I have made it a personal priority to drive political leadership in this area. But for this to have an impact reform must be also driven by the sector at both a national and local level and by all parts of the workforce.

Finally, I would like to challenge the sector to think about what a modern Fire Service should look like. This will help us all focus our reform agenda in a way which is more ambitious and strategic than it has been before.

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“It is clear that the Fire and Rescue Service needs to get smarter when it comes to recruitment, retention and progression”

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FIRE Correspondent Catherine Levin reviews this year’s LGA Fire Conference where an absent Fire Minister cast a shadow over the annual event

Conference critique:

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inspection and diversity back in vogue

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n 2015 the conference focused on funding and health; in 2016 it was about collaboration and governance. This year it has all gone a bit retro: inspection and diversity are back in vogue. Some might argue that the latter never went out of fashion, but from the discussion at this conference, there is clearly a renewed interest and much of it in response to the Thomas Review.

For a conference that is focused on elected members of fire and rescue authorities, it was odd not see any government ministers in attendance. Policing and Fire Service Minister Brandon Lewis gave his speech by prerecorded video, which led to the surreal situation where members of the audience directed questions at the panel prefaced by “if the Minister were here, I would ask him…” While it is inevitable that parliamentary business

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will trump a trip to Gateshead, attendees were clearly disappointed.

Last year in Bristol three political parties were represented; the year before Clive Betts MP put in an appearance as well. No one seemed to notice the absence of the shadow fire minister or a view from the Liberal Democrats. The former shows little interest in fire since Lyn Brown moved off the fire brief and the Lib Dems have so few MPs, fire is the least of their worries. It would be good, however, to have some more national political input into what is the premier conference focused on fire and aimed at fire authority members.

Diversity The LGA took advantage of their annual conference to launch a new report to demonstrate how it is dealing

Government & Politics

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Millington in Kent and Dawn Whittaker, who is Acting Chief of East Sussex). They are not the first women to do so, but they form an important and influential group who can influence others to follow them.

“We need a large scale piece of research to understand why we aren’t an occupation of choice,” said Becci, focusing on women particularly but also embracing BME groups in her concern. She has looked at recruitment materials being used today and does not hide disappointment: “they still look like the ones we used 25 years ago; we are still doing the same things”.

The Home Office ‘Insight’ team will be carrying out research into the barriers to retained recruitment this year, perhaps they should expand its scope to look at wholetime recruitment too.

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Inspection The second big theme for this year’s conference was inspection. LGA Fire Peer Challenge filled a void when the inspectorate was abolished and sector led reform was all the rage. Always billed as a self-improvement tool, the LGA never tried to replace inspection in its entirety, rather providing a means to reassure fire and rescue services that they were doing OK. Now that ministers have decided they are not so keen on a lack of an inspectorate and have resurrected it through the Policing and Crime Act 2017, the LGA now need to reposition peer review to remain relevant.

The fire peer challenge and peer improvement workshop provided a therapeutic environment in which to rehearse a new version of peer review that could co-exist alongside the new inspectorate. Gary Hughes from the LGA said it wanted to “complement the inspectorate; adding value and supporting improvement but not adding a burden”.

There are three options on offer: pre inspection peer support; post inspection support for areas of development identified; and peer inspectors who would join an inspectorate-led team.

The first and second options seem fairly logical, with post inspection probably the most useful in terms of picking up the work required to improve once that independent view has been confirmed. It is the third option that seems odd. Surely the point of the inspectorate is to be independent? Government has long been scathing about peer review and how it is ‘marking your own homework’.

Why would they want to invite a ‘sector peer’ to join the team? Is this a rolling back of a position or a pragmatic, practical solution?

At the tail end of the conference, Chloe Dunnett, Head of the Fire Strategy and Reform Unit, confirmed that the Home Office is working with the LGA to develop plans in this area. She promised more detail on this in the weeks to come.

In Chloe’s speech she provided some new information about the way the inspectorate will work, although stopping short of naming the new chief inspector.

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with some of the recommendations coming out of the Thomas Review.

An inclusive service: the twenty-first century fire and rescue service is a good read. It sets out a series of actions that the LGA has already taken, including signing an MOU with the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Asian Fire Service Association, Women in the Fire Service, Quiltbag, Stonewall and trade unions, setting out their approach to diversity.

Diversity was a clear theme of this conference. It is not new. It is included in every speech from the Fire Minister. And while it may be true that the Service is “overwhelmingly white and male”, this mantra is in danger of becoming predictable and no longer heard. He did, however, observe that “one third of the workforce will be retiring soon. This is a golden opportunity to make improvements on diversity”.

Many fire and rescue services are now recruiting wholetime firefighters, but the LGA makes the good point that it is not all about recruitment at entry level.

“Action on diversity should not be confined to recruitment at entry level. We need to open ourselves to the wealth of external talent available to fill senior posts and to making the most of the talent we already have by ensuring diversity in promotion and development. We need to be and to be seen as an inclusive workplace.”

The LGA document provides insights from a wide range of interested parties about the problems that need to be addressed. The document provides some practical steps that can be used to improve diversity and it focuses understandably on fire authority members, helping them to pose the questions that members should be asking of themselves and their respective services.

“We want the 21st century firefighter to be perceived as just as likely to be a woman as a man, free from racial and identity stereotypes as likely to be visiting schools to provide fire safety advice as running into a burning building – a respected member of their community, with the skill and expertise to protect that community in numerous ways.”

Added to this, on the second day of the conference and coinciding with International Women’s Day, an allfemale panel convened to talk about equality, diversity and inclusion.

The Thomas Review includes some commentary on the existence of ‘unconscious bias’ and recommended that training about this should be rolled out across the Fire and Rescue Service. One member of the panel, Kathryn Billing, picked up on this in her address to conference. She talked about an inclusive culture “where we can come to work and be ourselves.” Becci Bryant expanded on this point in her speech and talked about using blind assessments both for recruitment but also promotion.

Becci, as Chief of Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service, is part of an elite group of four women heading up fire and rescue services (along with Dany Cotton in London, Ann

“We need a large scale piece of research to understand why we aren’t an occupation of choice” www.fire–magazine.com | April 2017 | 19

“‘I’ve ditched procurement and I’m going to talk about the psychology of sex’. At least that got some attention”

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Standards On that standards point, the Minister sought to reassure his audience about his intentions: “I also want to clarify what I mean by ‘professional standards’. This is not going to be solely based on recognising and highlighting best practice like the College of Policing. It is about professionalising the Fire Service, seizing the opportunity to put structure and organisation around the standards already in place.”

The Minister went on to say that “nothing has been decided in terms of where the standards body will be located” and encouraged fire and rescue services to get involved in the work already underway. Assistant Chief Chris Bigland from Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service is leading the project team and more information about this evolving work will emerge over the next few months.

There was surprisingly little about governance changes at this conference. Roger Hirst, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex, spoke about being the first PCC to consult on the local business case for taking on fire and rescue responsibilities in his area. David Fuller from Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority outlined how they had reduced their authority down to 11 members with a view to the PCC having voting rights.

Maybe it was because they both spoke at the end of the first day, but neither seemed to elicit the kind of interest and debate that should have been expected given the impact of the changes of governance. Perhaps governance just is not that sexy. Ann Millington talked about procurement the next day and said exactly that: “I’ve ditched procurement and I’m going to talk about the psychology of sex.” At least that got some attention.

With the National Framework due out for consultation in the summer, there is an opportunity to capture much of what was said at this conference, the debate from the Policing and Crime Bill and the recommendations from the Thomas Review to create a document that reflects the Fire and Rescue Service of 2017. As the Minister has now said a couple of times, he wants 2017 to be a big year for the Service.

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She set out three key initial tasks: 1. Recruitment of expertise 2. Development of the inspection programme 3. Creation of an inspection framework.

Fire sector experts, she said, were “absolutely vital” and she sees secondments into the inspectorate as a “key learning role for officers”. During the debate about the inspectorate in parliament, there were concerns about the inspectorate being a home for retired chiefs so it was good to hear a positive view about how current serving officers can contribute to this work.

She confirmed that all fire and rescue services in England would be inspected and that those who received a high rating many be let off a future inspection (for a while). Emphasising the desire to be transparent about the inspection outcomes, Chloe advised that inspection reports will be published in full and will contain a single overall judgement along with a summary of findings. In addition to individual fire and rescue service inspections, there will be thematic reviews with diversity likely to be one of the first in this series.

Chloe went on to confirm “the critical role of the standards body” but without such a body existing, it is hard to know quite how that will work. Elsewhere in this conference there was a presentation on the development of a standards body, but given the business case is not due until September, it will be of no use to the initial inspections which are due to commence by the end of the year. Asked what the inspectorate would use in its absence, Chloe talked about other standards but was vague on detail.

It is all a bit unsatisfactory. An inspection regime newly enabled through primary legislation needs time to evolve, recruit the right staff, and effectively communicate how it will work so that the whole Fire and Rescue Service can have time to prepare themselves properly. It is great that services are lining up to be the first to be inspected, but really it would be better if the Home Office would spend a bit more time working everything out before experimenting on fire and rescue services.

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