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What happens when the money runs out?
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FIRE Correspondent Catherine Levin reports on the prevention activity in South Yorkshire and in so doing highlights that the broad landscape within which fire prevention work operates has changed with the government’s push for collaboration and changes to governance
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here have been acres of press coverage about the Grenfell Tower fire. The last edition of FIRE was devoted entirely to the fire and its aftermath. In among the discussion about cladding, building regulations and sprinklers there was little about fire safety messages. The constant refrain from the Fire and Rescue Service in recent years has been about prevention, so it seems timely to look at what fire and rescue services are doing in this area and whether the context in which this work now operates changes anything. South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (SYFR) is pouring a lot of money into prevention; it comes with a distinctive collaborative flavour and rightly so. In South Yorkshire, the fire authority committed to pump £2m over four years into fire prevention activities to work out what is effective, what is efficient and where collaboration works best. There is something perverse about committing £2m when the SYFR budget reduced £14m (a 25 per cent cut) since 2010. The money comes from the authority’s reserves with the intention that it “reinvests money into local communities to support work to prevent emergencies”. With projects ranging from £5,000 through to £100,000 there is a huge variety in the approaches being taken. Some
are focused on a single city while others reach across the whole SYFR area – with a population of 1.37 million, this is a large metropolitan fire and rescue service serving some very deprived wards. Lots of the work being carried out in South Yorkshire is likely to be found in other fire and rescue services. Partners for Collaboration Steve Helps, Head of Prevention and Protection at SYFR, wonders who the natural partners are for fire: health or police? Steve says it is both. ‘We are collaborating with others to make South Yorkshire safer and we want to be bold in the way we do that.’ He goes on to say: ‘The service has always been proud to keep people safe whatever the circumstances. We’ve always changed and adapted to do that. For me the Fire and Rescue Service has always evolved and it’s right that we use our skilled staff and resources in order to reduce the risks and challenges society faces in order to keep people safe.’ The examples that Steve provides have a strong health focus. He talks enthusiastically about the Dementia Café. Opening up one of the fire stations in Doncaster to a local support organisation, the local staff get to know their community, have a captive audience for fire and other safety messages. It is the kind of thing that fire stations
“We are collaborating with others to make South Yorkshire safer and we want to be bold in the way we do that” 24 | September 2017 | www.fire–magazine.com
Fire & Emergency Response
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“We have done a huge amount of work in recent years to make sure our tower blocks are safe. The cladding systems are fireproof and comply with building and planning regulations”
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has allowed it to continue until March 2018 when a fuller evaluation will take place. A second police partnership seems rather one sided. This is about medical break-ins: South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue staff responding to requests to break in to premises when the householder is incapacitated for some reason. Steve says that SYFR has been commissioned by the police to provide this service: ‘We do it in a cleaner, safer and quicker way.’ He says it is a better use of time for them rather than police to do it and yet the police have not provided any funding for this work. While this may come under the banner of collaboration in South Yorkshire, it seems like the police got the better deal here. With Police and Crime Commissioners looking closely at fire and rescue services and wondering whether they should look at the governance options, those in fire will want to be sure that they are working in the spirit of collaboration. It really was not necessary for the government to put a duty on fire and rescue services to collaborate; they were already doing it. What it has done is give police and crime commissioners a hook on which to focus attention beyond the police.
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Steve Helps, Head of Prevention and Protection at SYFR
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are perfect for and in Doncaster they are getting a nice community garden out of this partnership. Steve is also keen to share the experience of the Optimeye eyesight screening programme by local resident Dawn. Following a fire in her home, Dawn was offered an eyesight test by one of the community safety officers. Dawn knew that her eyesight had deteriorated and understood the cause of the fire was down to her poor sight. Dawn had been afraid to seek help for her eyesight but the visit by SYFR staff gave her courage and as a result of having the test and the subsequent treatment, Dawn could not thank SYFR enough. It is a nice story about post fire interventions and community working. Steve is clearly comfortable in the health space and has many more examples to hand. There are only a few examples of work with police. One of these is the Local Intervention and Falls Episodes (LIFE) team. The team operates using two specialist vehicles and consists of four staff – two SYFR employees and two South Yorkshire Police Community Support Officers. The team has adopted a neutral uniform so as far as the public is concerned it does not matter if the officer comes from fire or police. They have visited homes to reduce fire risk in properties, provide reassurance and support to victims of crime and anti-social behaviour, improve security and help people who have fallen. It is a proactive and reactive service, attending low-level incidents that ordinarily would have been attended by uniformed personnel from all three emergency services. Whether it works as a new business model, it is too early to tell, as Huddersfield University has little data to work with for its evaluation. The authority clearly has faith in it as it
PCCs and Governance In South Yorkshire, PCC Dr Alan Billings has limited interest. He sits on the fire authority having gained a place with full voting rights in February 2017. Adding Labour aligned Billings to an already strongly Labour majority authority was not going to be controversial. Prior to this, the fire authority set up a Police and Fire Steering Strategic Collaboration Group to take forward future possibilities for joint working. And it is the fire authority that agreed expenditure from the Stronger Safer Communities Reserve Fund on projects like the ones described above. Of course, increased exposure to the workings of the Fire and Rescue Service can be a double-edged sword. It either confirms that the fire authority is doing a good job and by being a voting rights member, an element of Stockholm Syndrome is always possible; or it exposes weaknesses that the PCC can seize upon and decide that actually the governance arrangements looks like something that needs further exploration. It is not a specifically South Yorkshire problem, but one that could be the result of PCCs in any part of the country becoming more conversant with the workings of fire. www.fire–magazine.com | September 2017 | 25
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So all that collaboration work needs to carry on and be shouted about. It needs to be creative but based on the premise that it has to “wash its face”. Making new initiatives like the LIFE scheme business as usual functions requires long-term funding and that is usually where these schemes fall down. Evaluation is critical and the initial findings from the first £1.4m investment into fire prevention activities are really promising with a social return on investment of £7.80 per £1 invested across eight separate projects. The evaluation report explains: ‘The approach looks at the outcomes – the differences the project makes – and considering the value of these outcomes in social, economic and environmental terms’. It is a 48pp detailed report, but worth reviewing by other services interested in resolving the age-old problem of quantifying the value of fire prevention work.
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High Rise Safety Interestingly, the fire authority has also allocated £1m to invest in sprinklers. This is timely as sprinklers dominated the agenda in response to the Grenfell Tower fire. This fund was intended to ‘encourage more housing providers to install them in building lived in by those residents most at risk of fire’. Sheffield is no stranger to investment in sprinklers with the retrofit of Callow Mount in 2011 in partnership with the British Automatic fire Sprinkler Association and SYFR. A week after Grenfell, Councillor Jayne Dunn, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Community Safety at Sheffield City Council, said: ‘We have done a huge amount of work in recent years to make sure our tower blocks are safe. The cladding systems are fireproof and comply with building and planning regulations. ‘We had always intended to review our position on
26 | September 2017 | www.fire–magazine.com
sprinklers later this year. But as an extra reassurance to residents, I am today announcing this has been brought forward and we will be fitting sprinklers in all 24 blocks.’ Whether the fire authority will be asked to contribute some of their funds to the high rise retrofit is unclear, but when the council realises quite how expensive the retrofit will be, they may come looking for assistance. Post Grenfell World This article was meant to be a gentle reminder about the importance of fire prevention and an exploration about how one fire and rescue service is working hard at collaboration to ensure the safety of its population. What it has shown is that the broad landscape within which fire prevention work operates has changed: the agenda pursued by the government around collaboration and governance has wide ranging impacts and, post Grenfell, the Fire and Rescue Service is under the spotlight more than ever. Making tough decisions about budgets to invest in prevention is a brave move, but only where fire authorities can provide evidence that collaboration is about efficiency and effectiveness will they demonstrate they really are working in the spirit of the duty framed in the Policing and Crime Act 2017. In South Yorkshire, the PCC sits on the fire authority with full voting rights, so he is complicit in the decisions they make about spend on fire prevention in the name of collaboration. For now, that works well for South Yorkshire. But when the money runs out, collaboration may have to take on a new form – whether that is back office functions or operational efficiencies – and the governance arrangements may end up being revisited. Those fire authorities which embrace the PCC will all know that this is not necessarily going to be a long-term relationship.