We know it's all about improvement

Government & Politics

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ire inspection is coming. It has been in the offing for a long time and as soon as it appeared on the Policing and Crime Bill it became inevitable.

But how would it work? Would it be Her Majesty’s Fire Service Inspectorate reincarnated or a replica of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary? Until recently, much of this was simply unknown. With HMI Zoë Billingham talking at the National Fire Chiefs Council autumn conference in September, more detail emerged but only to a select audience.

To help share the message a bit further, FIRE interviewed Zoë Billingham to find out more about the new Her Majesty Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS).

Inspection Regime There is a distinct theme to this interview. Zoë talks a lot about transparency, consultation and improvement. It is a good start, as she sets out a simple premise: “I promise to the Service and everyone that is interested in fire that the inspection will be developed with the Fire and Rescue Service; it will be designed to promote improvement and to identify all aspects of the excellent work done by the Fire and Rescue Service.”

The legislation requires an inspection framework and an inspection programme. Zoë talks about a proportionate

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We know it’s all about improvement

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FIRE talks to Zoë Billingham, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services, to find out more about the new inspectorate

inspection regime that recognises good but promotes improvement across England.

“The key”, she says, “to a successful inspection methodology is being able to pose some very simple questions to which you can get some very straightforward answers.” She is quick to caution, “This isn’t going to be a replica of PEEL, but we do want to draw on the good bits of police inspection.”

Asked if there is to be a new acronym for the process, Zoë responds: “We’ve been through a full panoply of potential acronyms and PEEL was on the table for about a nano second.” That is a shame.

So if not PEEL, then what will the fire inspection regime look like? It is going to be pretty similar in that it will have its own three ‘pillars’: operational assessment, leadership and value for money.

Asked how this will differ from the Audit Commission approach, Zoë says: “Very, very significantly. Because we will get into the nuts and bolts of fire safety and fire prevention and enforcement and make a graded assessment.”

By this she means ‘Outstanding’, ‘Good’, ‘Requires Improvement’ or ‘Inadequate’. She explains that there are two judgements above the line and two below the line.

Based on the experience of the police, leaders are naturally striving to be in the ‘Outstanding’ or ‘Good’ categories.

“I promise to the Service and everyone that is interested in fire that the inspection will be developed with the Fire and Rescue Service” www.fire–magazine.com | November 2017 | 13

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As well as the operational assessment there are measures focused on leadership of fire and rescue services. This includes a look at values and culture, training and skills, fairness, diversity and capability.

The focus of the value for money pillar is on how efficient the fire and rescue service is in discharging its responsibilities. Is it able to assess risk and work out what resources it needs to meet that risk? Is it ready for emergencies and to respond appropriately? How does it make use of its staff and resources at times when they may not be responding to emergencies? How does the service work with other blue light services?

At the time of the interview, Zoë says they have not gone into the detail of the questions that will go under each of the three pillars of inspection. Her Majesty Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services held a meeting with all CFOs, chairs of fire authorities and PCCs on October 10 to look at some of this. The results of this work are intended to inform the inspection methodology that is due out for consultation in late November.

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• How effective is the service in keeping people safe from fire and other risks?

• Is the service doing what is necessary to prevent fires from happening in the first place?

• Do they respond effectively in an emergency when it occurs?

• Are they doing the work around protection and enforcement that the public would wish to see the service involved in?

• How resilient is the service?

• Is it working with other services to protect the public from national threats?

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In terms of operational assessment, Zoë sets out what inspection will seek to uncover:

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Inspection Structure There is going to be a small pilot phase in the first few months of 2018 to trial the methodology. Zoë says she has been inundated with offers from fire and rescue services that want to be part of that pilot. With space for only two to three pilots, it is likely that there will be one from each ‘family group’.

And then it is straight into live inspections. From April 2018 there will be three tranches of 15 inspections over 18 months. Each of the existing HMIs (excluding the Chief Inspector, Sir Tom Winsor) is taking on a fire portfolio in addition to their existing police responsibilities. This essentially means that there will be five regions of fire inspection. A simple map on the HMICFRS website shows this.

That is a lot of work and explains the extensive recruitment exercise to get in seconded officers and others to support the process. It is good to hear that 126 people applied for the Service Liaison roles, 20 for

The five HMI inspection regions for fire and rescue services

the Chief of Staff post and a further 11 for the Assistant Portfolio Director role.

Zoë is keen for secondees to have currency and experience from a range of perspectives across the Fire and Rescue Service. She says it works well with police at different ranks and different experience. This is certainly the right direction to take to create a dynamic place of work, one where ambitious staff in all areas of fire and rescue services view a spell in the inspectorate as a key part of career development.

“We want it to have a bit of a buzz.” Zoë was particularly effusive about the success that many police secondees have had in getting promotion soon after a stint with HMIC. It sounds expensive. In 2016/17, the HMIC budget was £20.82m. It is an arm’s length body of the Home Office and gets a separate grant from them to do its work. It employs 230 staff including inspectors, civil servants, police officers and seconded staff. It also has a register of up to 150 associate inspectors. There are no figures available to say how much the additional work for fire inspection will cost in year one and thereafter.

It is unclear at the moment what happens once the first cycle of inspection is complete. This will form part of the consultation process. Where services are below the line, they may be re-inspected more quickly than those who receive higher markings. Again, there are no specifics about this yet.

Asked if the inspectorate will have anything to offer services that need a bit more help on their improvement

“It will be designed to promote improvement and to identify all aspects of the excellent work done by the Fire and Rescue Service” 14 | November 2017 | www.fire–magazine.com

Government & Politics

“We simply inspect. Our job is to hold a mirror up to a service and report in a transparent and accessible way to the public. Then it’s up to the service to move on and improve” journey, Zoë replies: “We simply inspect. Our job is to hold a mirror up to a service and report in a transparent and accessible way to the public. Then it’s up to the service to move on and improve.

“We are not regulators. We have no powers of enforcement.” The inspector can only make recommendations for areas of improvement.

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Looking at whether new governance models will provide opportunities for collaboration in inspection, Zoë is firm that joint inspections are not on the table. “They are utterly, utterly separate.”

If a PCC has responsibility for fire and police, then the result of a police inspection will be useful background but no more than that. It seems a shame that with all the talk of collaboration and the duty in place, that an inspection regime will work in silos. Perhaps some thoughts about timetables for inspecting services where the PCC oversees both would at least be helpful to the PCC.

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Thematic Reviews One area that the inspectorate will be able to help services with will be thematic reviews. This could be something where the inspectors find points of interest and then bring them together into short briefings or more in depth reports. Zoë says that the information will only be gleaned from the inspection process and no additional work will be done. Building reports based on the evidence in inspection that allow other services to take a look without reading everyone else’s entire inspection report sounds like a good approach.

It may well be the case that the inspection programme (the one that the Secretary of State will have to approve) highlights areas of potential interest in advance of inspections taking place. There will be obvious early candidates like equality and diversity, recruitment and IRMP. Warming to the theme of the use of evidence, there is clearly a connection between inspection and the guidance that the service is using to assist service delivery, thinking particularly about National Operational Guidance. It is a two-way street: the guidance gives the inspectorate a place from which to measure operational activity, but it also means that any inspection evidence that suggests change to existing guidance can be considered and lead to the improvement of the guidance itself over time. This is a win‑win.

Zoë says: “We’ve spoken to the people doing the hard work on operational guidance as well as the work on professional standards. National Operational Guidance is very much our starting point in terms of looking at operational response.” She goes on to say: “Where there are national standards across the service against which we can inspect, we will take them into account in developing our inspection methodology.”

Where there is guidance and standards this is all very well, but in areas where there are not, the inspectorate will be looking to the Service for a steer on how to build a methodology that can frame inspection questions that work. The Expert Reference Group is likely to be a key critical friend here.

While much of the inspectorate’s work with this group is around framing the setup of the organisation, Zoë says it is going to be a permanent function. “It is absolutely essential. It is here for life and not just for Christmas,” she says with some humour.

Expert Reference Group Membership Roy Wilsher – Chair of NFCC Chloe Dunnett – HO, Deputy Director, Fire Strategy and Reform Brian Nash – HO, Fire Strategy and Reform Peter Holland – Chief Fire and Rescue Advisor Jason Thelwell – Chief Fire Officer, Buckinghamshire FRS Geoff Howsego – Director of Corporate Services and Sector Improvement for CFOA Phil Hales – Deputy Chief, West Midlands (CFOA lead for Peer Review) Cllr Rebecca Knox – Chair, FRA, Dorset and Wiltshire Cllr David Acton – Chair, FRA, Greater Manchester Charles Loft – Senior Advisor, LGA Jason Ablewhite – PCC Cambridgeshire Police Joanna Dawes – Head of HMIC Policy, HO Policing Directorate Dave Curry – CFO Hampshire FRS and Standards Lead Roger Hirst – PFCC Essex

Fire Reform Agenda Sector-led improvement as a policy from government left the Fire and Rescue Service without an inspectorate and with a peer review process that did not fill the void left behind by HMFSI. Adding inspection to the Policing and Crime Bill at such a late stage looks like inspection was an afterthought rather than a well thought out policy.

But now, with the inspectorate in its nascent state, there is real potential to understand what each service is doing and how it is improving. The fire reform agenda will have evidence to demonstrate that the Service is changing and modernising. And where it is not, at least the evidence will provide a basis on which individual services can improve, but also can inform further policy development and reform that is meaningful and most importantly, achievable.

If Zoë’s requirement that inspection reports are written “in terms that a 14-year-old could understand,” then perhaps we will see public engagement and interest.

After all, this is about showing the public what the Service is doing with public money. Let us see if they pass the test – anyone want to offer up their teenager for some proof reading? www.fire–magazine.com | November 2017 | 15