Is the writing on the wall for fire and rescue authorities?

Fire & Emergency Response

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Is the writing on the wall for fire and rescue authorities?

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Online conferences are a poor substitute for the real thing and without a trip to Gateshead for the LGA Fire Conference, Political Editor Catherine Levin takes solace in Zoom to listen to Lord Greenhalgh and Sir Tom Winsor as they share their thoughts about the state of the Fire and Rescue Service

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rofessionalism, people and governance may be the three pillars that underpin the approach that the current Fire Minister Lord Greenhalgh takes to his work, but this year’s LGA Fire Conference audience was mostly interested in governance.

Fire and rescue authority members do not want police and crime commissioners to take over the scrutiny and oversight of fire and rescue services. It is the classic turkeys voting for Christmas problem. The question section of the LGA conference was open season on the topic and members returned to it time after time.

The Home Office review of police and crime commissioners had not been published at the time of the conference, so Lord Greenhalgh was unable to share its content. The review was first announced in July 2020 and was due to be published in October, so it was well overdue.

It was in fact published on March 16, and in good time before the PCC elections on May 6.

There are four police, fire and crime commissioners in England: Staffordshire, North Yorkshire, Essex and Northamptonshire, with just two of the incumbents standing again. It is likely that fire will feature in many manifestos, although it is early days on the campaign trail.

The argument made previously by the government is that PCCs are better because they are democratically

Lord Stephen Greenhalgh, Minister of State for Fire

elected by the public to do that job whereas fire and rescue authorities are made up of elected members who then get nominated for the fire and rescue authority along party political lines.

One member of the audience said that PCCs were only elected on 15 per cent of the vote and he was right, but only for the 2012 PCC elections, which were held in November and that is always a terrible time to get people to vote.

The turnout improved considerably in 2016 where figures published by the Electoral Commission show that turnout was 27.3 per cent. While this is not a huge number, it is more in line with local government elections where turnout is around 35 per cent (as it was in May 2017).

Lord Greenhalgh picked up on this point when he talked about strengthening the resilience of governance by moving from a committee model to a single elected figure. Members at this conference questioned the logic of one versus many, but he was not to be persuaded: “We have individual decision-making in other areas, such as mayors. We have seven years of single executive governance to draw on.”

When a PCC wants to take on fire governance, he/she has to develop a business case, consult on it and then take the results to the government who then get CIPFA, the accounting people, to look at it and provide a view. One member of the audience asked if this might be changed to

“It can’t be right to have so many governance models” Fire Minister Lord Greenhalgh

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Ministerial Statement The Ministerial Statement published on March 16 contained some brief detail on the outcome of the PCC review and announced the intention to publish a Fire Reform White Paper. The fire element of the statement is reproduced in full below.

‘On fire, the Government is clear that further reform of fire and rescue is required in order to respond to the recommendations from Phase 1 of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, the Kerslake Review and to build on the findings from Sir Thomas Winsor’s State of Fire and Rescue Report. Our reform agenda will focus on three key areas: people; professionalism; and governance. Taken together, improvements in these areas will help deliver higher standards and greater consistency across fire and rescue services.

‘The Review kick-started our work on fire service governance and the findings signalled strong support for a directly elected individual taking on fire functions to help simplify and strengthen the governance of fire and rescue services across England. The Home Office will be launching a consultative White Paper on fire reform later this year. The White Paper will be used to set out our reform agenda in further detail and explore the Review proposals on fire governance which include: • Consulting on whether to mandate the transfer of fire and rescue functions to the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner model across England where boundaries are coterminous, unless there is an option to transfer fire governance directly to an elected Mayor.

• Consulting on how to address coterminosity challenges, including in the South West.

• Legislating to create operational independence for Chief Fire Officers and to clearly separate and delineate strategic and operational planning for fire and rescue.

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include review wider than just from CIPFA. The Minister would not be drawn on this point.

Lord Greenhalgh talked about the plethora of fire governance models and concluded: “It can’t be right to have so many governance models.” He is looking at police and seeing a single governance model in the PCC and contrasting it with fire where governance takes many forms. It can be in a county council; a combined authority made up of representatives from a small number of local authorities drawn from different levels of local government; metropolitan ones made up of big cities and different flavours of mayor-led authorities. The logic is hard to understand, but the benefit of changing it is not clear yet.

Cllr Nick Chard asked the Minister if the rumours of a fire white paper were to be believed. “There is some truth to it,” he responded. “It’s in the very early stages. It is very important that we talk to fire and rescue authorities, chief fire officers and other stakeholders.” He said that the government’s plans were open to change and there was no publication date for now.

• Considering options to clarify the legal entities within the PFCC model’.

Winsor Reports Some of the detail of this is discussed as part of the interview with Sir Tom Winsor, that appears on pg 20 of this issue.

Sir Tom Winsor spoke at the LGA Fire conference, following on from the Minister. At the time, the 2020 edition of State of Fire had not been published, so instead Sir Tom focused on the HMICFRS Covid-19 inspection reports (covered in last month’s issue of FIRE).

What was most interesting about Sir Tom’s speech was how frank he was about the reaction of the FBU to the Covid-19 inspection reports. He said: “Fire and rescue services were thwarted by restricted working practices that have existed for a long time. This is not an attack on firefighters as some have asserted. It is our assessment of the barriers that are holding fire and rescue services back.”

He framed his argument firmly in the need to meet the public’s expectations about how fire and rescue services should be run.

He went on to talk about the Tripartite Agreement, noting it was: “A pragmatic, initial solution to overcome barriers in the sector. It should never have been needed.

It had the effect of delaying firefighters and responding to local needs.”

With the demise of the Tripartite Agreement in January, Sir Tom said he was encouraged to see the work that fire and rescue services were doing to assist in the

“Fire and rescue services were thwarted by restricted working practices that have existed for a long time” HM Chief Inspector Sir Tom Winsor

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Fire & Emergency Response

“I hope that the FBU will play a full and active role in the future. It will be richer and better with them involved”

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HM Chief Inspector Sir Tom Winsor

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the trade unions, far from it. I recognise the enormous value they bring. Firefighting is much safer as a result of the health and safety improvements that the FBU has championed. We found they prevented change and modernisation. This was not in the interests of the public.

The Tripartite Agreement became a mechanism for the FBU to delay or veto the actions of fire and rescue services in a national emergency.”

He continued: “The contrast with other fire unions is really quite striking. They supported their members in carrying out activities outside of their roles. It meant nonoperational staff could be deployed quicker. I hope that the FBU will play a full and active role in the future. It will be richer and better with them involved.”

Looking forward, Sir Tom talked about the next round of inspections. Having been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, HMICFRS has now started the process, albeit remotely for the time being. He confirmed that inspection outcomes will be in the form of graded judgements under the same three pillars as before (efficiency, effectiveness and people) with a particular emphasis on inspection of protection, learning from the Grenfell Tower fire and equality and diversity activities. He also said that the inspectors would be paying close attention to pandemic impacts.

He ended with a plug for fire and rescue services to second ‘their best staff’ to HMICFRS, noting that many do return to their roles on promotion. He also advised that HMI Zoë Billingham is leaving and that the advertisement for her replacement was on the Cabinet Office appointments website. For the first time in HMICFRS history, this role is only open to candidates with a fire background and chief constables cannot apply. At just shy of £180,000 this is a plum job for a retired or retiring principal officer – see the interview with Roy Wilsher on pg 23 for his reaction to this opportunity.

With the publication of both the Home Office PCC review and HMICFRS State of Fire and Rescue 2020 since the LGA Fire conference, March proved to be a really interesting and important month for fire. The Fire Reform White Paper looks to be hugely significant to the way in which fire and rescue services are run and could well result in major new primary legislation.

For those with memories of the changes that came from the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, the changes in 2021 may well prove to be just as momentous. FIRE will follow all of these developments with great interest, providing analysis and insight along the way.

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roll-out of vaccinations across the country. “The public expect every emergency service to tackle the pandemic.

Disappointingly, rather than respond to us and have a professional conversation, the FBU has sought to discredit the Inspectorate and mobilise their members too. It was not an attack on firefighters. We have no argument with

Sir Thomas Winsor, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services

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