Memorandum by the London Fire and Emergency
Planning Authority (LFEPA) (SOC 25)
It has been bought to my attention that the
Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is
to hold an inquiry into the current work on community cohesion.
This is an area of growing significance to the fire service, particularly
in the light of the Government's modernisation agenda for the
service and the inception of Integrated Risk Management Planning.
Recent years have seen a gradual change in the
priorities of the fire service. The previous concentration on
reactive firefighting and rescue has given way to the realisation
that proactive prevention is preferable and that the best way
to extinguish a fire is to endeavour to prevent it happening in
the first place.
There are two major community safety issues
facing the fire service nationally at this time. The first is
fire safety in the home and reducing the number of accidental
fires and the deaths, injuries, material losses and suffering
that they cause. This is not part of the Select Committee's inquiry.
The second is stemming and ultimately reducing
the numbers of fires that are set deliberately, involving, rubbish,
stolen and/or abandoned vehicles and empty property. Young people,
especially young males who have become disaffected from society,
commit many of these incidents of anti-social, if not criminal,
behaviour. They believe that society has nothing to offer them
and that they have nothing to offer society. In the worst, thankfully
limited, instances this has manifested itself in verbal and sometimes
physical attacks on firefighters responding to emergency calls
(and these are sometimes hoax calls).
In the recent past LFEPA would have looked to
other agencies to address this behaviour. Now it is recognised
that firefighters themselves are best placed to explain the potential
consequences of such behaviour for the individual, their families
and friends, firefighters and society as a whole. Firefighters
can also provide positive role models, demonstrating that there
is an alternative future, including the fire service as a potential
career. For the fire service the hoped for benefits are a reduction
in deliberate fires and the possibility of recruiting firefighters
from minority communities that are either under-represented in
its ranks at present or, in the worse case, not represented at
all with all that implies for community relations.
Enclosed with this letter is our submission
giving details of two projects that we are running in the London
Boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Hounslow. They are both pilots which
it is anticipated will serve as templates for similar programmes
in other London boroughs with problems resulting from the disengagement
of young people from society. In these projects we work in close
partnership with other interested agencies from both the public
and voluntary sectors. This close collaborative working to reduce
risk to the community goes to the heart of Integrated Risk Management
Planning.
Ron Dobson
Acting Deputy Fire Commissioner for
Fire and Emergency Planning
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