Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
21 OCTOBER 2003
MR ANTHONY
MCGUIRK,
MR MIKE
HAGEN, MS
CAROLINE HINDLEY
AND MR
STEVE MCGUIRK
Q40 Mr Streeter: Are you going to
do it? Will there be a cultural change?
Mr S McGuirk: I believe there
will, but you have to start by changing everything. You do not
change a little bit at a time. We have a new regulatory framework
and a new role, and we have to be very clear if we are going to
change culture what it is we are actually trying to achieve? What
is the vision for the new Fire Service? We have to give people
something different to get out of bed for and to come to work.
Just sitting at the fire station waiting for a call to come along
is not the thing that is going to get people out of bed in the
mornings in the future. We have to start by being really clear
where the future vision is and then start to think about the kind
of service and the kind of people you want to recruit and employ
to deliver that vision. You have to work back from there—what
do they look like and how do they work et cetera?—it is
a big picture.
Mr A McGuirk: I think it is important
not to view IPDS as some form of panacea to all of our human resource
issues. It is a personal development system. It is a pretty sophisticated
one, but that is what it is. Most of the organisations in local
government and certainly the private sector have similar systems.
Where it helps to achieve cultural change is in the ability for
people to join the Fire Service in a variety of careers and a
variety of different levels in the organisation. I think that
is the key to what IPDS can offer. The question remains, will
it achieve what it intents to achieve? Will that actually happen?
We have had some experience of trying to bring in people at different
levels in the organisation and faced significant pressures from
both trade unions and from government. Our experience is that
that change has to be supported by real commitment to make it
happen. I guess that is where the difficult question is going
to come. The problem with IPDS is not so much about improving
performance as how do you deal with poor performance? I think
that has been the tension that has led to the difficulty and actually
implementing it. Everybody is up for the good new side of IPDS:
improvement, et cetera. What about the individual—and it
is inevitable that there must be at least one—who does not
perform, who cannot be developed? I think that is the tension
that will emerge as we implement it and how we respond to that
tension as a Fire Service, as a framework and as a government
will be the true test of IPDS.
Q41 Chris Mole: You have taken a
proactive approach towards fire safety and there have been some
successful local initiatives. The White Paper proposes a statutory
role for the Fire Service in conducting community fire safety
work. What have you learned from your experiences and what evidence
do you have to show that a preventative approach works?
Mr A McGuirk: I think we have
a very high level of evidence. We have already talked about reductions
in fire death, et cetera. We have provided data in our submission
about that. I think the biggest evidence is that fire fighters
have taken on board a cultural change. In Merseyside on every
single shift and every single day of the year fire fighters are
out in people's homes checking homes for safety and fitting free
smoke alarms. We have already done 200,000 homes across Merseyside.
That is quite a unique development.
Q42 Chairman: They are battery ones,
are they not?
Mr A McGuirk: They are 10-year
batteries and the batteries are glued into the alarm. We have
a whole range of support mechanisms to ensure that the battery
stays in the alarm.
Q43 Chairman: I can see the advantage
of that, but who is going to come back in about eight and a half
or nine years? Are you coming back or do you actually expect the
householder to remember that they had a ten-year battery in?
Ms Hindley: I think what is important
here is how we are actually working in partnership so it is about
the fire fighters actually carrying out a job which they are very
good at, which is to give advice and fit the smoke detectors.
How Loop get involved is actually making the initial contact with
the public by telephone, which is a very non-intrusive way of
actually making contact. We have seen a very high percentage of
conversion and in some regions it is 80 to 90% of people who will
agree to have a fire fighter go into their home. I think more
importantly—or another side effect of this—is that
we are actually capturing centrally information on what is actually
going on in that household so Loop will actually send out to the
fire fighters a form with all the details filled in which gives
information not just about the house but about the householder,
such as any special needs, things like that. When the actual risk
assessment has been carried out all the information is captured
centrally in the database. What that means is that it allows us
to have a rolling programme at which point we would go back to
that household at some point in the future and re-assess or re-fit
and it actually puts the control within Merseyside itself as to
how we actually deal with that household.
Mr S McGuirk: Can I say something
beyond that on community cohesion. In Cheshire we won the community
cohesion award last year which was fairly unique and goes beyond
community fire and safety. We started off like everybody else
trying to do good things and reduce fire hoax calls et cetera.
I think we found in some of the houses that we were working in
the brand of the Fire Service, the credibility and the trust that
the community still has in fire fighters, was enabling us to open
doors for all kinds of other partners and agencies. We found that
in some areas social services, the police, youth workers could
actually start to do work in the communities way beyond the fire
agenda. We started to see youth clubs developing; vandalism, graffiti
improved. I am not suggesting that life became perfect and trees
started to grow and the grass became green again, but the Fire
Service getting involved in some of these estates has had a more
significant impact than just the reduction in fire calls and hoax
calls and those kinds of things. It was on that basis that we
won the community cohesion award.
Q44 Chris Mole: When you are running
a service which is operationally intensive like the Fire Service,
how do you strike a balance between preventative work? How do
you get the initiative for preventative work?
Mr S McGuirk: Intuitive management
planning is really what we are all about now: a really good and
accurate assessment of the real risks that the community faces
and which the Fire Service must be able to respond to, and start
to recognise in future that actually that changes; it differs
during the day and night. The reality is that fires dip dramatically
during the day; there are hardly any fires during the day. In
the old standards of fire cover we still had to have the same
number of fire fighters with the same number of fire engines and
so on, sat there all day, training them just in case there was
a fire. We have a lot of latent resource that we can now actually
reapply into community fire safety. However, it will mean us thinking
differently, and the community, the government and everyone else
accepting that the fire engines do not necessarily want to be
sat there waiting as a reassuring factor just in case a fire might
occur.
Q45 Mr Cummings: Has the White Paper
missed any opportunities for enhancing effectiveness and efficiency
in saving lives and injuries, for example by involvement of the
voluntary and private sectors, or through radical changes in call
handling and response?
Mr A McGuirk: I think there is
a big issue about response standards in the White Paper and I
am sure other evidence givers will talk about the response standard.
The voluntary sector I think is conspicuous by its absence from
the Paper. That is particular interesting given the government's
commitment to a widening role for the voluntary sector. We have
a body called The Friends of Merseyside Fire Service and that
is a voluntary arm of our Service. In eight years time it will
be the voluntary sector who go out and change the battery, check
the alarm or make sure safety is maintained while fire fighters
carry on with those primary home fire safety checks. We have identified
around twenty-seven different roles that voluntary sector workers
can engage in the Fire Service. It brings all sorts of people
to work with us. We have a 24-hours a day after- fire care unit
where the voluntary sector go out and help a householder who has
had a tragedy befall them and restore their lives back to normality.
I think it is a big opportunity missed and I would hope it is
something the government could come back to.
Mr S McGuirk: To add to that about
the voluntary sector, it is a big miss and I would share all thoughts
about how we might use it better in future. I think it also missed
the national community fire and safety centre. I do not recall
them mentioning it and yet there is a body which was set up to
co-ordinate and develop and share best practice, all those kinds
of things. It actually takes initiatives from one area to another
and starts to implement them in some kind of co-ordinated way.
I think there is a need to co-ordinate better this activity in
some kind of national sense. The other point is about the regional
dimension which is slightly hazy in the sense of what is likely
to emerge from the White Paper. It is unclear to most people,
I think.
Q46 Mr Cummings: What role could
a dedicated call centre facility such as Fire Service Direct play?
Ms Hindley: I guess for me it
is about people doing what they are best at doing. For all roles—certainly
with Merseyside, Cheshire and Cleveland—we employ very passionate
people who work for Merseyside, who work for Cleveland and work
for Cheshire, managed by Loop and trained in the art of conversation
and actually communicating with the general public, protecting
and also increasing the brand awareness of the Fire Service. It
is about doing what we are best at cost effectively. We manage
also the fire fighters time, given that that is a lot more expensive
than the people we have sat making phone calls. We cluster appointments
for them so when they actually do go out it is a better us of
their time. I think another thing which has been an off-shoot
is the fact that we can offer long service hours and a central
point of contact for non-emergency calls into the Fire Service.
We get a whole range of calls through from the public in Merseyside.
We have had instances where we have had actually phoned up to
make an appointment for somebody and the lady has said, "Well,
actually, you can come and see me but round the corner there is
a single mother living with two children and I think she is in
danger". What we have then done is contact the Fire Service
who have gone round and the resultant is that they have rehoused
this woman and potentially stopped a fire hazard.
Q47 Mr Cummings: How do the Chief
Officers feel about this?
Mr A McGuirk: I think there is
an issue about being joined up. For example, if someone phones
the NHS Direct helpline for information about a burn or a scald,
that says to us that they are more at risk than perhaps other
people. They would automatically be transferred into a Fire Service
Direct system. I think it is one of those quick wins which really
could show a very public face of commitment to improving safety
and it could fairly easily and quickly be achieved and give a
public face to the National Fire Safety Centre and to the Government's
commitment to reform and transform the Fire Service. I think it
is important to have quick win symbols that show the public—the
recipients of our service—that things are changing for the
better for them.
Mr S McGuirk: I do see call centres
and the way we use technology as being an important part of the
way forward, but I think that has to be done in a swift but measured
way. I would hate to end up with a member of the public going
down the Fire Service and once again listening to Vivaldi's Four
Seasons playing.
Q48 Mr Cummings: How have you tackled
fire safety in areas which are typically hard to reach, such as
the ethnic minority communities?
Mr A McGuirk: We have been very
proud and quite innovative in our approach to our communities
on Merseyside because we have a range of communities, particularly
in terms of Somali, Yemeni and Chinese communities (which are
very old established and quite significant communities).
Q49 Chairman: How many people from
those communities actually work in the Fire Service?
Mr A McGuirk: To start with, most
people have to identify the Fire Service as a career for them.
I think people think in pictures, they have to see members of
those communities in Fire Service uniform working in that community.
Q50 Chairman: How many?
Mr A McGuirk: In terms of employed
fire fighters we have around thirty black and ethnic minority
fire fighters.
Q51 Chairman: Out of?
Mr A McGuirk: Out of just under
thirteen hundred.
Mr S McGuirk: We have six out
of just under a 1,000. I think that is the point, how we access
those communities is actually starting to be better at having
members of those communities as part of the organisation.
Q52 Mr Cummings: Have you only got
six because of difficulty in recruiting?
Mr S McGuirk: I think the honest
answer is that we have not built relationships with those communities.
Part of our emergency role has been great for brand and image,
but emerging from this big fortress which is a fire station every
once in a while is not the way we are going to build a relationship
with a community. We actually have to get into the community and
only by doing that are we going to get people understanding what
we are and what we do and want to be part of us.
Q53 Mr Cummings: Is that the same
in your area?
Mr A McGuirk: I think accessing
is different to recruiting. We access the communities to improve
their safety by recruiting members of that community with the
natural language skills, who do not have the barriers to get into
the homes of members of that community, where white, male organisations
like the Fire Service do have. I think recruitment is a different
issue. There are relationships between the two issues. We did
not recruit for three and a half years and so those figures need
to be set in context whereby prior to the last 12 months we had
four members of the ethnic minority. We have increased up to 30
because we put a lot more effort into it. You cannot increase
unless you do recruit, it is a simple as that.
Q54 Chairman: Is there one thing
which would make a huge difference to reducing the number of fires?
Mr A McGuirk: I think probably,
yes. I think if every home in this country was aware of the need
of their own responsibilities to make their home safer. This is
not a one-way street. Every member of our community has a personal
responsibility to make themselves and their families safe. We
can provide a whole menu of services. We can provided specialised
alarm systems or sprinkler systems or advice or education; we
can do all of those things, but if that person at the other end
of that relationship does not do anything, then at the end of
the day there is only so much we can do. I think there is an educational
need there to raise awareness. I think the other side of that
is that we must have a wide menu of options to deliver to that
family unit to make them safer.
Q55 Chairman: There is a sort of
dilemma in the sense that the more successful you are in encouraging
people to go for prevention measures, there are less horror stories
which actually shock people into wondering whether their home
is safe or are they likely to suffer the same problem?
Mr A McGuirk: Our experience is
that the horror story is successful for a limited period of time.
I am not so sure that the horror story is the issue. Yes, if we
are more successful there should be fewer fires and we are proving
that works. There are still massive chunks of the community: elderly
people dying in fires by a massive majority particularly if they
are disabled. If you look at the demographic of this country,
that is a growing population and not a shrinking population. The
problem is going to get worse and I think that is an issue we
will have to come to terms with.
Q56 Chairman: So for elderly people
should you really be making sure that there is a sprinkler system
in domestic homes?
Mr S McGuirk: I think there are
two matters there. One is about improving behaviour; if you can
change people's behaviour then the world becomes a better place,
and that is true of fire. If there was one practical thing for
me it would sprinkler systems. A fire fighter the other said to
me that it is like have the cure for a particular type of cancer
and not telling anybody. The reality is that nobody has every
died in a sprinkler building. If I could do one thing I think
it would be to start to develop the industry, the government's
awareness and the building regulators to start to see these things
not as a luxury item that is added on, but as part of the fixtures
and fittings like central heating, which includes a DIY market,
if you like.
Mr Hagen: I have just one thing
to add to that, it is about encouraging innovation in those areas.
We used the example briefly of the smoke alarm. Who would have
thought of creating a battery operated smoke alarm for a fiver?
Somebody did. As a result, thousands of lives have been saved
probably. Why can that same innovation not be applied to provide
affordable sprinkler systems to people who need it the most?
Q57 Christine Russell: I want to
ask you questions in three different areas. The first one is about
cover. Under the existing risk assessment my understanding is
that workplaces and shopping centres are Risk "A" and
"B", but yet most people die in fires in their own home.
What changes do you foresee happening to cover as a result of
the emphasis on change of working?
Mr S McGuirk: The city centres
are likely to have less cover in the traditional sense, ie the
number of fire engines sat there waiting for a fire to take place
because fire safety has been built into that community already.
The urban areas are likely to see more cover. They are likely
to see a greater presence of fire fighters and appliances of all
different shapes and sizes in the future as well.
Mr A McGuirk: I think that is
pretty common. I think there is a limit to that and fire services
have been moving the balance of cover over the past 10 to 15 years
anyway. The debate started in the mid-1980's so it is not so new
that fire services and chief fire officers have not thought about
it. There has been a gradual shift away from all this resource
into city centres, to start looking at the way population is moving.
Society has changed and fire cover has moved with it to that degree.
There is a change, but I am not sure it is as significant as perhaps
it could have been 10 years ago.
Q58 Christine Russell: Will there
be resource implications with that? Will you not only be moving
the fire fighters but actually moving your fire stations because
they are in the wrong place at the moment.
Mr A McGuirk: On paper that is
perfectly feasible and possible. When you look at the way city
centre living is developing, there are two generations of society
emerging: the city dwellers (and that is going to increase, I
suspect) and a lot of them are young people and their mums and
dads are still living on the outskirts of cities. The demographics
are a little more complex. Before we take cover from person A
and give it to person B, I think person A will have something
to say about that. In theory it is a perfectly simple process;
the reality is going to be very much more complicated.
Mr S McGuirk: It is also in a
sense an old world view of what fire cover is about. The idea
that we will need to build new fire stations is the view that
says that everything happens from that fire station; it is a focal
point and there is a series of concentric circles that fire cover
moves out from. What we suggest in a future model is that risk
is moving; it is transient and it is in different places. It is
unlikely to be the lovely municipal buildings that we once constructed
as fire stations. You have to move your resources to meet the
risk and you can then relax a little bit more about the kinds
of facilities you need to actually do that.
Q59 Christine Russell: Can we move
on to get your views on the future financing of the Fire Service
because we know you have already got this quite large liability,
the fire fighter's pension. We know you have a pretty generous
pay rise, but you are also going to have all these statutory requirements
to get into preventative work. What are your views on how optimistic
you are that the finances are actually going to be made available?
Mr S McGuirk: Not at all optimistic,
actually; quite pessimistic really. It is not very realistic financial
planning, certainly for year one. The amount of pump priming investment
that has been made available, I am not awfully sure the model
that was applied to identify what that amount was—it is
thirty million at the moment but we are still unclear how that
is meant to be distributed—and we are now aware that a million
of it will need to pay the audit commission to validate our Integrated
Risk Management Plan, so it is already down to twenty-nine million.
You can automatically see that the figures are really quite small.
I also felt that it was a little bit disappointing that we are
talking about the most fundamental change to this Service in over
fifty years. Modernisation is personified in this change, and
yet in every other part of the public sector where modernisation
and reform have been taken forward it has come commensurate with
investment and the recognition that down the line savings will
be possible by the investment up front. There seems to be an image
that the Fire Service is sat there with latent resources just
waiting to do these new and wonderful things. I think there is
a need to re-appraise the actual investment that is going into
the Fire Service . I would be quite happy for that to be conditional;
I would be quite happy for it to be tied in in some way to make
sure that it does come out in years to come so that it is not
just putting money in without any return, but I think there does
need to be a reappraisal of what is achievable in the first year.
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