Examination of Witnesses (Questions 68-79)
21 OCTOBER 2003
MICK HOWELL,
JEREMY HILTON
AND BARRY
MERRITT
Q68 Chairman: Can I welcome you to
the final session of the Committee's inquiry this morning. Would
you please identify yourselves for the record.
Mr Howell: My name is Mick Howell;
I am Chief Fire Officer of Cornwall Fire Brigade and I am also
secretary to the South West Forum of Fire Authorities.
Mr Merritt: My name is Barry Merritt.
I am an employer of retained firemen.
Mr Hilton: I am Jeremy Hilton.
I am a councillor for Gloucester Fire Authority and part of my
portfolio is the fire and rescue service.
Q69 Chairman: Can we start with a
really awkward question. Across the forum, which is the best Fire
Authority?
Mr Howell: I am speaking on behalf
of all Fire Authorities and I would have to say Cornwall. We work
very well together and I would not want to be drawn on that particular
issues, but if you do force it, it is Cornwall.
Q70 Chairman: Why is it Cornwall?
Mr Howell: Because of the peninsular
shape and location in Cornwall I think we have an opportunity
to take initiatives forward which are easier when you are surrounded
by water and there is no help coming over the borders. I like
to think that you get good value for money. We are part of an
excellent county council so that CPA read-across already exists.
I like to think that because of the low economy we spend the few
pennies we get to run the fire brigade very wisely.
Q71 Mr Streeter: You have all said
that you broadly support the White Paper. Can you say what changes
you consider are the most important to make the new Fire Service
work?
Mr Hilton: I do not broadly agree
with everything that is in the White Paper because there are some
inconsistencies in there. Page 28, Section 4.4: "In essence
there are too many small fire authorities which struggle to provide
cost effective service because of their size". This statement
goes on to mention that 14 brigades with less than 700 employees.
Gloucestershire has a staff of 616 and Gloucestershire Fire and
Rescue Service is one of the most forward thinking fire services
in the country. It has only this year joined the tri-service control
centre with our HQ on the top, the control centres of all the
three emergency services in the centre; and on the ground floor
is the ambulance HQ. By 2005 the Gloucestershire Police are going
to be building their new HQ next door to us.
Q72 Chris Mole: Do you want to merge
into a greater South West Fire Authority?
Mr Hilton: I do not think we want
a greater South West Fire Authority. What we have is the good
co-operation with all the south west brigades already. We were
well ahead of the game on the radio project and we were the preferred
tender when the Government changed the rules and said that they
wanted a national scheme so we had to stop that. I was chairing
the forum at the time. We have been meeting and working together
effectively over a number of years. Somerset and Avon and Gloucestershire
Fire and Rescue Services have got the joint training centre which
opened earlier this year which can be used by our three brigades
but also by others. It is a PFI bid with Vosper Thornycroft, again
another imaginative innovative scheme that a small brigade is
incapable of doing according to the White Paper. In a few weeks'
time we are going to open our joint workshops with Gloucestershire
Police Service and the Ambulance Service. In the White Paper it
suggests that there should be regional workshops. The distance
between Truro and Gloucester is the same distance as between Gloucester
and the Scottish borders. It does not seem like a good idea. Maybe
three or four regional workshops or workshops with the other emergency
services following the Gloucestershire model might be a more cost
effective way of running the services. When you go on into the
White Paper and actually get to page 67, 9.14, is where the White
Paper contradicts itself because it then talks about co-operation
between fire authorities, co-operation between other emergency
services and co-operation between other agencies. Of course, we
have three Fire Authorities in the south west and I know it is
very, very efficient. We do not have agenda items on the cabinet
just for the sake of it, but I am sure that some combined Fire
Authorities probably end up having a meeting to discuss something
and one of the criticisms is that there is interference in day
to day management could be that members of the combine Fire Authorities
did not always have something to do.
Q73 Chairman: I think we need slightly
shorter answers if we are going to keep to the schedule we have.
Mr Howell: I will be very brief,
Chairman. I think, in order to break down barriers to implement
the expectations in the White Paper there are two fundamental
things that need to be addressed. I think the first is that if
Government wants regional fire authorities they should say so
because it is absorbing an awful lot of resource to play the game,
as it were. There is no desire for a regional fire authority in
the south west generally but there is most certainly a need for
clarity because if we are working towards that then we can work
towards that regional fire authority concept. Otherwise I think
we can actually adjust what we have fairly simply and straightforwardly
without major political fall out and without actually harming
the current arrangements that we have. The second point is about
identity. One of my colleagues touched on the failure, and I think
it was yourself who mentioned about lack of involvement of the
Fire Service and community safety initiatives and the absence
of the Crime and Disorder Bill. This is a golden opportunity for
the Fire Service to establish an identity as a community safety
lead organisation and that really needs to come from the top;
it needs a high level of campaign so that the members of the public
that we serve can actually identify with the Fire Brigade far
beyond squirting water and digging people out of cars.
Q74 Mr Streeter: Is there a view
about the implementation of the IPDS in terms of bringing about
cultural change?
Mr Howell: I think IPDS has to
be seen as an evolution rather than separate from IRMP. The Integrated
Risk Management Plan will, in time, identify what skills, tactics
and initiatives are necessary to drive down risk, and then what
skills are necessary to deal with the residual risk. You cannot
have IPDS going along on a parallel path. It needs to be totally
integrated with the IRMP process and the outcomes. I think IPDS
has an opportunity to help us change the culture of the Fire Service,
not least of all in the way that we engage with the public. IPDS,
just looking at the television news this morning about the suspension
of police officers for their racist behaviour—if that allegation
is founded—tells us that we have a lot to do in terms of
our recruitment processes to make sure that we are recruiting
people who are community focussed, that they do not bring with
them hatred, bigotry and all the other qualities that are negative
in the community, and that we develop their skills so that they
can truly engage not so much in the fire fighting and rescue role—because
I think we have a lot of experience in that—because the
area we need to develop is actually engaging our communities and
working with them. Just a final point on that, in Cornwall—and
I did say it was the best brigade in the south west—we have
just opened this year ten community fire stations under PFI initiatives.
They were begun by the previous Government and supported by the
current Government. We have 21 other fire stations completely
renovated and open for business for the community. That is the
stage that I think all fire brigades have got to go to. I think
a number of colleagues have mentioned that and are doing it in
other parts of the country as well. Those fire stations become
part of the community, not just somewhere where red fire engines
turn out to incidents.
Q75 Chris Mole: You mentioned the
topical subject of the police training. Do the cultural problems
within the Fire Service start with the Fire Service College at
all?
Mr Howell: Not at the Fire Service
College. I think it can be a breeding ground for negative practices,
but it can also be—as has been proven—a breeding ground
for good practice. I think the College in recent years—in
fact going back to the courses I attended when I was a younger
officer—actually conducted its behaviour and set down its
standards in terms of behaviour to try to change the culture.
There is still a bit of an officer's club element to the Fire
Service College but it has changed immeasurably in the last fifteen
to twenty years. That has a part to play, but I think the most
important part for the College to play is to respond to the needs
of the IPDS agenda that we talked about a moment ago.
Q76 Christine Russell: You may have
heard that your five previous colleagues all said how committed
they are in getting geared up to preventative work, but I think
in your submission you made the point that the resources that
you have are more limited to do that work. Could you tell us a
little bit more about whether you are going to have sufficient
people and resources to go and do the community safety work that
you are obviously keen to do?
Mr Hilton: One of the things we
are doing in Gloucestershire is with the Public Service Agreement
and we have agreed that one of the things will be a community
fire safety. We have just done a video package to give to people
like social workers so that they can go in and check the homes
of people at risk and make sure that their smoke alarms are fully
in order and electrical wiring is sorted out and that sort of
thing. That is one of our main targets as a county council. I
think that is one of the great things about the county brigades
that they have a very close working relationship with the local
authority and therefore working with the education services and
the social services you can develop some of these things.
Q77 Christine Russell: What about
social housing providers?
Mr Hilton: I think they have been
brought on board as part of that because all the district councils
are involved in the twelve Gloucestershire Public Service Agreements
as well. So you are working with various agencies but it is not
just the fire fighters going out and doing that work, it is using
everybody else.
Q78 Chris Mole: I think you began
to touch on some of the advantages of being a county rather than
a regional fire authority. What do you think are the advantages
and disadvantages between those two models?
Mr Howell: I would like to pick
up, if I may, the previous point about resources and particularly
resources in a predominantly retained fire fighting community.
We have an employer with us and maybe he will have a chance to
pick up that point and the demands that are going to be made on
the retained service in the future if we are to address all of
the aspirations of the modernisation agenda. As far as the advantages
and disadvantages of the county, I have only worked in two fire
brigades and they have both been counties, Hertfordshire and,
in the last seven years, Cornwall. Clearly there are advantages
and disadvantages particularly in terms of funding. In the same
way I have accused central Government—and it was an accusation—of
not properly recognising the identity and role of the Fire Service
in the community (benign neglect is a term which I think one of
the previous ministers used), so too it can happen at county level.
We are not the big sexy department; we are not education, social
services; we are not what people go on to county councils to address
and at the last county council elections a county councillor who
had just been appointed—he had previously been an officer,
so quite a well versed person in the wider world of county council
business and its responsibilities—did not even know the
Fire Brigade was a responsibility of the county council. That
is a disadvantage for us at local level. I go through the pay
barrier every budget now. The advantage is that we have an infrastructure
which actually supports the kind of thinking that is within the
modernisation agenda in terms of gaining economies of scale, having
support services and functions that are more generalised, if you
like, in terms of their application. In terms of some of the economies,
obviously not every department buys fire engines and the kit that
goes with them. We have benefits in procurement that we are already
exploring across the south west, but that infrastructure that
a county council provides obviously reduces costs in similar ways
that the modernisation agenda has aspirations for at a regional
level. My view is, why change it?
Mr Hilton: We have a joint administration
and it is working quite well and making a lot of changes. Of course
the Fire Service is also getting the same importance there. There
is a much cleaner and quicker way of making decisions rather than
going through a very staid committee system. In some ways we have
that advantage and we also have democratic support services, legal
services behind us; we also have procurement with the county council,
procurement with the police and ambulance service.
Q79 Chris Mole: So you are worried
that you might lose some of the economies of scale coming out
of a county council which would not be recovered by going into
a regional one.
Mr Hilton: I am worried that if
we had a very heavy regional structure that we would have a heavy
bureaucratic cost which would be added to the county council tax
payer in my county. I cannot see it finding any efficiencies so
far as the operation of our service.
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