Examination of Witnesses (Questions 314-319)
11 NOVEMBER 2003
MR MARTIN
EVANS AND
MS MOLLIE
BICKERSTAFF
Q314 Chairman: Can I welcome you
to the final session this morning of our inquiry into the Fire
Service and ask you to identify yourselves for the record, please.
Ms Bickerstaff: My name is Mollie
Bickerstaff. I am the Director of the Audit Commission responsible
for developing a new CPA for the Fire Service.
Mr Evans: My name is Martin Evans.
I am the Director of Audit Policy at the Audit Commission and
I have particular responsibilty for what is known as the verification
audit.
Q315 Chairman: Thank you very much.
Do you want to say anything by way of introduction or are you
happy for us to go straight to questions?
Ms Bickerstaff: Straight to questions.
Q316 Chris Mole: What statistics
on the performance of the Fire Service ought to be available?
Ms Bickerstaff: There is a very
great deal available already on how quickly fire people get out
to put out fires. What needs to be known is information to help
assess how effective the community fire safety work is being.
That is not very difficult. Sorry, it is extremely difficult;
it is not very difficult to see the problem. If I may give you
an example, in Merseyside they have set up a local performance
indicator where they look at the number of smoke alarms in fires
where there have been casualties and they are able to see that
their rate of where there are smoke alarms is much higher than
the national rate; they are running at over 40%, the national
average is 28%. That may be an indicator to show that the penetration
of smoke alarms—which they have worked hard on—has
been effective. However, one has to say "may"; it is
difficult to be very clear on what kind of performance information
will really help assess the penetration and effectiveness of community
fire safety work. Proving a negative is hard and a lot of work
needs to be done on that.
Q317 Chris Mole: What about in the
responsive service? Should we be having more statistics about
other types of incidents than fire than perhaps are available?
Ms Bickerstaff: Yes, of course.
You will have heard plenty of evidence about road traffic accident
work. Again, there are some performance indicators; there is data
collected and it is not necessarily helpful in its present form.
A lot of data is collected on make and model of car or chassis
number and you may not need that. There may be more effective
ways of looking at the data and more effective data to collect.
May I emphasise that it is a notoriously difficult subject, effective
performance indicators. It needs a lot of time and care to collect
data and measure performance in such a way that one is not encouraging
perverse side effects.
Q318 Chris Mole: What role are the
Audit Commission taking in developing these new measures for the
brave world of the White Paper? Are you liaising with the College
and the Inspectorate?
Ms Bickerstaff: The performance
data is collected and will continue to be defined and collected
by the ODPM. We are recognised by them as a stakeholder and we
are very happy to be part of their consultation work which has
begun. We will continue to offer our expertise from the fields
where we have worked in performance indicators to give them every
assistance.
Q319 Chris Mole: You think that where
we have statistical measures that are not particularly helpful—such
as the one that was mentioned earlier where once a fire engine
has been deployed when the next call comes in that one is not
counted for the purposes of the statistics—you would put
that firmly in the lap of the ODPM would you?
Ms Bickerstaff: I would refer
questions like that to people with more expertise and may I say—as
I think I said at the briefing session we had earlier—the
Audit Commission is new to the field of performance assessment
in the Fire Service and we are learning as fast as we can.
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