Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-344)
11 NOVEMBER 2003
MR MARTIN
EVANS AND
MS MOLLIE
BICKERSTAFF
Q340 Chairman: But you do not have
any clear national criteria that you have set out to start with,
so you have nothing to measure them against, have you?
Ms Bickerstaff: There will be
a national framework which is coming out before Christmas produced
by the ODPM. We, quite properly, will set CPA within that. We
will first of all look over time—we obviously cannot do
it before Christmas—at how each fire authority is meeting
those overall national requirements.
Q341 Chairman: So you are going to
rely on the ODPM setting these national standards or targets.
Ms Bickerstaff: For the national
framework that will be necessary. The national framework, as you
know, is mentioned in the White Paper. After that we will look
at how each fire authority is achieving its own targets locally.
We will assess them rigorously against that.
Q342 Chairman: How much is the whole
audit process going to cost?
Mr Evans: What I have described
as the verification audit which assesses progress the delivering
the changes set out in the pay agreement, we have estimated that
to cost £1 million nationally and that will have to be recovered
from fire authorities through audit fees. That is phase one. The
pay agreement also provides for us to carry out a similar exercise
next summer in relation to the stage three award and we envisage
that the cost of that exercise should be less because we will
be able to build on the experience of the first phase of work
and we may be able to differentiate more clearly between the amount
of work we do at different authorities. It is not going to be
much less than a million but it should be less.
Q343 Chairman: What is your part
in the process?
Ms Bickerstaff: Some early budgets
have been drawn up. We are spending in this current financial
year about £450,000 in order to do development and piloting
work. After that the budget remains speculative until we have
the results of the pilots.
Q344 Chairman: Might that money have
been better spent by simply giving it to the fire authorities
to get on and do the job themselves?
Ms Bickerstaff: That is a question
that will be easier to answer after we have gone through our pilot
work and done some initial CPA. Then there will be a better ability
to form a view on whether CPA for the Fire Service is going to
be helpful.
Mr Evans: We recognise that we
have to justify what we do and it comes back to my answer to Mr
Betts' earlier question. Audit and inspection bodies have to demonstrate
at the end of the day that they add value, whether that is through
providing assurance to stakeholders about probity and propriety
or whether it is about helping secure improvement of services.
We are up for that challenge.
Chairman: On that note can I thank you
very much for your evidence.
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