Examination of Witnesses (Questions 203
- 219)
THURSDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2004
COUNCILLOR LES
BYROM, MR
RICHARD BULL,
BARONESS RUTH
HENIG AND
CRISPIAN STRACHAN
Q203 Chairman: Can I welcome you
to the final session this morning of our evidence on the draft
Regional Assemblies Bill and ask you to identify yourselves for
the record please.
Cllr Byrom: I am Councillor Les
Byrom, LGA Fire and Merseyside Civil Defence Authority.
Mr Bull: Richard Bull, Fire Officer,
Tyne & Wear Fire and Rescue Service and professional adviser
to the Local Government Association on fire.
Baroness Henig: Ruth Henig. I
chair the Association of Police Authorities and also the Lancashire
Police Authority, but also I chair my own local safety partnership
in Lancaster.
Mr Strachan: Crispian Strachan,
Chief Constable, Northumbria Police, representing the Association
of Chief Police Officers.
Chairman: Does anyone want to say anything
by way of introduction or are you happy for us to go straight
to questions? Okay, straight to questions.
Q204 Mr Betts: I suppose this is
a very obvious one, that the regional assemblies are going to
get responsibility for fire, but not police. Does that make sense?
Cllr Byrom: Watch this space perhaps!
Maybe we are the litmus test, but yes, that is the proposal. I
think, however, my view is that the recent experience of industrial
problems within the Fire Service probably brought forward the
idea of having a regional fire service. That was brought off the
shelf, it is still there and it has been integrated into the draft
Bill probably because of the recent history.
Baroness Henig: The strength of
police in this country very much is around local policing, local
accountability and anything that you do that actually undermines
that local accountability could have serious consequences for
policing, so I think my starting point here is the service that
is offered to local people, their identification with their local
force and I would be worried at this stage about how that would
translate into a regional level because I think you have got to
make sure that you do not lose anything from that very strong
identity between an area and its local policing.
Q205 Sir Paul Beresford: Would you
not agree that in the south-east all the fire authorities are
working very closely together effectively making up a regional
response, but because they are working together, they also keep
their local aspects, so there actually is not a need for a regional
authority in the south-east at least for fire?
Cllr Byrom: I think there are
two different issues here. Fire authorities have worked traditionally
since 1947 when they were nationalised, they were separated, they
were brought back, but there is still that culture of militarism
and nationalisation there which we are trying to change, we are
trying to stop. Working together, you would be surprised at the
regional management boards. I think generally local government
is uncomfortable with regionalism, but the regional management
boards, surprisingly, are working quite effectively. Working together
across boundaries for efficiency and effectiveness is a good thing;
you do not have to force people into doing these things. Also
let fire authorities or other authorities find their own partners
rather than corseting them into standard regions which is not
natural in some respects. Do not underestimate the power of individual
badging. The county badge of the local fire authority, of the
local police authority is very powerful and it is closer to the
people. What we were promised was that the Government in this
sort of range of legislation would move powers down from Whitehall
and Westminster rather than taking powers up from local government.
Fire, and police to an extent, but I am speaking about fire, fire
is a local government service, it should stay as a local government
service and whilst there may be a case for regional co-ordination
or neighbourly co-ordination, that is a sensible thing, there
is absolutely no need to create one fire authority for the north-west,
south-west or any other region.
Q206 Mr Betts: What about regional
civil contingency planning then? Is the co-ordination of that
sensible to be done at the regional level?
Cllr Byrom: Well, obviously a
level of gold command is going to be sensible in any service.
The only caveat I would put on it is the danger of having a two-tier
fire or police service where at the top, regional level all the
big decisions, the glamorous perhaps, actually the less glamorous,
the terrorism, the planning for disaster issues are taken, and
down at the local level it is about, in fire service terms, pumping
water just on to fires. Now, that is not good because chief fire
officers and the next cadre and the next cadre down have got to
have experience of gold command. They have got to have the experience
in their local areas of dealing with emergencies, so whilst co-ordination,
buying materials, policy-making at a regional level is a good
thing, you must not forget the situation where you would have
a two-tier fire or police service.
Q207 Mr Betts: Mr Strachan, you have
commented on the fact that you have some doubts about the ability
of the Home Office and ODPM to work together. Is this Bill a reflection
of that, that it is ODPM's Bill, so they have managed to find
something in their remit, namely fire, to give the regional assemblies
to do, but the Home Office have not really wanted to play ball
with this at all and, therefore, police are not affected by the
legislation?
Mr Strachan: That is, with respect,
sir, a rather leading question, but yes, I would agree!
Q208 Christine Russell: Can I just
take you up, Mr Byrom, on what you were just saying because you
seem to be saying that you cannot be a chief fire officer unless
you have totally risen, that you have to start at the bottom.
Is that not what you are saying?
Cllr Byrom: The danger in the
country would be to have a two-tier fire service, one at a regional
level which dealt with emergencies and all the sort of—
Q209 Christine Russell: But how is
it going to be different from what it is now because you have
just talked about how the regional set-up at the moment appears
to be working, so what in a practical sense is going to be different
about what is proposed from what is happening at the moment?
Cllr Byrom: Well, the current
situation in the north-west, for instance, is that there are five
individual, unique fire authorities. Now, if the proposal is to
have one fire authority for the whole of the north-west or there
is a proposal to have one tier for terrorism and emergency management
organisation beneath that, a sort of more local community fire
brigade, there is a danger in that. It could work, anything could
work, but I do not think it would be the right thing to do, nor
efficient and proper.
Q210 Christine Russell: But if you
have got the right structures, the right people in leadership
roles, why should it not work?
Mr Bull: I think one of the issues
is that at the moment we are moving forward with voluntary regional
management board arrangements, that we are following policies
laid out in the Government's recent White Paper on the Fire and
Rescue Service. Those voluntary arrangements cover six strategic
areas, for example, ranging from training to procurement. We have
also got other agendas running in terms of resilience and regional
fire control rooms and a national radio communication system which
are all impacting on fire authorities and I think what we will
end up with eventually, from a professional viewpoint, is a 90
per cent organisation which co-operates and collaborates, but
we could end up, for example, in the north-east with four separate
fire authorities and four separate chief fire officers, four management
structures and, therefore, you are not realising the full efficiencies
and opportunities that may be there. However, we are moving along
a motorway at the moment, as Councillor Byrom said, resulting
from three years of a national pay dispute.
Q211 Christine Russell: Do you think
that the proposals would do anything to address the concern that
was raised in the White Paper over the difficulties that some
of the smaller fire authorities have and the suggestion in evidence
that we certainly had when we doing our inquiry into the Fire
Service that perhaps some of the smaller authorities should be
merged anyhow?
Mr Bull: I think it is one of
the problems that we have had from time immemorial really, that
the small fire authorities have never had the resources to be
able to develop their people or the skills or expertise as quickly
as the larger ones because it is a question of capacity, as simple
as that. What we have had over the last 10 years in particular
is this increase in "regional collaboration" which has
meant that the larger authorities have helped and supported the
smaller authorities along, but there is no doubt obviously that
the pooling of resources makes for a more effective organisation.
Cllr Byrom: Adding to that, there
are going to be amalgamations. There will have to be small authorities
amalgamated together, but taking the example of the north-west
which was going to be one of the pilot schemes, but not now, you
have got differences between cities, metropolitan areas and the
rural areas. There are just differences in the way that they are
operated at the moment. Some are on a whole-time, and some are
on a retainment, method of crewing fire stations. The London model
which is being proposed here will not necessarily work. It might
work for London and it may work for metropolitan areas, but I
do not think you could just import that into all areas and all
regions, as is proposed. The Scottish and Welsh model which is
where you have the Assembly or the Parliament managing, but each
of the brigades is still separate, but under an umbrella, that
may well be a different matter altogether.
Q212 Christine Russell: Well, that
was actually what I was going to ask you, that if a regional fire
authority was created, how could you then ensure that at a local
level the different needs between metropolitan centres, historical
cities and rural areas, how could you then ensure that in a practical
way the needs of residents and businesses in those areas were
still being met?
Mr Bull: Because we have recently
moved to what we call "integrated risk management planning",
so we have moved away from standards which have been in place
for the Fire and Rescue Service for 50 years, so national standards
of fire cover which were put together in 1936 have now been dissolved
and replaced by local integrated risk management plans. Now, that
risk management plan can cover a brigaded area, a region or whatever,
but that is about targeting resources at a local level to where
the risks exist. One of the things we say now is that people do
not die in town or city centres in fires, but they die in urban
housing estates and that is where the risk is in the main.
Q213 Chairman: Have you any evidence
as to what the optimum size is for a fire service either in terms
of the population it covers or the area it covers? We will all
have had the nonsense, will we not, that in somewhere like greater
Manchester, the existing fire service is going to have a larger
service than will be there in the north-east, if you were to put
all the existing fire services together?
Mr Bull: Well, this goes back
in history as usual in these situations. We had a report in 1971
by Sir Alan Olroyd which actually talked about the amalgamation
of fire brigades as far back as that and produced a model of an
ideal size of a fire brigade in those days which was around about
20 to 30 stations and three—
Q214 Chairman: But that was then.
Have you any idea now what would be the optimum size in terms
of the area it covers or the population it covers?
Mr Bull: I think it comes down
to a number of factors, as we outlined in our submission, and
one of the things we said in our submission, as Councillor Byrom
has covered, is that perhaps in this country one size does not
fit all because of the environmental, the geographical, the population,
the urban, the rural, and the economic factors which exist within
a particular region. If you take the north-east as the example,
with Mr Cummings coming from the same area as myself, if you look
at the north-east in geographical terms, from a professional viewpoint,
for a fire and rescue service the model could fit quite nicely
together and indeed before all this emanated, we had discussions
in the north-east about moving to a collaborative regional fire
authority proactively with all of the authorities involved in
that because the economies of scale in the north-east are self-evident
to some extent.
Cllr Byrom: It is government by
the people by permission, if you like. Can a chief fire officer
for Cumbria know his or her whole patch? You would think so. Merseyside?
You would think so, but for the whole north-west? I do not think
so.
Q215 Mr Betts: If we can come on
to community safety issues, it does seem to me that one of the
strange bits of the proposed legislation is that community safety
responsibilities are going to be at the regional level, but the
police are going to remain at a more local level. Do you see a
potential for conflict and inefficient working?
Baroness Henig: I think there
are some other questions to be raised. At the moment community
safety partnerships, whatever region they are operating in, work
very closely with the regional crime directors and there are ten
of those directors and they are answerable to the Home Office.
They then very strongly co-ordinate the community safety partnerships
in their area and that system works very well, so for me the question
then is: what would be the relationship between the regional crime
director and the Government Office in that whole cluster of responsibilities
and the crime and disorder partnerships? Those partnerships are
very well established. They vary considerably, but they are well
established and they are points actually where the police and
the fire services come together with local services and they,
as I say, are co-ordinated by the Government Office. What, therefore,
has to change, I think, is the relationship that is envisaged
between the regional assembly and how that operates and the Government
Office at that level. That is where, I think, some thinking has
to be done about how those things are going to be co-ordinated.
Mr Bull: Can I just support that
as well as that is important in terms of fire. Our relationship
with the government offices nationally is one we have developed
over recent years really since we became part of the crime and
disorder section 17 arrangements. With the resilience agenda in
terms of fire and rescue and the civil agenda, it is across the
Government Office and that relationship between police, fire and
the Government Office in terms of resilience and how it fits together
is particularly important as well.
Q216 Mr Betts: So you are really
saying that in terms of this community safety role, it should
be simply a strategic role that the regional assembly has, but
the hands-on doing it should be done by the partnerships?
Baroness Henig: That is how I
would see it. There is a lot going on below regional level. The
agenda is moving all the time. If you, for example, look at local
strategic partnerships which operate both at district level and
also at county level, those local strategic partnerships at county
level are bringing together fire, police, contingency planning
again together with county functions, so there is a lot going
on both at district and at county level. It would seem to me that
the regional assembly very much would have a strategic role because
you would not want to undermine the very good initiatives that
are already going on and I think it is very important that the
co-ordination, therefore, has to be thought about as to how this
is all actually going to work out on the ground and how it is
going to add value. At the moment what we would not want, I think,
to happen is that the regional structure is a disincentive to
what is already happening because there is so much good work happening
below the regional structure.
Q217 Mr Cummings: What happens if
the regional strategy is better than your own strategies?
Baroness Henig: Well, that is
fine and the regional assembly would presumably have discussions
with these other bodies and you would have co-ordinating mechanisms
just as you do with the Government Office. These partnerships
at local and county level are fairly strenuous and robust affairs
and there is a lot of consultation and discussion that goes on,
but it is important, people have to feel ownership of these structures
and my worry about regional structures is what ownership will
local people feel in regional structures and that has got to be
built up in it and it will take time to build up.
Mr Strachan: I think part of my
submission, if I may say so, is that the Bill does not address
that sufficiently. The interesting paragraphs in the background
paper to the Bill are not sufficiently expressed in a clause 43
or other means in the Bill in terms of saying exactly what a regional
assembly would do other than wrap it in a warm and wet fish.
Cllr Byrom: If you look at the
way it might work, if there were to be regional government in
any region in the north-east, leaving the politics aside, you
would have an executive of six or so people. Now, one of those
might well be for public protection and why would you have to
create underneath that in the fire situation a whole fire authority
and bring all the fire brigades together into one? That individual,
who is the portfolio holder perhaps for public safety, could chair
the regional management board, could be involved in developing
community safety strategies and I do not think there is any real
need or necessity within this model to import the London proposal,
the London principle of having a fire authority for the whole
region and, by extension, for the police.
Q218 Mr Betts: Do you think that
the regional assembly with its general powers and ability perhaps
to raise some extra money could be an important source of extra
funding for fire prevention and reduction partnerships on the
ground?
Baroness Henig: Well, where would
that resourcing come from? The way I look at resourcing at the
moment, there is a pot, a national pot, and then at the moment
police authorities can have a precept locally and there are all
sorts of problems around that, as we know, with a precept at any
level and the ability of local communities to pay.
Mr Strachan: I think if one were
to take the theme which has come into this Committee already this
morning and if we were to talk about matters coming down from
central government and not perhaps, with respect, Ruth, coming
out of local precepts, then to say that the £22 billion which
ODPM puts into the "liveability" fund should actually
be given to regions, not administered from ODPM, or the Home Office
funds for urban renewal for neighbourhood renewal foundations
or things like that should be delegated to the regions, then you
would be adding value at a regional level to something which comes
closer to its effect, not having to take it upwards from existing
councils or from other tiers of government.
Baroness Henig: At the moment
it goes through regional crime directors actually.
Q219 Chairman: So you are quite clear
that government should be coming up with some money that it hands
on for allocation at least to the regional assemblies rather than
looking at the possibility for the regional assembly to put a
precept on to the council tax to raise a bit of extra money perhaps
to put in one or two patrols or whatever?
Mr Strachan: That is my understanding
of the nature of the regional assembly, that it should be to bring
central government down to that level rather than to damage, detract
from or otherwise further tax the local government structure which,
as we have also previously discussed, is in need of considerable
reform to avoid having six levels of government for myself in
Northumberland.
Baroness Henig: But there is the
balance of funding discussion going on at the moment as we speak,
is there not, about how you resource public services and I would
have thought that this would have to feed into that debate because
we do not quite know where that is going to end.
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