Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 239)
THURSDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2004
COUNCILLOR LES
BYROM, MR
RICHARD BULL,
BARONESS RUTH
HENIG AND
CRISPIAN STRACHAN
Q220 Chairman: Yes, we are trying
to get some clarity as to what is in the Bill or what should be
in the Bill.
Mr Bull: In terms of fire, the
funding situation for fire is particularly relevant and particularly
important because at the moment in this country we have seven
different constitutional and funding models for fire in particular
ranging from county councils to fire and civil defence authorities
to combined fire authorities to the London funding and in the
north-east, for example, we are bringing four fire authorities
together that are all different at the moment, so Northumberland
is part of the county council and the county council decide how
they are going to allocate their funding to fire. In bringing
the four together with precepts in the other areas will put some
strain on the council tax initially because we are going to have
to take up the resource deficiencies, if I can put it that way,
which exist in some of the areas that are being funded by the
wider county council at the moment.
Q221 Mr O'Brien: That leads us into
the question of what Bain said in his report, The Independent
Review of the Fire Service. With the introduction of regional
fire services and the amalgamation of small services, there could
be significant savings in the budget. Is this realistic?
Mr Bull: Yes, from a professional
perspective, yes, it is. Those savings would materialise over
a three- to five- to seven-year period, so in the medium to long
term, but as with bringing everything together, amalgamations,
it would require some up-front pump-priming investment to do that.
For example, at the moment we are following a government policy
of amalgamating all of the fire controls into regional control
centres, so we will end up with ten regional control centres in
this country between now and 2007. That will provide real efficiency
savings for the Service, which is part of our modernisation and
reform agenda which has been set by government, because in terms
of the pay deal that we have just thankfully settled recently,
obviously government have been very clear that the fire authorities
have to pay for that in the long term through realisation of efficiency
savings. I think if you think in simple terms of bringing together
one training function, one transport function or one stores and
supplies function, then those efficiency savings will materialise,
but, as I say, not overnight.
Q222 Mr O'Brien: Well, Bain suggested
that over three years £42 million perhaps could be saved
overall. Do you subscribe to that?
Mr Bull: I do.
Q223 Mr O'Brien: And in that proposal
then, are there fears of fire stations being closed?
Mr Bull: I think as we move forward
now, as I explained before, moving into integrated risk management
planning, there is an expectation by government that as we relocate
and redetermine our resources, we will need less resources to
provide the services we are providing at the moment, but we are
also moving into a very proactive prevention mode now and the
services we are providing are much more balanced between community
safety along with colleagues in the police or wherever to reduce
fire deaths and fire-related injuries with the operational response
providing the safety net when something goes wrong, so the expectation
of firefighters is now that we will do a lot of work in the community,
driving down the risks before the fire or other emergency occurs.
I think as we realign those resources, we will provide a much
more efficient service which means less fire stations and less
firefighters.
Q224 Mr O'Brien: I come from west
Yorkshire and I have seen fire stations close in the programme
of efficiencies, but my question to you is: in the regional assembly
proposals, would that itself influence the closure of fire stations?
Mr Bull: Yes, in the long term
it could because you bring together four fire authorities which
have been constituted and put together since 1974. Some of our
fire authorities have fire stations that go back to the 1920s
and in 1920 or in 1950 those fire stations were in the right locations.
As we have moved on, the risk needs have changed and town and
city centres now are well protected with fire safety measures
and sprinkler systems and automatic fire detection. Where we now
lose 500 people a year in this country is in domestic houses and
that is where the risk is now and when you look at the location
of fire stations and you redo it by bringing four together, then
you would have those fire stations in different locations and
perhaps less or perhaps more, depending on the circumstances.
Q225 Christine Russell: Let's say
this is all going to happen, regional assemblies are going to
happen, how do you think we can make sure that by incorporating
clauses in the legislation to guarantee that all of these good
community safety initiatives that I know are happening in Cheshire
and Merseyside, like the fitting of smoke alarms and all of those
issues, how can we then make sure that all of those, not so much
responsibilities, but the concerns people have which the fire
authorities are now addressing, how can we make sure that they
would continue if we do land up with regional fire authorities?
Cllr Byrom: Best practice across
the country is something for the management of the entire Service
and that is something that I think is a professional issue for
all chief fire officers and for leading members to be involved
in, but there has got to be still an element of choice, has there
not? Merseyside, for instance, made a political decision to provide
free smoke detectors and we paid for that out of the people's
money, but that is a choice thing. You could have economies of
scale and I think there will be amalgamations, but still the operation
of urban metropolitan authorities will be different from rural
or those in the more sparsely populated areas. Inevitably there
will be some differences.
Q226 Christine Russell: But that
happens already.
Cllr Byrom: It happens already,
that is right. There will be some amalgamations, but you will
not be able to end up, I do not think, where one fire authority
for seven million covering two principal cities and four other
cities and hundreds of acres of hillside will work or be healthy.
Q227 Christine Russell: Could I just
move on and ask you briefly about the accountability of the fire
authorities because obviously the LGA have expressed their concerns
over the reduction in the numbers of elected members who will
be serving on them. What are your views on how we retain an element
of local accountability?
Councillor Byrom: The LGA oppose
regional fire brigades and are in favour of the local delivery
of quality services. Regional government in itself, and this is
changing the issue slightly, regional government in the north-west
would lose 500 elected councillors and replace them with perhaps
30 regional councillors. Is that a move towards democracy? I do
not think so. It is a slightly different issue off the fire agenda.
If you ended up with a situation, as in Wales or Scotland, where
you had individual fire services with their own members, but there
was an umbrella within any region which voted for regional government,
that would be a different matter. Scrapping all of the existing
democratically elected fire authorities or appointed fire authorities
and replacing them with a regional quango I do not think would
improve democracy at all.
Q228 Christine Russell: Even if those
members were elected councillors?
Cllr Byrom: Well, it is the seven
million people, are they going to be represented by five groups
of 18 or so or one group of 30, of which a very small number will
actually only ever be involved with fire?
Mr Bull: I think one of the issues
is that it has always been argued in fire that the strength of
fire has always been in the local democracy and the local accountability
because it is a local service targeted at local risk needs. Over
the years fire authorities have developed when we created the
metropolitans or whatever, but they have always been totally representative
of the local authorities of a particular area and in the metropolitans
one of the fears was that we would end up with a parochial argument
about where the new fire station was located and the new fire
engines, but when you look at the metropolitan authorities they
have worked very strategically together to try and provide that
service across the whole area. It is one of the things that Councillor
Byrom mentioned, that at the moment the Bill mentions the application
of the London model in terms of the regional fire authority, which
would be 17 members, nine from the Assembly and eight from the
local community, and obviously we have concerns and reservations
about that. Our view is that there must be other models that could
be looked at as well which would address one of the points you
have made about the actual achievement of that local accountability.
Q229 Mr Sanders: This is really to
the police. What kind of working relationship do you actually
have at the moment with regional assemblies and how would you
envisage developing a relationship between police authorities
and elected regional assemblies?
Baroness Henig: Many regions,
and I can speak with the most authority about the north-west though
I am sure it happens elsewhere, many regions have collaborative
arrangements. For example, in the north-west we have a quarterly
meeting of police authority chairs chief constables and clerks
and, interestingly, not just the north-west, but north Wales as
well because they feed very naturally into that structure and
that is one of the things I think we have to watch with regional
assemblies because there are already groupings which are very
important. So we meet quarterly and I know chief constables on
the operational side also have tasking and co-ordinating arrangements
on their side. Now, at the moment we have no relationships at
all, I think chief constables do, but that body that I speak of
that comes together quarterly has no arrangements at all with
the regional structures, but I can see that there would be no
problem if you had a regional assembly and you could actually
introduce arrangements whereby those sorts of regional collaborations
could then tie in with meetings on a regular basis with regional
assembly members. I do not see that as a problem. To me, what
matters is that already out there is a structure which is working
and it is working quite effectively and I am just concerned that
we do not do anything to undermine it.
Q230 Mr Sanders: And that structurally
is the regional assemblies as presently constituted?
Baroness Henig: Well, if you like,
it is a de facto coming together of bodies that are grounded locally,
and that is so important, but who come together for specific purposes
to share good practice across the region, and also on the policing
side, and I am sure Crispian can say more about this, on the operational
side to pursue a lot of criminal activities which need to be dealt
with at that level.
Q231 Mr Cummings: To whom are you
responsible? Who do you answer to?
Baroness Henig: Who do police
authorities answer to?
Q232 Mr Cummings: Your organisation.
Baroness Henig: The Association
of Police Authorities?
Q233 Mr Cummings: Yes.
Baroness Henig: To our members.
Q234 Mr Cummings: And your members
are?
Baroness Henig: Our members are
44 police authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and
I suppose we have responsibility also to talk to the Home Office.
Q235 Mr Cummings: And, through those,
back to the local authorities?
Baroness Henig: Yes.
Mr Strachan: If I may add to that
reply on behalf of the police forces and particularly from the
point of view of the north-east, your Clerk does have written
evidence from me relating to the North-East Crime and Community
Safety Forum which might represent a way forward in that the Association
of North-East Councils, the North-East Assembly, the Government
Office, the Regional Development Agency and the three police forces
meet quarterly in the unique forum. The aims and objectives are
too lengthy to set out at this stage of the Committee's deliberations
and all I would say is that the kind of thing we are looking at,
to give you an example of how we can have cross-cutting issues
which do defy orthodox boundaries, those currently work on alcohol
and the night-time economy and licensing, doorstep crime, whether
it be trading standards in somebody's in-tray or deception burglars
in someone else's in-tray, anti-social behaviour and regional
perceptions. Now, that is the kind of thing which you can get
if you genuinely join up the sections. I remember with some significant
effect that when I was the superintendent here in Wandsworth in
1988 I could, and did, walk into Wandsworth Council offices armed
with a circular from Her Majesty's Government, and I make no party-political
point on this, signed by 11 government departments and talking
in the same language about the work that could, and should, be
done by local agents, local agencies, councils and police forces.
There has been no such joint government circular since. If there
were to be one such, it would be an excellent foundation for the
work of the assemblies to knit together with more force so many
other aspects of good work which presently are suffering by not
being knitted together.
Q236 Mr Sanders: In terms of the
functions that you have referred to there, how many of those are
going to be part of an elected regional assembly's area of responsibility?
Mr Strachan: Not enough, and you
will accept I come from a specialist point of view, particularly
from resilience, which we have discussed, through community safety,
which we have discussed, and into my orthodox line of crime and
disorder reduction and reducing the fear of crime and disorder.
Far too little of that is knitted together and although I know
it is in government strategy and I hear it in government strategy,
I see too little of it coming down those joined-up messages to
the practitioner level.
Q237 Mr Sanders: Is there, therefore,
a danger of losing the current linkage between the local authorities,
the regional assembly, the RDA and the Government Office if you
create an elected regional assembly with fewer functions and no
link with those local authorities which will either disappear
or be there, but do not actually have any rights to representation
within the elected regional assembly?
Mr Strachan: I think even under
the Boundary Commission proposals, the majority of local councils
will remain there, particularly the larger and more significant
unitary authorities rather than counties where, in turn, in the
unitary authorities there is perhaps the greater crime and disorder
problem. I think the majority of the work can, and will, continue.
What I would like to see is a framework that makes the continuation
of that work more explicit and clearer.
Q238 Mr Sanders: That will be in
the legislation then?
Mr Strachan: I believe so. I
think clause 43, in particular, needs to be more explicit. I think
we have too many taskmasters and too many warm feelings. Not enough
is specific to encourage the best of innovation, good practice
and development locally.
Q239 Chairman: So we have a situation
basically in which the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is
signed up to this legislation and is making the Fire Service fit
into it.
Cllr Byrom: Yes.
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