Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR ALUN
EVANS, SIR
GRAHAM MELDRUM,
MR DAVE
LAWRENCE AND
MRS MARIE
WINCKLER
30 JANUARY 2006
Q60 Mr Betts: Will the
Regional Control Centres perform all the tasks and duties that
are currently performed within the various authorities' control
rooms?
Mrs Winckler: They will perform
all the functions that are related to the control service. They
will not perform what are currently deemed to be out-of-scope
functions because at the moment control rooms do some functions
to use up spare capacity which are not related to the control
service. The new centres will do all the functions related to
the control service itself but they will not do what are called
out-of-scope functions.
Q61 Mr Betts: So some
extra duties are going to have to be passed on elsewhere in the
Fire Service?
Mrs Winckler: They will be functions
for which the Fire and Rescue Service will have to find a home,
yes.
Q62 Mr Betts: And staff.
So the saving of 500 staff in the control room is not a true total
saving, is it?
Mrs Winckler: How they choose
to fulfil those functions is up to them.
Q63 Mr Betts: You are
saying there are 1,500 staff doing a particular job in control
rooms at present, there will be 1,000 staff doing some of that
work in the Regional Control Centres in the future. You are going
to need some of those staff who are supposedly being saved to
carry on doing the jobs that will no longer be done in the Regional
Control Centres, are you not?
Mr Evans: It depends which authority
you are in. If you take London, for example, which has probably
the highest call volumes, they are taking a call roughly every
30 minutes per operator so they are pretty much fully occupied.
In some authorities control room operators will be taking a call
per operator once every two hours or so, so that is five or six
calls a day. In some of those authorities there are other activities
that they do. In terms of answering your question on the number
across the country, one cannot do it because it depends how each
individual Fire and Rescue Service manages their service.
Q64 Mr Betts: Wait a minute.
You are deciding centrally we are going to have these Regional
Control Centres throughout the country, it is a central decision,
the implications are worked out locally but the total cost of
the project has to take account of the extent to which some of
the functions currently carried out in control rooms are displaced
within the service. It has to do that otherwise it is not a proper
cost.
Mrs Winckler: The business case
does take account of—
Q65 Mr Betts: How many
people will have to do the displaced tasks? You must have a number
in there of whole-time equivalents to do the costings.
Mrs Winckler: At the moment I
cannot recall a specific figure for the number of people doing
out-of-scope functions.
Q66 Mr Betts: Can we have
a figure?
Mrs Winckler: We can certainly
go back and look into that but I cannot give it to you off the
top of my head.
Mr Betts: Can we have a note on that.
Q67 Dr Pugh: A very quick
question. The Fire Minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, said that the move
to Regional Control Centres will improve response times. We are
in an age of evidence-led policy now so you must surely have presented
him with some clear evidence that indicated that was the case
because it was not just a guess, was it? What was the evidence?
Mr Evans: FiReControl will improve
response in three ways at least: firstly, it is more resilient
so the system will be—
Q68 Dr Pugh: I am not
asking for the case to be made, I am asking what research base
you produced to Jim Fitzpatrick which made him say Regional Control
Centres will necessarily improve response times. What evidence
was shown?
Mr Evans: The research base was
around response times at the moment plus capability of technology
in particular areas compared with the response times and the known
capability of the technology that we are developing.
Mrs Winckler: At the moment response
times are not measured in the same way as they are going to be
measured in future. Response times are measured from the time
a call is received in the station and the appliance gets the call
in the station and sets out. The situation is going to be very
different in future, not least because of the introduction of
Integrated Risk Management Planning and the fact that appliances
are not all going to be in the station, they are going to be out
on the road where there is the greatest risk and there will be
dynamic mobilising direct to the appliance. So you are not comparing
like-with-like, you are moving into a new situation.
Dr Pugh: I totally accept that. I do
note that what you have not said is that there have been any extensive
pilot studies done or large international comparisons made before
the theory of Regional Control Centres was put forward. Thank
you.
Chair: We are really short of time and
I want to get to resilience. John, can I ask you to only ask question
seven, we will leave question eight to ministers I think.
Q69 John Cummings: Would
you tell the Committee what criteria have been used to decide
where the Regional Control Centres will be located, please?
Mrs Winckler: There was a public
consultation on the criteria which related to resilience to such
characteristics as whether the site was on a floodplain or whether
it was in sight of low-flying aircraft, proximity to fibre-optic
network, those sorts of criteria, and we went out to consultation
on those criteria. Those were the criteria that applied to the
consultation.
Q70 John Cummings: How
extensive was the consultation?
Mrs Winckler: We consulted Fire
and Rescue Authorities and Regional Management Boards and the
Practitioners' Forum.
Q71 John Cummings: How
will the location of the RCCs affect joint working in the future?
Will the new RCCs be co-located with police stations or other
emergency service control centres?
Mr Evans: There are no plans to
do that at the moment. The liaison between the new RCCs and other
agencies will work the way in which it does now but it will be
improved because of the technology. The only example that is different
from that is in terms of when the London control room comes in
we are working on whether or not there is any extra co-operation
we need in terms of preparing for the London Olympics.
Q72 John Cummings: I want
to come back very briefly to the consultation. It was basically
a closed form of consultation, you did not go out to public consultation,
was it not?
Mrs Winckler: We consulted Fire
and Rescue Authorities and Regional Management Boards. It was
a stakeholder consultation.
Q73 John Cummings: But
not a public consultation. It was an incestuous sort of consultation.
Mr Evans: With the main stakeholder
within the service.
Mrs Winckler: The documents are
on the website.
Q74 John Cummings: Who
did you consult with? The police? Ambulance?
Mrs Winckler: We did not consult—
Q75 John Cummings: Local
authorities? Councils?
Mrs Winckler: We consulted the
Fire and Rescue Authorities. We did not consult the police and
the ambulance but the criteria were drawn up in conjunction with
those who deal with national security, so to the extent that those
affect police and ambulance they would have been relevant.
Q76 John Cummings: So
was it just a paper exercise to give it a smattering of consultation?
Mr Evans: No. It was consultation
with those members of the stakeholder community who are most interested
in it.
Q77 John Cummings: Not
the public? Not the local authorities representing the public?
Mr Evans: Local authorities, elected
members contributed to it.
Q78 John Cummings: They
were invited to?
Mrs Winckler: Yes.
Q79 John Cummings: So
local authorities were invited, that is the question I am asking?
Mrs Winckler: Yes, they were consulted
and did respond.
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