Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR ALUN
EVANS, SIR
GRAHAM MELDRUM,
MR DAVE
LAWRENCE AND
MRS MARIE
WINCKLER
30 JANUARY 2006
Q80 Anne Main: What lessons
have been learnt for the Fire and Rescue Service from the attacks
on London on 7 and 21 July and also the Buncefield disaster? How
has the Government responded and how has the Fire Service responded?
Mr Evans: The Fire Service responded
extremely well to both of those incidents you mentioned. In terms
of London there has been a lessons learnt process on all of the
issues from command and control, from multi-agency working, from
sustainability of resources. In Buncefield we have done a lot
of work on the mobilising of other Fire and Rescue Services from
throughout the country, liaison with local authorities, regional
working in response to major crises, effects of that crisis on
the oil supply industry and aviation fuel to Heathrow, and there
will be a full lessons learnt document on that within a few months.
Q81 Anne Main: What tests
have been made of the equipment procured under the New Dimension
programme? Have staff had sufficient training in using this equipment?
Does that training extend to retained firefighters?
Mr Evans: There is an enormous
programme of training and testing of the equipment to test its
robustness, and that is carried out in partnership with the Fire
and Rescue Service, they have come and looked at all of the equipment
in prototype before we bring it in. We have a full programme of
training funded by the Department so that Fire and Rescue Services
do not have any extra costs incurred. The Retained Fire Service
is involved in this process.
Q82 Anne Main: Many of
the current reforms have been framed against the backdrop of 9/11
and 7/7. What evidence does the Government have for believing
that these reforms are equally appropriate say, for example, in
rural areas as they are in metropolitan areas which might be perceived
as having a greater risk of a terrorist attack but rural areas
have their own particular needs?
Mr Evans: I think that is quite
a good point. Rural areas have just as much threat, if not possibly
more, from natural disaster, floods and things like that. If you
look at the experience of the last 18 months, we had the Boscastle
floods in the summer of 2004, the Carlisle floods in 2005, we
had 7/7 in the summer and we had Buncefield. Three of those were
outside of Central London and one was in Central London. I think
the response has been equally good from the Fire and Rescue Service
and other agencies working together in all of those. I would say
that we have a flexible and appropriate response mechanism and
that New Dimension equipment, for example the high volume pumps,
has been used at Carlisle and Buncefield and if they had not been
there we would not have had the capability to deal with those
two disasters.
Q83 Mr Olner: Is it not
frightening that the larger you grow, you only have one form of
resilience? The fact is if you have got many Fire Authorities
and they all build in some resilience that means you are able
to tap on a national basis the spare of all those little bits
but if you have just got a few big bits there is not going to
be enough resilience to go round, is there?
Mr Evans: I think there is a balance
between how much you want to have capacity in every Fire and Rescue
Authority and how much you develop this on a risk basis. As I
said right at the beginning, one of the things on New Dimension,
which is accepted across the piece from fire officers to local
authorities to FBU, is the need to plan for New Dimension type
incidents on a regional basis. In the crises that we have had,
like Carlisle, like Buncefield, we have needed to bring in resources
from across the country but we have always had enough resources.
Q84 Mr Olner: Will you
in the future when you have not got so many Fire Authorities?
Will you have enough resilience in the future?
Mr Evans: We believe we will have.
Q85 Mr Olner: It is only
a belief?
Mr Evans: I cannot give you a
cast iron guarantee, we do not know what crises we are going to
have. The interesting thing about Buncefield was the risk assessment
had been for a fire with one tanker blaze but in actual fact we
had 20 and Hertfordshire and other Fire Services put that out
and we had enough foam from across the whole country. I do not
know whether Sir Graham wants to say anything more on preparing
for disasters we have not yet thought about.
Sir Graham Meldrum: I think the
proof of those major disasters so far has been the value of providing
the equipment for the New Dimension of terrorism project regionally
provided throughout the whole of the Fire and Rescue Service.
What we have done is supplemented the capability for dealing with
incidents. Before 9/11, and questioned by the minister after 9/11,
we had to admit for that huge scale of incident we did not have
the equipment that would have met that demand for high volume
pumping, for instance. Now it has been provided it was possible
to deploy it at Buncefield and extinguish the fire. Previously
in a number of areas we had to address the situation on a new
scale, such as mass decontamination of the public. I think we
have gone from having a very limited capability prior to 9/11,
because that was how it was perceived as a risk, to now possibly
the best in the world in terms of our capability for dealing with
such an incident.
Q86 Dr Pugh: Moving to
fire prevention, your written evidence says that prevention culture
is now "embedded in the FRS". Is that a pious hope or
are you looking at some real evidence that shows that is so?
Mr Evans: The fire prevention
mechanisms that we have done and the investment in fire prevention,
arson control and other initiatives show that there is wide experience
across all different authorities in fire prevention and our challenge,
if there is one, is to ensure that best practice is shared as
widely as possible because not all 46 authorities are as good
as each other.
Q87 Dr Pugh: It is differently
embedded in different places?
Mr Evans: Different qualities
of embeddedness, yes.
Sir Graham Meldrum: In the last
ten years we have seen the move away from the Fire Service looking
at purely legal fire prevention, fire safety measures and looking
at the role simply from intervention to one of being prevention
in the true sense of the word. We have made a huge commitment
towards the whole of preventing fire in the first place with the
formation of the Community Fire Safety Centre. That has resulted
in the very pleasing result of seeing a fall taking place in fire
deaths to the lowest this year we have seen for 45 years.
Q88 Dr Pugh: In terms
of that very desirable development, do you think the new resilience
duties the FRS have got are going to impact upon or distract from
that mission, as it were?
Sir Graham Meldrum: I think the
fact that out of all the changes that have taken place the new
Fire and Rescue Service Act, the 2004 Act, put a requirement upon
the Fire and Rescue Authorities to ensure they carried out community
fire safety changed the whole way people look at this. In the
past it was something you could do, it was an add-on, now it is
a duty on every Fire and Rescue Authority in the country to carry
out community fire safety work. It is not something people are
doing reluctantly. There are some amazing initiatives taking place
up and down the land. There have been 330,000 home fire safety
visits taking place where smoke detectors have been fitted into
people's homes, particularly people who vulnerable, the elderly.
There have been some amazing initiatives with young people in
the community as well. It is an amazing change of culture that
has taken place in the Fire Service over a very short period indeed.
Q89 Sir Paul Beresford: Is
there prevention built into the funding formula?
Mr Lawrence: Yes, there is. One
of the huge changes, both in terms of the finance and the activity
of FRAs, is the prevention role is now seen as being equal and
in some areas more important than the intervention role. In other
words, if we can prevent it happening in the first place this
is clearly the way forward. Local Risk Management Plans and the
results of those do feed into the finance formula.
Q90 Sir Paul Beresford: So
the old system of more fires, more money is sliding to one side?
Mr Lawrence: Indeed so.
Q91 Dr Pugh: Just to pick
up on some minor issues relating to prevention. Is there a greater
role for the retained firefighters in this particular line of
work? Is there not an importance to be attached to how firefighters
are trained because obviously teaching people how to prevent fires
is rather different from rescuing people from fires and different
personal qualities are required?
Mr Evans: In addition, some of
the activities of the Fire Service are now made a legal duty,
including rescuing people from road traffic accidents, for example.
They take up more time than fighting fires. It is important to
get the balance of training right between traditional fire fighting
and these other duties and preparing for New Dimension type disasters.
Sir Graham Meldrum: It is true
to say that in the new entrant training course the community fire
safety aspect plays a big role. Also, the Government has put a
lot of money into it. There has been a £25 million grant
to Fire Authorities to fund smoke detectors in vulnerable communities,
11.3 million put into arson and, of course, the national television
advertising campaign, one of which is running at the moment, which
we found have had a considerable impact on the reduction of fire
deaths.
Q92 Dr Pugh: I am not
sure if you dealt with the issue of retained firefighters.
Sir Graham Meldrum: The retained
firefighters in many ways are the true community fire safety officers
because they are part of the community. We have found throughout
the country some very good initiatives have come forward from
retained firefighters to take forward community fire safety within
the area they serve.
Q93 Dr Pugh: It is an
increasing role.
Sir Graham Meldrum: It is an important
part of their work.
Mr Lawrence: We did have a major
review of the Retained Service which reported in January 2004
and that is now with the Chief Fire Officers Association and ourselves
to drive forward. I would like to echo that, I think the retained
are an absolutely vital part of the service for the future and
how we develop that from the community safety perspective is one
of the key challenges over the next year or two.
Q94 Chair: How soon do
you think we can see concrete changes as a result of the discussions
that you are having with the chief fire officers?
Mr Lawrence: On the retained?
Q95 Chair: Yes. Is that
just going to sit there or are we going to see some action?
Mr Lawrence: We are going to see
some action.
Q96 Chair: How soon?
Mr Lawrence: The position at the
moment is that the Chief Fire Officers Association are preparing
a business case for putting in priority order what came out of
the retained review. I would expect that to be with us in a matter
of weeks.
Q97 Chair: And then?
Mr Lawrence: Then there will go
from that an action plan to be discussed on taking it forward.
I would expect over the next month or two to see some real developments
on that front.
Mr Evans: If I might add one final
point on the retained. One of the issues is recruitment of retained
and it is a big challenge to make sure we keep up the level of
recruitment because it has become increasingly difficult to encourage
people in some areas into the Retained Service.
Q98 Lyn Brown: Despite
the fact that diversity was specifically mentioned in this Committee's
Terms of Reference, there is no mention made in the ODPM's written
submission of this issue. Furthermore, the ODPM Annual Report
for 2005 states that the Service Delivery Targets to increase
the percentage of black and minority ethnic communities' representatives
and women amongst staff was not met. Can you tell me why the Department
did not meet its SDA 2000 targets on increasing the numbers of
women and ethnic minority within the service?
Mr Evans: Progress on meeting
the targets clearly has not been good enough and is something
we have got to address over the coming years. The one thing I
would say in response to your question, which is not ducking the
issue, is that there are some authorities, and I will pick out
London in particular, who have done very good work of going into
the ethnic communities and recruiting from those areas. Although
the progress has not been good enough, has not been nearly good
enough, there are pockets of good performance and good practice
around the country and one of the big challenges is to make sure
those aspects of good practice are replicated much more widely.
It is a long-term problem and it is something that needs extremely
good communication and good project management from the centre
working with local authorities.
Q99 Lyn Brown: Why did
the Department not set itself new targets?
Mr Evans: I am not sure I can
answer that.
Sir Graham Meldrum: We are actually
reviewing the targets now with the stakeholders. They have examined
the previous targets, looked at the progress that has been made
and there have been a number of reasons for this, one of which
is there has been quite a reduction in recruitment that has taken
place because of changes in the Fire and Rescue Service. As we
speak we are preparing a report that will go to our ministers
within the next few days which will look at the employment target
strategies and do a milestone review, point out where we are and
suggesting that working with the stakeholders we need to review
the targets, not to make them stretched targets but achievable
targets. Particularly with the recruitment of women firefighters,
the target was set ambitiously at 2010 at 15% of the workforce
and it has not been met, and is not going to be met. Rather than
a target where everybody just says, "We are not going to
meet it", because of the change in the way recruitment is
taking place, we want to set a target that will stretch but will
be achievable.
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