Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-219)
MS V SHAWCROSS,
MR KEN
KNIGHT AND
MR RON
DOBSON
31 JANUARY 2006
Q200 Alison Seabeck: Are
they cost effective?
Mr Dobson: Absolutely; yes.
Q201 Chair: So it is not
related to the Regional Control Centre at all? It is not a technological
fix.
Ms Shawcross: The technological
aspect is that we have started to use mobile phone technology,
talking to the mobile phone operators. We do now have an arrangement
for mobile phone abusers to be warned and then cut off. That has
been extremely helpful.
Q202 Alison Seabeck: You
have expressed concerns, a slight impatience almost, that the
system is a tad overdue. Are you clear what arrangements will
be put in place to meet the interim gap which is likely to occur
here?
Mr Dobson: London had already
instigated a project to replace our analogue mobile communication
system prior to us being involved in the FireLink project. A couple
of years ago we stopped that procurement and engaged in the FireLink
project. The abortive costs were picked up by the ODPM. We are
keen for FireLink to be delivered on time in 2008 because we see
a range of operational benefits in relation to the delivery of
that system, but in the meantime we have a requirement to ensure
business continuity and operational continuity and therefore we
have been maintaining our existing analogue system. We have also
recently extended the lease on our hilltop sites, so that if there
is a further delay, there will be no impact on our business continuity;
we can still continue to deliver our service.
Q203 Alison Seabeck: But
there will be cost implications.
Mr Dobson: Yes, there could be
some cost implications. I do not have the exact figures, but there
certainly could be some cost implications.
Q204 Alison Seabeck: In
terms of the delay and your discussions with ODPM, once they give
the go-ahead, what is your feeling about the precise time lapse
before the roll-out will actually happen and when it will actually
be on stream?
Mr Dobson: From our discussions
with ODPM, we are hopeful that we should be one of the first authorities
which actually gets rolled out as part of FireLink. We are hopeful
that if the project does deliver on time, which we hope it will,
we shall also be rolled out during 2008; as early in 2008 as we
can be.
Q205 Alison Seabeck: Have
you had any reassurances from ODPM that they will meet any of
the additional costs?
Mr Dobson: Not at the moment.
We are continuing to press for those.
Q206 Lyn Brown: The ODPM
argue that FireLink, FiReControl and New Dimension are essential
factors to strengthen our fire resilience. Do you agree or do
you think it could have been done better?
Ms Shawcross: The Civil Contingencies
Act and the New Dimension programme have been absolutely central
to driving forward our ability to deal with resilience issues,
but that is not the end of the story. Now we have an integrated
risk management planning process which allows us to collect data
and plan on it and act on it, which is not how it used to be in
the Fire Service, we also have our own risk assessment which means
that we took the view that equipment and training would be required
which would be complementary to the national programme but specific
to London and I am sure that would be the same elsewhere in the
country. To some extent, that is reflected in the financial split.
The Government have provided certain kinds of equipment and training
and we have been very much involved in that programme and supported
it. Equally, we have upgraded and increased some of our own equipment
which was prepared to deal with the Tube in particular, because
we see that as a particular risk.
Mr Dobson: Part of our intervention
in the risk management plan, the London Safety Plans one and two,
is that one of the risks that London has faced, and we are there
to assist with, is the terrorist threat. What we have done is
to make sure that in London's Safety Plan the deployment of our
resources, and additional funding which we have attracted in order
to increase our resilience, is focused towards that terrorist
threat.
Mr Knight: Alongside the Government's
New Dimension programme, of which you have heard, which we are
a key part of as clearly much of the critical risk still is in
the capital city, we also have quite separately a London resilience
programme, which has identified additional equipment and resources,
as you might expect.
Q207 Lyn Brown: Have you
been adequately consulted over the programmes? Do you think you
have been involved?
Ms Shawcross: We have been involved
both politically and technically very centrally right from the
beginning of the programme and we have had no difficulties of
communication. The only issue there has been for the Fire Authority
has been that of finances. There is a view in the Fire Authority,
which I share, that we think there should have been a greater
level of subsidy coming from the national pot to London because
at the moment we do not get a capital city allowance as part of
our programme of funding, as the Metropolitan Police do. Certainly
there are special risks in London and we also play a particular
role in supporting the rest of the country when there are major
incidents.
Q208 Dr Pugh: You are
saying you are dealt with on differentially worse terms than the
Metropolitan Police. Is that the point you are making?
Ms Shawcross: There is not a component
of the Fire Authority's funding in London that is specific to
the fact that we have a capital city risk, whereas there is for
the Metropolitan Police. Whether or not the Met get enough, I
do not know.
Q209 Dr Pugh: But you
are not a security force in the same way the police are.
Ms Shawcross: No, but we are of
course looking after sensitive national institutions in the same
way that the police are. We attended the fire at Buckingham Palace.
Q210 Dr Pugh: Would you
accept that people in the northern cities who have funded fire
brigades and things like that, which they probably believe are
under-funded in many respects, would in a way regard it as special
pleading by the capital city, would they not?
Mr Knight: The risks remain throughout
the United Kingdom, but it is generally accepted in the security
service and elsewhere that the predominant risk, in fact the predominant
population, is here in the capital city and that is why there
is a special arrangement in place for the London resilience programme.
The point being made, and it has been a cross-party point being
made within the Fire Authority, that the additional expenditure,
for example, on the equipment used on 7 July, none of which was
New Dimension equipment, was all London resilience equipment,
funded from LFEPA and it is felt that actually there ought to
be some recognition of the capital city role in terrorist attacks.
Q211 Dr Pugh: Do you think,
on an evidence basis, mile for mile, you could demonstrate that
there are in fact additional costs incurred simply by virtue of
being a capital city that are not there by virtue of being a city.
Mr Knight: I am confident.
Ms Shawcross: Yes.
Q212 Dr Pugh: Have you
submitted the evidence to ODPM and tried to sustain that argument?
Ms Shawcross: We constantly try
to sustain that argument, but we have never persuaded them of
the principle.
Q213 Dr Pugh: And what
do they say?
Ms Shawcross: We have never persuaded
them of the principle.
Q214 Sir Paul Beresford: Do
you know the cost of CPA and other inspections?
Ms Shawcross: We were not subject
to CPA. We were inspected as part of an IPA project which was
looking at us in the context of the Greater London Authority.
There was an attempt to translate those scores and those findings
into CPA terms, but there was some mismatch. I could not tell
you the costs off the top of my head, but we can report that.
Q215 Mr Hands: Going back
to resilience again, what specific operational changes were learned
or came about as a result of 7/7 and 21/7 in terms of reacting
to major events? One of the things that strikes me is that the
nature of the two attacks was actually fairly close to what had
been trained for and what many commentators and outsiders had
predicted. How well set do you think you are for something that
is really totally unprepared for, that people have not really
thought of yet?
Mr Knight: You are absolutely
right that the exercises and training that we did before that
event and continue to do with the other agencies not only showed
their worth but worked extremely well. You are absolutely right
that the Osiris exercise in Bank Underground was a very similar
exercise to the reality; same number of crews and so on. What
it showed us was that four multiple major incidents, requiring
some 200 firefighters simultaneously deployed, required a very
fast strategic response to an incident of that type and that the
command and control facilities put in place effectively. What
it also showed us is that our integrated risk management planning
of moving pumping appliances from the centre of London on the
old wartime standards to a risk-based approach to some outer London
areas also proved its worth and worked extremely well and we had
a very fast response from the whole of London. Where we were found
wanting, and we have highlighted this to the Fire Authority, was
that although we recognised we had taken delivery of ten fire
rescue units for the London resilience programme, which are not
part of the New Dimension programme, we advised the authority
that a further six would be required in order to maintain the
appropriate level for an escalating level of attack. I am pleased
to say that with the authority's support, and indeed the Major
of London's support, that is now part of the forthcoming budget.
I would just ask Mr Dobson, who has led on London resilience throughout
the process, to add any points.
Mr Dobson: The point I should
like to make really is just how integrated we are in terms of
the threat assessment of the risks that London faces with the
other emergency services, particularly the Metropolitan Police
and also the security services. The sorts of other threats, if
you term the attacks of 7/7 and 21/7 as conventional explosives
or conventional attacks, the other sorts of unconventional attacks
which may involve chemical agents, are the sorts of things we
have also been planning for and training for and the brigade has
been equipped through the New Dimension programme and through
the authority's own provision of resources to deal with those
threats as well. If you take Osiris in September 2003 as an example,
it was not just an attack on the Tube system, it was also an attack
involving a chemical agent. All the firefighters who were involved
in that were using gas tight chemical protection suits and other
chemical procedures. The exercises we have run in London over
recent years show we are aware of the other threats, we have prepared
for those and we are prepared for them.
Q216 Mr Hands: In terms
of preparing for the unexpected, which I know sounds a bit of
an oxymoron, has anybody studied the work last year of the 9/11
Commission which was almost a case study in the unexpected and
at that time, in a totally different city, but the complete breakdown
of fire and police interaction in New York City and whether that
might be repeated in the event of a similarly unexpected catastrophe
here?
Mr Knight: I am confident it will
not and I am very well aware, not only of that report, but of
that relationship. Just to reassure you, we have very active contacts
with the other capital cities such as Paris, Berlin and Madrid
and we are mirroring that sort of activity. I say why I am confident:
we have a longstanding arrangement through the London Emergency
Service Liaison Panel, LESLP, which has a clarity about the roles
of emergency services and local authorities and others and it
was clear that no-one was tripping over each other on 7 July or
21 July as everyone was clear what their role was. We have since
had many visits from all parts of the world to share that experience
with them and we have a duty to do so. I am confident we do not
have those same tensions regarding primacy at a major incident
of that kind.
Q217 Mr Hands: You state
in your submission that you have made good progress in improving
resilience. How easy is that to say in the absence of another
major incident?
Mr Knight: We should not at all
be complacent to say that we are at the end of such attacks. We
would say, professionally, that we are probably in the middle
of such attacks and we have to remain prepared and prepared for
a very long time. Our continuous improvement in equipment, in
training and preparedness, along with all the other emergency
services and through the London Regional Resilience Forum which
is particularly dynamic in looking at a range of risks, sometimes
natural disasters, sometimes terrorist attack, will continue to
maintain that readiness. We were not found wanting on 7 July,
I am pleased to say, and I am confident we shall not be found
wanting in the future.
Q218 Lyn Brown: In your
evidence, you state that you have a target to reach level five
of the local government equality scheme as soon as is practical.
That is a fairly long timescale. I just wondered what level you
are at now.
Ms Shawcross: The Fire Authority
does have a very strong equalities function department and a programme
and we took a view that we were not in the business of ticking
boxes and jumping other people's hurdles. We are in the business
of really changing the culture of our organisation and its recruitment
and improving its outreach and making sure the community fire
safety work we were doing and the social engagement programme
have really met people's genuine needs. We decided that the change
management that that needed would have to be paced. We could have
accelerated and ticked the level five box very quickly, but we
are not going to do that until we are confident that we have successfully
implemented the change we needed to make all the way through the
service. If the Committee wanted to visit the service, you would
be confident that what we are actually doing is not just superficial,
on paper; we are actually making a change.
Q219 Lyn Brown: Why do
you think it is harder to achieve a workforce which is representative
of the community it serves for uniformed staff rather than non-uniformed
staff?
Ms Shawcross: It will get easier.
It is important that you look at equalities issues as part of
a diagnosis of the core health of the management of your organisation.
Since we now have the Fire Services Act, under the new settlement
a lot of old human resources practices which were imposed on us
have gone. For example, there used to be a disciplinary code which
meant that there was a sort of court-martial style procedure,
an external officer would come in to investigate a complaint and
it would almost be dealt with between the firefighter and their
watch manager or whoever it was, as though it was an argument
rather than an issue of line management. We have now been able
to make those basic legal and structural procedural changes, which
will give us the possibility of improving the grass-roots quality
of our human resources management. That, in my view, has been
where the problem is and so, 18 months on from that, that is where
we shall start to see the improvements. The uniform service has,
in the past, suffered from bullying, sexism, a culture which excluded
people and we can only address that culture by actually improving
the quality of the line management, improving the skills and the
empowerment of the line management all the way through the organisation
and therefore become able to implement the policies that the Fire
Authority has. I see it as a key indicator of the health of the
organisation and we are moving on with it now; we are starting
to make some very good progress.
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