Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-223)

MS V SHAWCROSS, MR KEN KNIGHT AND MR RON DOBSON

31 JANUARY 2006

Q220 Lyn Brown: Do you think you have lessons for other Fire Authorities to learn?

  Ms Shawcross: Obviously we do share practice within the Fire Service and we go on visits and we look at what other services are doing and we invite people to look at what we are doing; not just within the ODPM's beacon project, but outside it. Sometimes that is more interesting, because it is less structured and you can go where you need to go. We have tried to target people with some specific outreach programmes and given women taster events, that kind of programme. I have to say, to some extent the equal opportunities law is not terribly helpful because it does put an iron curtain down in front of some of the practices you would want to carry out. We took legal advice, counsel's opinion, very early on as to how far we could go in trying actively to promote recruitment of women and ethnic minorities. A core issue, from talking to the women in the service, has always been what experience women get when they work in the service. They have always had a really appallingly bad experience and it is only now that we are starting to improve that experience. Women are not stupid and they talk to each other and they ask women who work in the service what it is like. I feel confident now that we are getting to grips with the culture of the organisation and, with improved management, that the women are starting to get a better experience and that will flow through into better recruitment. We have nearly doubled the number of women we had five years ago, but it was from an extremely low base.

Q221 Lyn Brown: You state that you wanted the Government to review their national targets and to ensure they are based on empirical evidence. What leads you to think that the targets are not based on empirical evidence and how precisely would you change those targets?

  Ms Shawcross: We noticed very early on and I would echo the comments of our colleagues in Devon, that the targets did not seem to be based on any understanding of how there was a flow-through of staff within the service and what mechanisms for change were available to us. They are simply unrealistic because they do not reflect the number of posts that we are advertising and recruiting. Equally, they do not reflect the fact that, as my colleague from Devon said, when you advertise a job you do get a majority of traditional workforce white men applying; it is an extremely popular career amongst that group and you cannot dismiss those applications. They have to be looked at and dealt with. The point we would make is that not all the tools we needed went with the targets.

Q222 Lyn Brown: How would you change the targets?

  Ms Shawcross: We should want to—

  Mr Knight: It is that lack of empirical evidence. We are absolutely committed to the diverse workforce just to deliver the core business we want to. We are having discussions with the ODPM and certainly more realistic targets for us would be around the number of joiners, not the number in the establishment. So, for example, we would be more satisfied to talk about 25% BME joiners and 12% women joiners by 2009, not the proportion of the workforce which is so static.

Q223 Lyn Brown: Given the evidence of your Chair, maybe another one would be how many you were able to retain.

  Ms Shawcross: The retention has improved; that has been something we have been looking at all the way through and retention has improved. We also looked at the disproportionate number of ethnic minorities who were suffering disciplinary action. We have tried to be very open about all of that programme. I agree with the Commissioner, that we should much prefer to have our targets cast around what we are actually doing. If we have a year when there is no recruitment, then—

  Mr Knight: There needs to be some sophistication there as well. How many are attracted to join? How many join? How many stay? It is a very blunt instrument just to talk about such targets as the number in the establishment. It is joiners and the sub-set below that counts drilling down into what makes people want to join and stay.

  Chair: Thank you very much for your evidence. I am sure the Committee would like to take the opportunity of expressing our thanks to you and the other emergency services for dealing with 7/7 and 21/7. All of us were here in London and fortunately, as far as I know, no Member of this House suffered harm. Clearly we are very appreciative of the way in which the emergency services responded to those two events.





 
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