Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
BOB WILKINSON,
MR PETER
HOLLAND AND
MR CHRIS
KENNY
31 JANUARY 2006
Q240 Chair: Is the new
system less flexible than the one you have at present then?
Mr Kenny: Our provider is now
the preferred provider for FireLink, so we are now in a situation
where we are very hopeful that the technologies are very, very
similar, if not identical. Before then, we thought we might lose
a lot of technology in this solution.
Q241 Chair: So the concerns
that you did have were before you knew that the preferred supplier
was essentially the person that you were already being supplied
by?
Mr Kenny: The concerns still remain
about how that transition is managed, but certainly our concerns
are more to do with the difficulties we faced in bringing in Airwave
and knowing that those same challenges will be faced by the national
project with FireLink. We are keen to help and support the national
project to ensure the lessons that we have learned are not going
to create difficulties for the national project.
Q242 Chair: Do you think
it would be possible for the national roll-out to avoid some of
the problems you experienced because of learning from your experience?
Mr Holland: We certainly hope
so.
Mr Kenny: We are engaging with
the project and we do have good relations with the FireLink project
to be fair. One thing we fear is that the amount of change that
is going to occur in quite a short period of time will be a challenge
for any organisation to absorb with FireLink and regional controls
and change in procedures all happening simultaneously.
Mr Holland: May I just make one
other plea, because it is something which is not included in the
FireLink project at the moment? The handheld radios which we use
on what we call the fire ground, when we are at an incident, are
not part of the FireLink project at the moment and from an interoperability
point of view, it is essential that they are brought within the
FireLink project for the future; that gives us the ability to
talk to adjoining fire and rescue services.
Q243 Alison Seabeck: You
say you have had Airwave and you were very positive about it,
about how it worked and you are competent in that system. We heard
evidence yesterday from people who said that, where police forces
had a similar system, they have had an awful lot of problems.
Did you have any initial teething problems with it which were
worrying or has it been plain sailing?
Mr Holland: Yes, we did have teething
problems, but they were soon ironed out. We rolled out just after
the police did. The reason we moved over was because the police
were moving over. We were going to be losing our radio if we did
not move with them.
Q244 Alison Seabeck: So
your experiences generally were positive?
Mr Holland: Extremely positive.
Q245 Alison Seabeck: On
the interoperability element and the handheld units, I assume
this is just purely for the Fire Service. You would not want to
have that open to other services like the police to feed into
your system. That would need to be separate.
Mr Holland: No, we do feed into
the police. We can talk to the police on our mainstream radio.
The handheld radios that our officers have can talk to the police,
but we do not have it for wider use on every fire engine, for
example. Those radios are really for talking to—
Q246 Alison Seabeck: Are
there clear lines of command at an incident? The last thing you
want is somebody from the police force trying to tell you what
to do.
Mr Holland: You would be on a
different channel.
Q247 Chair: Pursuing the
argument about these hand-held appliances, presumably you are
not alone in Fire Authorities in believing that it should be part
of the system.
Mr Holland: I read through the
submissions before I came here today and several of the submissions
that you have are actually in support of that.
Q248 Chair: So why have
you been unable to persuade the ODPM?
Mr Holland: It is cost. You are
talking about a significant amount of additional money on the
project.
Q249 Chair: If it is not
implemented at the start, would that prevent it from ever being
implemented, or could it be added on afterwards?
Mr Holland: It could be added
on, for sure, yes.
Q250 Lyn Brown: Does your
recruitment freeze extend to the retained firefighters?
Mr Holland: No, it does not. It
was brought in in August 2003, with some reluctance I might add,
but it certainly impacted on our ability to work towards our targets.
Q251 Lyn Brown: Do other
Fire Authorities have frozen recruitment amongst front-line staff?
Mr Holland: Almost every fire
and rescue service has reduced the number of whole-time staff
they employ over the last couple or three years. Yes, it would
be fair to say that.
Q252 Lyn Brown: Can you
tell me whether or not your Fire Authority faces particular difficulties
trying to increase representation of black and minority ethnic
communities?
Mr Holland: We certainly do and
I am clear that the freeze in recruitment was a major setback.
We had just started recruiting about three months before that
and we had been very successful in getting applications from under-represented
groups, so it was really a very difficult decision, as you might
imagine. We have recently increased our staffing in community
fire safety work. These are non-operational members of staff who
wear uniforms and go out into the community. Of the 26 we have
recently taken on, 10 are females and five are from black and
ethnic minority communities; we are really pleased about that,
and hopefully, when we lift the freeze on recruitment, which will
be very soon, we shall be able to extend that to the whole-time
staff as well.
County Councillor Wilkinson: We
have to support the view that London had, that the target should
be the people we are going to employ, rather than the total service
now. Especially in our case, we are employing people on a contract
which is different from a firefighter's contract. They are only
small numbers but there are large numbers of ethnic minorities
and females within that small number.
Mr Kenny: May I bring in another
point as well? The thing about modernisation is matching skills
to posts, so not all new posts are going to be operational firefighter
posts. When you look at increasing diversity in the organisation,
to limit those performance indicators just to firefighter posts
is flawed. A great benefit could be got from widening those parameters.
Mr Holland: If
you look at why the targets are there, it is for the wider community's
perception of the Fire and Rescue Service. These people are working
out in the community, so from a perception point of view they
will see black and Asian firefighters, female firefighters out
in uniform. It is really important to include them.
Q253 Chair: Is there not
a danger that it might encourage further segmentation in the workforce
so that you would have good representation of women and ethnic
minorities in the lower paid part of the workforce, common in
many organisations I have to say.
Mr Kenny: One thing I should say
is that you often get a transition from those posts into the operational
side. It is a way of introducing people to the organisation; it
is certainly a stepping stone. You often find that is the case
with the retained service, for example, so I still think it is
very much a positive step.
Mr Holland: We should certainly
not want it to be seen in any was as a negative. So long as it
is taken into account in the overall numbers, you could separate
whole-time staff, separate non-operational staff if you like,
but I am very happy to be measured on our performance on recruiting
firefighters once we start recruiting.
Q254 Lyn Brown: In the
London evidence one of the things they talked about very bravely
and openly was the culture of sexism and racism which prevailed.
Do you have similar experience?
Mr Holland: We did a cultural
audit about four years ago in the service and, not surprisingly,
the Fire and Rescue Service reflects society. What the audit did
show was that behaviour is much better in the Fire and Rescue
Service whilst people are at work than outside. There is a management
inevitably around that which is good news, but you are talking
about a huge cultural change.
Q255 Lyn Brown: London
talked about changing the way their human resources operated and
dealt with issues. Instead of considering something to be an argument
between two individuals, they saw it as something which might
need to go into a disciplinary process. Have you gone through
the same cultural change?
Mr Holland: Yes, we have. We would
rather things did not end up going down a disciplinary route,
but it depends on the nature of the issue. We have spent a lot
of time and effort in the six and a half years I have been Chief
of Lancashire engaging with staff and having workshops and discussion
groups to try to change people's perceptions.
Q256 Alison Seabeck: You
talked about the difference between behaviour at work and behaviour
out of work. Were you talking about behaviour out on a shout as
compared with behaviour in the downtime in the station? Are you
talking outside the station?
Mr Holland: There is absolutely
no evidence at all of any sexism, racism, homophobia when people
are—
Q257 Alison Seabeck: It
is just that it was not clear.
Mr Holland: I am sorry, it was
badly worded.
Q258 Dr Pugh: May I ask
you about the restructuring which is taking place in the other
emergency services which could create a problem, a headache for
you? Do you see co-terminosity between emergency services as the
ideal? If it is the ideal, how much of a disadvantage is its absence?
Mr Holland: We have co-terminosity
in Lancashire with all three services and it works extremely well.
We are about to lose the Ambulance Service; on 1 July they are
becoming a North West Ambulance Service and it looks as though
the police are going to combine with Cumbria. That disappoints
me and it is a challenge for us to ensure that we do not lose
the effective relationship that we do have across the services.
It makes it more difficult, but it happens in other parts of the
country now. There are only six or seven services where there
is co-terminosity across all three services.
Q259 Dr Pugh: So you are
testifying to the benefits of co-terminosity. You do presumably
accept that it is an ideal, but there is going to be a fair amount
of discussion, a fair amount of consultation before the position
resolves itself in Lancashire or anywhere else and meanwhile you
are going to have to make plans for the future within your own
service. Is the uncertainty with regard to other types of restructuring
going to be a handicap whilst you are trying to think ahead?
Mr Holland: Long-term planning
is clearly a concern. We are reassured and our Chairman was told
this morning by ODPM officials that there will not be a regional
Fire and Rescue Service. It seems difficult to comprehend when
regional control rooms are being built and the Ambulance Service
is becoming a regional one. It seems almost inevitable that it
is going to happen to the Fire and Rescue Service in future. It
does create uncertainty, there is no question.
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