Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460-475)
MR PHIL
WOOLAS, MP AND
JIM FITZPATRICK,
MP
13 FEBRUARY 2006
Q460 John Cummings: Would
it be correct to say that you only circulated the questionnaire
to determine what work was being carried out by fire control staff
after your key decisions had been made?
Jim Fitzpatrick: I think it is
very straightforward: because we anticipate that the control room
staff will be undertaking control room duties. The principal decision
is do we improve control mobilising arrangements by going to regional
control centres or not. Yes, we do, so we will do that. What were
the control room staff doing that will have to be undertaken by
other staff as and when that happens? They are not going to be
moving for another year or two years. We can look at this in second
light because it is less of a priority. It is not going to happen
tomorrow. It is going to happen down the line so we can afford
to do it as a secondary activity. The important thing is what
are the best arrangements for mobilisation and communications.
We believe that regional control is the best way forward so let
us get that on the road. How do we work it out? What are the governance
arrangements? What are the negotiating arrangements? What are
the staffing arrangements? These are very important, very detailed
questions. We have not got to that stage yet. That is starting
now.
Q461 John Cummings: You
say it is an ongoing exercise and it is going to take a considerable
time?
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yes.
Q462 Mr Olner: I take
it you are circulating that questionnaire to all trade unions
who are involved with control centres, because I distinctly got
the view from UNISON earlier on when they were giving evidence
that they had somehow been left out of the loop.
Jim Fitzpatrick: If they have,
that is inappropriate because there are different trade unions
representing control room staff in different parts of the country.
All unions should be involved in those discussions. Yes, we will
be circulating it to all.
Q463 Mr Olner: Could I
move on to the evidence we heard from the FBU, particularly about
the excellent work that they and all the fire fighters did in
dealing with the Buncefield fire, one of the largest peacetime
fires that we have had in the UK, certainly throughout Europe.
They did a most remarkable job in bringing it under control without
having regional fire centres so why do we need them?
Mr Woolas: Our view is that the
resilience fora that have been put into place in this country
as a result of the Civil Contingencies Act, which provides for
a regional framework to meet that capacity point which has been
operating in London for some time, operated very effectively in
the instance of Buncefield, as shown by the initial evidence.
The lessons learned are part of the ongoing process in the regional
resilience fora which I am responsible for. The initial lessons
show that that regional capacity was one of the reasons why we
were able to mobilise the resources, including the new dimension
pumping equipment, from across the region and indeed other regions.
We would not have been able to do that as quickly and as effectively
without that regional gold command structure.
Q464 Mr Olner: I accept
that entirely. One of the fears I have in particular and I think
the Committee might well have is that all the individual brigades
build in resilience. I would suggest that we coped with Buncefield
because of all the added on little bits of resilience. If we do
not have all the little bits of resilience, are we going to have
the resilience to deal with a major disaster at the end of the
day?
Mr Woolas: We are very proud of
the emergency services and the other non-999 services involved.
We are also privately very proud of the resilience infrastructure
that has been put into place in the last few years. Let me just
give you some figures. On the 999 system in response to Buncefield,
during the first hour after the incident, the Hertfordshire control
room took 54 calls. The control rooms of neighbouring fire and
rescue services took 152. There is no evidence to support the
allegation that rerouting centres failed during the incident but
we are looking into that. There is no doubt that the combination
of the new dimension equipment and the regional resilience framework
enabled us to get particularly the high volume pumping equipment—it
is not the first occasion on which it has been used through the
regional resilience forum—and it was one of the major reasons
why they were able to address the fire quickly. That does not
answer directly the point that you are making because of course
it was done without the regional control centres being in place.
One of our objectives—we have already established the first
one in Yorkshire, the National Coordinating Centre—is to
provide for regional resilience command and control through the
regional centres as well. All of the evidence, we think, and all
of the arguments are showing that pointing that increased capacity
at regional level is the best way forward and Buncefield, we think,
is an argument for that.
Q465 Martin Horwood: I
am concerned within this process that some very important babies
may be being thrown out with the bathwater. I have already told
you the example that I am going to cite which is the triservice
centre in Gloucestershire. The 2000 Mott Macdonald report into
the future of fire service control room communications in England
and Wales concluded that the pilot projects in Cleveland, Gloucestershire
and Wiltshire should continue to be strongly supported and encouraged.
The lessons learned from these pilots have already proved useful
and have informed the study. More will be learned as these projects
are implemented. They will provide an invaluable input to future
control room strategy. Clearly things have changed since 2000
and the importance of resilience is now very high up the agenda
and yet that model has been praised as recently as last year by
the Audit Commission in its comprehensive performance assessments.
Is there not a danger that you are abandoning something which
could have enhanced emergency resilience and is still at an innovative
stage by moving to these regional control centres which have less
potential for local coordination in emergency situations?
Jim Fitzpatrick: What we are not
saying is that there are not some very good control centres across
the country. Therefore, there will be disappointment that some
benefits and experiences will be lost. What we are saying is that
the regional control centre framework that we are proposing will
be better for the whole country. With the tricentre that exists
in Gloucester, as I mentioned earlier, people get the impression
that for some reason this is a coming together of the emergency
control centres for fire, police and ambulance, which obviously
as you would know, Mr Horwood, it is not. It is the three centres
sharing a building with glass partitions between the three, where
there is no common mobilising arrangement because there are different
requirements on the different services in terms of turn-out times,
in terms of attendance, in terms of all manner of different things.
They do at least share the building so there is a coming together.
We have been asked the question several times during the course
of recent months, when are we going to be in a position to physically
and technologically bring fire, ambulance and police emergency
control rooms together. I think that is an ambition. It is an
aim and it is a laudable one. If it could be technically feasible,
it should be done but we are probably a generation or two off
of that. At this point of time, we had been faced with the dilemma
which is that following on from the first Mott Macdonald report
and subsequent ones after 11 September, after the resilience requirements
laid down by civil contingencies legislation and the rest, an
examination of the regional control centres across the country
demonstrated that many of them did not have the latest technology,
let alone the arrangements that you are talking about for Gloucester.
They were in buildings which were not fit for purpose and they
were being underused. We have a template whereby we can have more
professionalism because we will be giving staff exclusively control
room duties to do, not the additional, separate duties they are
employed in, because there is a recognition that there is not
enough to keep them occupied fully by just answering emergency
calls. We will be providing the latest equipment and the ability
to make sure that we have backup in the event that there is any
difficulty with any of the controls, through interoperability
and the arrangements of inter-networking that we will be putting
in place in due course.
Q466 Martin Horwood: I
think you are wrong. For a start, there are economies to be achieved
at local level as opposed to regional level in the triservice
model. I am not just talking about Gloucester; I am talking about
the model which was being pioneered only in three places, so I
do not see how you can be properly assessing it at this stage
in the process and undermining it now when you have not really
seen it through. One of the advantages was the ability to achieve
a common location for command and control with cross-agency working
in an emergency situation. The fire service's opinion in their
written evidence is that it has improved resilience and the ability
to link up with national, regional infrastructures and that multi-agency
command facilities offer maximum operational flexibility. Their
opinion is very strongly that it improves resilience, not decreases
it.
Mr Woolas: This is a very serious
policy discussion and obviously we have had this discussion internally.
The update Mott Macdonald report, The Future of Fire and Rescue
Control Rooms in England and Wales, did recommend the nine
centres as the best option in the post-9/11 period. The dilemma
is this: it is clearly our goal that the 999 blue light services
should be able to talk to each other and we should have a capacity
to mobilise. In fact, there are some 54 agencies in the London
Resilience Forum that we mobilise. We are developing computer
technology communications for all of them to talk to each other
in the different scenarios that they may face. Given that everybody
will agree that it is desirable that you have a common communication
and common command and control in these situations, you then face
a dilemma. Do you join it up locally first or do you have the
police, fire, ambulance, coastguard and liaison with military
upon systems that work nationally before you then are able to
join them together? Two things drive this policy. One is the availability
of the technology. It is not possible at the moment to achieve
that joining up between the services. It would be with huge expenditure.
The development of technology we believe means that the fire control
and the FireLink projects will provide the route for that joining
up in the future. The second, big point is this: all of the advice
that we get—this is not in any way a political point—is
that you can only in this country have the capacity to deal with
major incidents at a regional level. In my period, we have triggered
that gold command, I think, on six occasions. Even in fairly small
incidences, Glastonbury flooding was one example where there was
a danger because of contamination caused by the flooding of the
chemical toilets. We did use the Regional Resilience Forum to
mobilise resources. In the Carlisle flooding, the Carlisle authorities
did not have the capacity to deal with that scale and it was only
because we had the regional resilience. This is inbuilt into our
strategy. The capacity issue at regional level, we think, is the
responsible thing to do but I do recognise that there is an alternative
policy you could pursue. That was our logic.
Q467 Dr Pugh: Co-responding
and cooperation between emergency services is obviously very good
practice and the FBU have said that they would like to see it
at national level. Could we have your take on that and also your
take on what is the issue that dogs that? That is that, when a
fire service turns up and does work which essentially is health
service work or something an ambulance service would do, there
is a cost incurred by the fire service which they may wish to
recharge somewhere else. If there is not a standardised way of
doing that, it obviously creates a certain amount of friction.
A third possible aspect to this question is: is not any arrangement
of co-working to some extent spoiled by the lack of coterminosity
between various authorities? Three things: what is your approach?
What is the view on the cost basis for it and how costs can be
recharged? Coterminosity is the other issue.
Mr Woolas: I keep hearing this
word "coterminosity". This is the sharing of geographical
boundaries between different authorities. As I said before, our
policy is to achieve coterminosity at local authority level wherever
possible, consistent with the three criteria I set before. Our
policy on this is that we obviously fully support the schemes
and wish to see all of the fire and rescue authorities working
in partnership with their local ambulance service NHS trust to
introduce such schemes. We are in close, regular contact with
the Department of Health through our own department, the ODPM,
to consider what can be done to encourage the two emergency services
to pursue co-responder schemes and the use of defibrillators by
fire fighters. For information, a total of 221 automated external
defibrillators have been provided to fire and rescue authorities
under the second phase of the national programme. The Draft Fire
and Rescue Framework 2006-2008 proposes that fire and rescue authorities
should actively review the opportunities for improving community
safety by implementing co-responder schemes in partnership with
other agencies. Obviously, the financial arrangements across authorities
can be a bar, organised where there is not coterminosity, but
part of our local area agreement framework, which is done at the
operative area, is intended to benefit exactly such cooperation.
Q468 Dr Pugh: Rather than
have a national system you prefer local agreements which could
lead to different regimes operating in different areas of the
country?
Jim Fitzpatrick: Because there
are different pressures in different localities. What we have
in different parts of the country are some fire authorities operating
first responder schemes, some co-responder schemes and some just
carrying defibrillators for which they do not have an agreement
or an arrangement. It is good to hear that the Fire Brigades Union
is being supportive just as they are not being supportive on the
new dimensions kit. They have not always been but they have had
some genuine concerns and still have some concerns about health
and safety issues.
Q469 Dr Pugh: To be fair
to them, they said they would like to see national proposals on
co-responding.
Jim Fitzpatrick: In Devon, for
example, and in some of the retained areas, the provision of ambulance
cover is much more sparse than it is in other parts of the country.
When I was there recently, I met one crew who very proudly told
me of their first responder scheme. They turned up at an incident
and were called to a victim of a suspected heart attack. They
said, "This was one of the best things we ever did."
I said, "Did you save the person?" They said, "No,
we lost him." I said, "How is that one of the best things?"
They said, "Because of the grieving process that we were
able to help with. We were there within three and a half minutes
because we are the local village. We are neighbours. We are friends.
We are family. We got there. That family will not be asking, `What
would have happened if a defibrillator had turned up?'" A
defibrillator did turn up because Devon retained fire and rescue
personnel were able to bring it and that family can get on with
their lives knowing that everything that could have been done
by the emergency services was done to try and help that person.
From my point of view—and the Department is supportive of
this; most fire and rescue authorities are—it is about what
is the best template that fits different localities. They will
all be different. In some instances, first responders are better.
In some instances, co-responders are better, but every fire appliance
in the UK—certainly in England and Wales—should be
carrying a defibrillator. There is no reason for them not to be
doing so.
Q470 Mr Olner: I am sure,
Minister, your officials will have read the evidence that was
given to the Committee last week by the FBU, particularly on co-responding.
I certainly did not get the view that the FBU were in favour of
seeing this at a national level. I felt it was just the opposite.
At that meeting, there were 20 FBU members who had been expelled
in Liverpool for trying to operate a co-responding unit. What
action is the government trying to take to make sure that these
very, very essential, life saving schemes get put into place?
This is not the government or politicians dreaming it up; it has
been researched and audited by a professional person and it saves
lives. When is it going to be rolled out so that all of our constituents
can get the benefit of that?
Jim Fitzpatrick: We are engaged
with the Department of Health. I and Rob Warner wrote to the chair
of the Local Government Association Fire Committee in December
last year to try and make sure that we can move this forward because
we do think it is a positive move. I cannot understand why any
trade union was expelling people for using defibrillators. It
does not make sense to me but that is a matter of internal discipline
for the Fire Brigades Union. From our point of view, there should
be arrangements in place. Fire fighters should be carrying defibrillators.
We should be able to save people. The estimate so far in the past
12 months is that 18 lives have been saved by fire fighters using
defibrillators. I take the point we did not respond to in terms
of Dr Pugh's question. This is not about mobilising the fire service
to deal with ambulance duties; this is about saving lives and
if we can save lives surely that is what we all want to see.
Q471 Alison Seabeck: Clearly,
there is a lot of research going on and sprinklers are getting
cheaper by the day almost, I suspect. Your own PSA targets on
fire prevention and sprinklers play a part in that. Building regulations
are an important element as well but how much work are you doing
in order to persuade DfES, about whom we had nothing but criticism
in a previous session, to ensure that schools are built with sprinkler
systems in?
Jim Fitzpatrick: In general terms
in the first instance, the culture of the service, as the Committee
knows, is moving into being much more fire safety orientated and
much more a culture of fire prevention than it ever has been.
From the service's point of view, this is unfinished business.
This goes back to the 1960s and 1970s. This is the Holroyd Report,
the Young Commission, the 1971 Fire Precautions Act. This is a
culture that was supposed to be brought in 35 years ago but it
has now been brought in much more effectively than it has been
in the past 35 years. It is business that has been waiting to
happen. Going back to the original exchange we were having about
home fire safety checks, that is a very clear example of how the
service is moving much more effectively to protecting the most
vulnerable people in our community by the introduction of detectors
to alert them to a fire. The ODPM has financed the research into
low cost sprinkler systems in the UK. We have had a test rig at
Lower Brissington in the Cotswolds for the best part of a year.
We set a challenge to the industry to identify the ability to
reduce the costs of an ordinary sprinkler system because a sprinkler
system in the UK, roughly per house, was costing between £3,000
and £5,000. For a school, it is estimated at between £10,000
and £20,000. To be able to move the agenda forward on sprinklers,
we identified that we needed a low cost sprinkler system. We scoured
the world. The New Zealand system seemed to offer the best prospect
of success. We have paid for the test rig and the research which
has now come through and there is real evidence that we might
be able to certify in some respects a domestic sprinkler system
for about £500-£600 in due course. We are consulting
at the moment on the building regulations. That is just finalised.
We will be producing our report later on this year for domestic
premises and for implementation in 2007. In respect of schools,
we produced very robust correspondence to the Department for Education
and Skills because schools are not a matter for us. They are in
the process of producing Building Bulletin 100 which will be their
new standard for schools in due course. I know that they are seriously
looking at the question of sprinklers in schools because of the
correspondence that we have sent them, because of the consultative
submissions that they have had. There have been criticisms about
no sprinklers in schools previously but at the moment they are
consulting. This is an opportunity for them to revisit that. As
with any government policy, there is a determination of cost benefit
analysis whether or not it is desirable and, if it is desirable,
how much it will cost and whether or not it is better to do that
than to do something else. Sprinklers are not a complete panacea.
They are not going to stop everybody from dying in fires but they
will protect the most vulnerable and in a school situation they
could be a very useful tool, but that is for the DfES to conclude.
Q472 Alison Seabeck: In
relation to sprinklers, it is the problem in retrospectively fitting
them to existing buildings. My understanding has always been that
there are real difficulties in doing that. It is a long time since
I have looked into these things but has the thinking on that moved
on? Will it be possible to retrospectively fit them to schools
or is that still a problem?
Jim Fitzpatrick: The easiest way
to explain the technical difficulty is that if your house is being
rewired it is easier to do it when you are undertaking major building
works. If you decide that you want to rewire it because you think
it is suitable, you have to rip up the floorboards, so it is a
much more complex task and much more expensive. It cannot be cheaper,
whatever the technical solution. The low cost sprinkler system
that we have been examining will only be good for domestic premises,
for buildings of one and two floors. We will have to incorporate
major changes to the mains network possibly, the size of the supply
pipe from the main to the house, to make sure that we have the
pressure. Otherwise, we need to have an engineering solution to
fit the pump within the house which will make it work, which puts
another £100 onto the cost. You cannot have a low cost sprinkler
system for a school. It has to be gold standard. It has to be
British Standard certified and, in that instance, there is no
cheap way of sprinkling in schools. My understanding is that it
is between £10,000 and £20,000 and I might be entirely
wrong but forgive me. That is off the top of my head.
Q473 Chair: Since your
Department seems to have had little success in persuading the
DfES to take the sprinkler issue seriously, why have you not imposed
it on them through building regulations?
Jim Fitzpatrick: I am not sure
that we have had little success in impressing upon them. We have
corresponded with them. We think that they are taking the matter
very seriously. I know that colleague ministers are looking at
this. They are waiting for submissions at the end of the consultation
period. The DfES are responsible for schools. They are responsible
for the building programme, the refurbishment and building standards
which is why BB100 is their baby and not ours. The building regulations
that we are coming forward with in due course will not be in effect
until April 2007 and mainly deal with domestic and care homes.
Chair: We are going to be following it
up directly with the DfES anyway so maybe we might add to your
success.
Q474 Mr Betts: On the
filing project, we are aware that police services up and down
the country have had major problems in south Yorkshire and other
parts of the country as well with their communication systems
and the technology, which has almost got to the point of losing
public confidence in the police service's ability to respond.
It has been that bad. You are now intending to use the same technology
for filing. Does that not give you sleepless nights?
Jim Fitzpatrick: The police scheme
is several years, to my understanding, I think up to five years
old. The air wave scheme, I understand, that is in operation in
Norfolk and in another brigade in East Anglia, as the Committee
has already been told, works very well. We have built in technical
specifications and penalty clauses in the event that there are
any difficulties with the air wave system. We have not concluded
the contract fully because we are still waiting for final sign-off
but, because of the improvements in the system, because of the
technical specification that we have laid down, learning from
the mistakes that the police made because they were not working
to the same technical specification and because of the clawback
in penalty arrangements that we have written into our contract,
we are not going to pick up the tab if it does go wrong. Because
they are able to meet the new technical specifications, because
of the improvements that have been made over recent years, we
are confident that the air wave system will provide the wide area,
digital, national radio network that the fire service in England
and hopefully the rest of the country absolutely deserves.
John Cummings: Having gone through the
experience in Durham where it has been absolutely appalling, yes,
the equipment is several years old now but it was not when it
was put in. We were told it was brand new, state of the art technology.
I hope this Committee does not have recourse to call you back
here to answer for the assurance that you have given us. It will
be detailed in the minutes here so I hope that the people advising
you are advising you correctly.
Q475 Chair: On that happy
note, do you have anything you want to add?
Mr Woolas: We want to pay tribute
to the Fire and Rescue Authority and our own staff who are putting
this strategy into place. The test of our policy is in the number
of fires and, in particular, the number of fire deaths. We do
not publicise and promote because we do not want to be complacent,
but the statistics show that the strategy is working with a reduction
both in the number of fires and in the number of deaths and serious
injuries over the years.
Chair: Indeed. A happier note to close
on. Thank you both very much.
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