Memorandum by McCartney Associates (FRS
08)
McCartney Associates was incorporated in 2003
and has been working within the Fire and Rescue Sector since December
2004. The Company Director, Andrew P McCartney, has over 10 years
experience within the public sector the last five of which have
been working at a corporate management team level involved in
the modernisation agenda.
With extensive experience of strategic issues
ranging from corporate governance, risk management, local strategic
partnerships to working with the voluntary and business sector,
McCartney Associates brings a wealth of knowledge and practical
involvement to assist Fire & Rescue Service's to deliver the
government's modernisation agenda.
This submission is intended to present an external
perspective of how the Fire and Rescue Sector is responding to
the modernisation agenda from a direct understanding of managing
these changes. The comments made are not associated to any previous
or existing clients of McCartney Associates and are done so in
the capacity of a private individual, based upon his own experience
and knowledge.
Successfully Getting from CPA to B: How Can the
Government Stop the Scale and Pace of Modernisation Becoming the
Reasons for its Failure?
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 If the pessimists are to be believed,
the UK Fire and Rescue Service are in turmoil. For the last half
century this traditional, pseudo-militaristic organisation has
only been tasked with reacting to fires—dealing with whatever
is thrown at it at the time (as best as it can) and, for the remainder,
waiting for the next incident to happen. But as a result of the
settlement that followed the national strikes in 2002-03 and new
global terrorist threats, individual Fire and Rescue Authorities
(FRA's) now have to ensure their services can effectively plan
ahead, prevent emergencies as well as respond to them, engage
in wider local and national government agendas, show robust governance
frameworks and strong leadership as well as effectively managing
their performance—whilst, at the same time, demonstrating
value for money. In addition, all of this has to be achieved in
double-quick time with a de-motivated workforce and the continuing
opposition of wounded trade union. CPA and the National Framework
Document are seen as tools introduced in order to keep this modernisation
process on track.
1.2 From an external viewpoint, there is
some truth in all of these statements, but this perspective is
essentially myopic in nature. It is true that the Service is currently
the subject of a fundamental change programme—not just relating
to what it does, but also in respect to its culture and its core
values. However, the modernisation agenda did not appear overnight
and many FRA's have spent the last 20 years or more diversifying
their services in order to respond more effectively to local needs,
as well as establishing strong partnerships and in-house teams
aimed at promoting prevention and community safety—despite
the lack of leadership, financial support and statutory provision
from government. Furthermore, public satisfaction remains consistently
high, even after the industrial action, which suggests the Service
has successfully met the expectations of local communities over
a long period—not something many other public sector organisations
can boast. In fact, there are many examples of good and even best
practice within the Fire and Rescue Service arena that other public
sector organisations could greatly benefit from. However, a large
amount of this innovative work may be sidelined or even hamstrung
as individual services try to tackle the scale and pace of the
modernisation agenda.
1.3 Therefore, this submission paper will
focus on areas under the scrutiny of the Select Committee Inquiry
that McCartney Associates believe are most likely to undermine
sustainable progress in the overall modernisation agenda or even
destabilise embedded practices due to a further deterioration
in employee relations and a disengagement of managers with unrealistic
and unachievable workloads.
1.4 Specifically, this paper will look at
how the proposals to establish Regional Control Centres (RCC's)
and institutional reform, including governance, may actually have
a negative impact on service provision in the medium term. These
issues will also be discussed in the context of the growing financial
pressures on the public sector in general and whether the use
of CPA is appropriate as an audit and improvement tool for a service
at such a crucial stage in its transformation. It will also highlight
the impact on joint working with other emergency services, which
itself may have a knock-on effect in terms of local civil resilience
arrangements. It will conclude by offering options to consider
that may mitigate some of the potentially more destructive consequences
of following such a wide-ranging and intensive change programme.
2. REGIONAL CONTROL
CENTRES (RCC'S)
2.1 Within the individual Fire and Rescue
Services (FRS's) that McCartney Associates have been working with
over the last 12 months, the issues surrounding the establishment
of RCC's have proved to be some of the most contentious—both
for the workforce, service management, FRA members and local communities.
The apparent lack of transparency in the development of the business
case by government, coupled with the anticipated additional financial
burdens on the local taxpayer (needed to pay for the regional
PFI contracts over the next 25-30 years) drives the opposition.
2.2 This perception is intensified by any
lack of guarantees of improvements in services locally. In fact,
some FRA's are now arguing that standards of service will actually
get worse within a RCC set-up. This viewpoint is highlighted most
prominently, for example, in organisations such as Gloucestershire
Fire and Rescue Service (GFRS), where a major joint project with
Gloucestershire Police and Ambulance Services has resulted in
the creation of a local Tri-Service Control Centre and shared
headquarters site (a venture recently assessed as a success by
the Audit Commission outside of the CPA framework).
2.3 To add to the feelings of government
incompetence in this matter (a view shared not only by the partner
organisations but also the local communities) the county's daily
newspaper is running a campaign to save the centre. For instance,
it has highlighted the fact that the project was only made possible
less than five years ago by a substantial "Invest to Save"
grant from the government. The conclusions drawn are that although
Whitehall is demanding joined-up working from local emergency
services, it is ignoring areas where good practice of inter-agency
working and local resilience already exists and, in contrast,
it is demonstrating its own inability to think and work in a joined-up
manner.
2.4 The implications on citizens and individual
FRS's are clear. Citizens feel they will receive a less effective
local service when RCC's come on-line, but will end up paying
more money for the privilege. They will blame the government for
a dogmatic approach that lacks forward planning and apparently
wastes cash—particularly where local service provision is
already seen to be delivering the benefits of improved inter-agency
working. As for FRS's, they are feeling pressurised to commit
substantial resources to ensure the new systems work effectively,
whilst at the same time, having to plan for the absorption the
workloads from local control centres that lie outside of the project-scope
for the RCC's—such as data collection for local and national
statistical analysis and prevention-centred call handling services
(eg abandoned car and home safety check schemes).
2.5 What is more, because the controversial
issue of how much value should be attributed to maintaining a
good working knowledge of local risks and local topography has
never been adequately addressed by the government, the argument
to maintain local control centres will continue to plague the
project and put FRS's in the unenviable position of trying to
reassure local communities that their everyday safety will not
be compromised by the regional approach. And, all of this will
have to be achieved in the face of national and local budget restrictions,
brought about by the need to provide substantial "Gershon"
savings.
2.6 Therefore, if the government wishes
to mitigate these risks, but remain committed to RCC's, it must
engage more proactively on a local level with stakeholders and
communities, explaining in clear terms the benefits of the new
systems and justifying any additional burdens on the local taxpayer—as
this will not be done on its behalf by the FRA's.
2.7 And in order to focus this debate most
effectively, the select committee has an opportunity once more
to explore in detail the validity of the business case for RCC's,
in the light of the additional financial burdens and local expectations
now being realised by individual FRA's.
3. INSTITUTIONAL
ARRANGEMENTS
3.1 The government believe that the development
of closer working relationships between FRS's on a regional level
(besides RCC's)—in areas such as procurement, resilience,
training, specialist services and human resource management—will
improve the effectiveness, efficiency and value for money of services
in the medium term. In relation to procurement, it has also created
a national procurement company (FireBuy Ltd), which it expects
individual FRS's to use when procuring major service-specific
items (Draft Fire and Rescue National Framework 2006-08, para
2.20, page 20). However, there are growing concerns within FRS's
that this move towards more regional and national agendas is bringing
with it additional responsibilities and financial burdens that
it is expected to assimilate into its current structures and budgets.
3.2 For example, the cost of providing regional
resilience hardware and its associated start-up training—such
as for High Volume Pumps, Urban Search and Rescue equipment and
Mass Decontamination facilities—is currently being funded
by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). However, individual
FRA's are not being guaranteed additional resources over the longer-term
to maintain the competence of its workforce in these services—or
to maintain and replace the equipment—despite the Emergency
Order (due to come into force in Spring 2007) making such work
a statutory duty of FRA's. Again, this needs to be put into the
context of the financial pressures on all local authority services
currently in relation to "Gershon" savings. Will this
mean FRS's having to reduce the provision of locally focused services
in order to maintain its regional resilience capability? This
may be achievable in large urban and metropolitan FRS's, but in
rural districts, where a considerable percentage of FRS emergency
cover is already provided by firefighters working the retained
duty system, the ability for FRS's to divert resources into other
services is extremely limited and would also require a detailed
case to be made which addresses any rural proofing issues.
3.3 On the issue of procurement in more
general terms, the economies of scale brought about by regional
and national working do not appear to be capable of delivering
the savings first anticipated, because well-established relationships
in certain areas are already achieving these cost-reductions.
For example, the South West FRA's have been collaborating for
some time on regional procurement issues, most recently in relation
to its Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Breathing Apparatus
(BA). In contrast, the national Integrated Clothing Project continues
to run into legal and funding difficulties, despite its apparent
endorsement by government (Draft Fire and Rescue National Framework
2006-08, para 2.19, page 20).
3.4 To add to these difficulties, other
regional work streams (such as training, human resources and the
provision of specialist services) appear to be adding layers of
unnecessary bureaucracy into individual services, with only limited
outcomes to date from the investment. This is compounded by the
fact that the governance framework of Regional Management Boards
(RMB's) does not have either the political, legal or the financial
mandate to direct resources into these areas in order to drive
forward implementation. Instead, this has to be achieved (with
varying degrees of success) by consensus-driven politics and within
the regional branches of the Chief Fire Officers' Association
(CFOA).
3.5 Therefore, if government wants regional
working that delivers on its potential of improved effectiveness
and efficiency, it should consider creating substantive governance
structures (as well as financial and legal mandates) that match
its aspirations. The argument that this is not yet feasible for
FRS's to regionalise is undermined by the enthusiasm with which
government is currently looking to restructure Police and Ambulance
Services onto a regional or sub-regional model. In fact, if FRS's
continue to shuffle towards regionalisation it may be worse in
the long-term, since the modernisation agenda will always suffer
from "moving goalpost" syndrome.
3.6 However, metropolitan and urban FRS's
do not face the same pressures as rural FRS's and issues that
impact on the flexibility to move local resources to match regional
and national priorities, such as rural proofing, need to be appreciated
by both the government and the select committee.
4. FINANCE
4.1 Significant change agendas inevitably
use up resources before they start to save them, as organisations
need to invest time and money in order to re-engineer their structures,
services and workforce to meet the new demands and expectations
being placed upon them. For example, when CPA was introduced into
district councils back in March 2003, the rollout out programme
allowed, in some cases, over a year for individual organisations
to prepare for inspection—preceded by a six-month consultation
period. Moreover, CPA was introduced when district councils were
seeing a growth in spending settlements, which assisted significantly
in building the capacity they needed to kick-start and maintain
their respective change programmes. As a result, a great deal
of progress has been made in the delivery of many local authority
services.
4.2 In contrast, in the run-up to Fire CPA,
FRS's were given piecemeal guidance on the process and what to
expect, some of which was even published after the inspection
programme had already started. In other words, some FRA's did
not know the rules of engagement or how to prepare for the assessment.
The credibility of Fire CPA has been dented further since by the
"knee-jerk"' appearance of Operational Assurance at
the end of the first inspection programme.
4.3 More importantly, as a result of the
first round of CPA, services are now faced with implementing significant
changes and improvements to both their service provision and organisational
culture against a backdrop of diminishing financial flexibility—as
"Gershon" savings totalling £105 million nationally
are needed by 2007-08 and the majority of investment following
the industrial action has gone on firefighters' wages. Adding
to these pressures is the possible longer-term impact of having
to self-fund aspects of the national resilience programme from
local budgets.
4.4 Overall, the scale of the modernisation
agenda—compounded with the compressed timelines for implementation
and the restrictions on finances—adds up to a cocktail of
unsustainable pressures on the Service. In simple project management
terms, cost, quality and time need to be balanced if a desired
and sustainable end-product is to be achieved.
4.5 McCartney Associates urges the government
to reconsider its expectations of the Service over the medium
and longer term—particularly in relation to its capacity
to maintain and/or financially bolster national projects such
as the resilience programme and FireBuy Ltd—unless it is
prepared to deal with significant project failures. In fact, without
the benefit of more resources to help build capacity, it could
be argued that many FRS's will fail to meet the standards of the
next round of CPA by default.
5. JOINT WORKING
5.1 McCartney Associates have seen strong
evidence to demonstrate how effectively FRS's have engaged in
joint working with other emergency services over a number of years,
with numerous examples of good practice in relation to both project
management, procurement and joint service delivery. For instance,
the South West FRA's joint procurement initiative has rapidly
extended beyond its collective purchasing power and currently
takes advantage of national Police contracts, as well as offering
other emergency services the option of using its contracts, where
applicable.
5.2 Having said this, the concern now is
that the modernisation agenda may actually subvert many of these
relationships, as FRS's are forced into putting their limited
managerial resources into regional projects, at the expense of
local arrangements. For example, managers are being asked to commit
to both local and regional projects teams—often working
on the same subject matter at different speeds and with different
priorities. A good illustration of this is the work of local and
regional resilience forums, where issues such as business continuity
management are being approached using different methods by the
partner organisations at regional and local levels. This inevitably
leads to a stalling of projects, as managers wait for aspects
of the disparate work streams to coincide, in order to avoid duplication.
And besides these elements of delay and confusion, local managers
are being tasked with regional project work on an ad-hoc
basis, on top of their local "day-job", adding to the
potential for project creep and even failure in relation to their
own local priorities.
5.3 If this is put into the civil resilience
context, together with the changes impacting on all three emergency
services (Police, Fire and Ambulance), the outcome is a multi-layered,
overlapping and out-of phase resilience structure between the
services that makes it increasingly difficult to agree and implement
workable local joint operational protocols.
5.4 In the absence of nationally agreed
(and mutual supportive) governance and organisational structures
for the emergency services, the government must take the lead
in developing national risk assessments and operational protocols
in relation to civil resilience operations—in order to override
the difficulties of local variation and priorities. These must
be embedded in practical experience and not the product of desktop
analysis.
5.5 Furthermore, if the government wants
to ensure uniformity in New Dimension service delivery, it must
commit itself to funding and organising the long-term maintenance
of skills and service provision across the country.
6. CONCLUSIONS
6.1 The aim of this paper was to look at
how the proposals to establish Regional Control Centres (RCC's)
and institutional reform could have a negative impact on service
provision. Issues relating to growing financial pressures and
the appropriateness of using CPA during the early stages of a
transformation process were also highlighted.
6.2 In order to mitigate the more destructive
effects of these factors on established and new work streams,
McCartney Associates make the following recommendation to the
government and select committee:
— Regional Control Centres—the
government should engage more proactively on a local level with
stakeholders and communities, explaining the benefits of the new
systems and justifying any additional burdens on the local taxpayer.
— Regional Control Centres—the
select committee should question its support for RCC's and re-examine
the government's business case, in light of the additional financial
burdens and local expectations now being realised by individual
FRA's.
— Regional Working—to achieve
effectiveness and efficiency, the government should create governance,
financial and legal structures to match its aspirations.
— Regional Working—the different
pressures associated with operating in urban and rural environments,
such as rural proofing, should be considered by the government
and the select committee when assessing the relative flexibility
of FRA's to move local resources to match regional and national
priorities.
— Finances—the government
should reassess the outcomes, scale and speed of its modernisation
agenda, in order to confirm that the cost, quality and time factors
are in balance to achieve sustainable and appropriate outcomes.
— "Gershon" Savings—the
government should tailor the next round of CPA to take into account
the limited ability of FRA's to build capacity in a restricted
resource environment.
— Civil Resilience—the government
should develop national risk assessments and operational protocols
to override the potential for local variation and priorities.
These should be validated in practical terms not just theoretically.
— New Dimension Funding—the
government should commit itself to funding and organising the
long-term maintenance of skills and service provision across the
country.
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