Memorandum by the Kent and Medway Fire
and Rescue Authority (FRS 23)
INTRODUCTION
1. The Kent and Medway Fire and Rescue Authority
was constituted in 1998, following local government reorganisation.
It is responsible for the delivery of fire and rescue services
to the people of Kent and Medway, which together have 1.6 million
residents and cover an area of just over 3,700 km2. The Authority
has specific responsibilities for safety in the Channel Tunnel,
and is also a member of the Marine Incident Response Group, which
deals with incidents at sea at the request of the Maritime and
Coastguard Agency. It is one of the largest of the non-metropolitan
fire and rescue services, with 66 fire stations and over 2,000
staff in total. As a result of the 2005 comprehensive performance
assessment of the fire and rescue service, KMFRA was one of the
two authorities nationally to be rated excellent.
THE IMPLICATIONS
OF THE
INTRODUCTION OF
REGIONAL CONTROL
CENTRES AND
FIRELINK
RADIO
2. While the Government's intention to improve
national resilience in creating the regional fire control centres
is clear, the Authority has some concerns about the implications
of the change on sustaining the quality of service delivery locally.
High performance in the control room is a key component in achieving
a high standard of performance in the service, particularly in
relation to local policy aims, which may require changes in working
methods. For this reason we regret the loss of our control room,
which has made a significant contribution to the overall rating
of the service among the best nationally. Essentially this leaves
the Authority in the position of having to contract out one of
its core services, and the first interface with the public.
3. A key issue here is that of governance
and accountability for the new arrangements. The Authority expressed
a preference for a local authority company, of the limited options
on offer, but we have concerns over the way in which this would
operate in practice. The current consultation on the National
Framework suggests that the contractor should be a partner in
the proposed "roll-out board", which we believe would
muddle the client/contractor role during development Even more
critically, when the RCC is actually in place, the Authority requires
robust arrangements for managing its part of the "contract"
which are hard to secure with a monopoly provider, despite the
fact that the duty to secure the provision remains with the Authority.
An example of the way in which these roles can be blurred is the
recent proposal in the working group that the RCC should have
powers to deploy resources to incidents outside an Authority's
area without reference to the owning body.
4. KMFRA has also had as yet no opportunity
to review the business case for the SERCC, so we have to date
not been able to assess the impact on our medium-term budget position
as we would have wished. One consequence of the inevitable delays
in the programme has been financial, as suppliers increasingly
recognise the need to sustain existing ageing systems. The Authority
welcomes ODPM's assurance in the recent draft national framework
that it will plug this gap with additional funding
5. The geography of the region is a significant
factor in the consideration of this issue. The Government Office
for the south-east region includes nine fire authorities and stretches
from Margate to Banbury via Fordingbridge. The south-east region
is generally recognised to be a less cohesive region than others,
with no strong sense of identity. It has a much larger population
than most regions with higher projected growth. In terms of emergency
services, managing it as a single entity causes significant problems,
not least because the road network is so dominated by London,
with very high traffic volumes. In consequence, KMFRA is considering
how it would deal with the "Gold Command" element of
major incidents, as it may not be practicable for senior officers
to reach Fareham, the site chosen for the RCC.
6. The Authority has of course been co-operating
in the development of the RCC and its supporting systems, but
still believes that the option of two or three sub-regional controls,
which was suggested in the White Paper on the Fire Service, would
have been more appropriate for the south-east in providing real
resilience.
7. There are some concerns over the impact
of the RCC on service delivery and management once it is operational.
Inevitably the specification for call and data handling is tending
towards common denominators, but the Authority would not wish
to compromise its present capacity to use performance information
drawn in part from the mobilising system. It is also of the view
that it will be harder to sustain the current level of public
engagement with the service once calls are being remotely handled,
as this is likely to affect identity.
8. The Authority also questions the assumptions
being made about the resilience of the new ROC network, given
that it will be a network with an integrated operating system.
Although the current control rooms are individually small, their
functional separation gives an additional level of resilience
to the present system which will be absent in the new one. The
current stand-by control for KFRS is located in the Kent Police
Control Centre, a distance of only two miles, which is also the
local "Gold Command" location for major emergencies.
However, in the event of a local problem affecting both these
controls, there is also the option of switching calls to East
Sussex Fire and Rescue Service Control in Eastbourne.
9. In relation to the proposals for the
radio scheme, the Authority welcomes the decision to purchase
Airwave as a clear way forward to support interoperability.
PROGRESS ON
FIRE AND
RESCUE SERVICE
REFORM SINCE
JANUARY 2004
Community Safety and partnerships
9. The Authority has been actively engaged
in a range of local partnerships over a period of some years,
and has achieved demonstrable benefits through this approach.
It was a party to the Kent Public Service Agreement in 2001, in
the first round of national pilots, and achieved a reduction over
four years of 75% in accidental fire deaths and casualties—well
over the target set of 20%. This year the Authority was a signatory
to the second Kent PSA, with a target of reducing loose rubbish
fires, as part of a set addressing the "cleaner, safer, greener"
Kent objective. We will be using the reward grant of £2.1
million resulting from the 100% achievement of the first target
to support activity directed at achieving the second. This will
also help to reduce the number of deliberate fires, as most rubbish
fires are deliberately started.
10. Success as a partner in the Kent PSA
has led to membership of the Kent Public Service Board, and the
Local Area Agreement. The LAA includes targets on the reduction
of road accidents and casualties, and we are using this route
to assist us with the new statutory duty in relation to road traffic
accidents. The Authority is an active player in the Medway Local
Strategic Partnership and the district-based Crime and Disorder
Reduction Partnerships. It has an extensive education programme,
which has been funded in part through the Arson Control Forum.
While we welcome the Government's support of such initiatives,
it is to be hoped that national guidance in this area will not
become too prescriptive, as much is dependent on the activity
and engagement of other partners, particularly local authorities.
11. The Authority also embarked on a programme
of home fire safety checks in 2001, using firefighters to install
smoke alarms in high risk homes. This has now been extended, funded
in part by specific grants from ODPM, to include dedicated staff
for this purpose, in addition to the provision of alarms for use
by local authority schemes, mainly targeting elderly people. We
have also had some success in encouraging local authorities and
developers to install sprinkler systems in schools and housing
projects. However the Authority regrets that the Government has
not made this a requirement both in schools and social housing,
particularly for new developments, given that such buildings are
at higher risk, and publicly funded.
12. The possibility of applying this to
the major housing growth areas within Kent and Medway is currently
being explored with the Government Office for the South East to
see whether the new developments could incorporate higher standards
of fire suppression when built. This would help to reduce fire
risk at the design stage, and also mean that standards of fire
cover could be maintained without the need to build additional
fire stations. This approach has been successful overseas in significantly
reducing deaths and casualties.
Regional Management Board activity
13. The Authority is an active participant
in the South East Regional Management Board, but the development
of the Board to undertake all the functions outlined in the National
Framework will present some difficulties. This is in part caused
by the geography of the region described earlier: nine is the
largest number of authorities in any region, and the region lacks
geographic coherence and identity. It would be easier to operate
in two or three sub-regions, which would still be similar in size
and population to some existing regions. It is not clear to us
why a single model for RMBs has to apply across the country, without
regard to the locality. For the fire service, an additional level
of complexity is introduced in collaboration between authorities
by the mix of combined fire authorities and county-based fire
services, where the support systems, such as finance, and procedures
are tied to the host authority. However, the Authority believes
that even in this context it is still possible to generate real
efficiency savings through collaboration.
Workforce modernisation
14. Much of the modernisation agenda focused
on working arrangements. While this is wholly understandable,
the issues identified in relation to working arrangements by the
Bain Report and consequent legislation is too dominated by metropolitan
practices. For example, the impact of the 24 hour shift system
is less rigid in shire areas where it forms part of a mixed economy
of shift, day and retained crewing. The pressure to use overtime
more also runs counter to the tenor of the Working Time Regulations,
and targets being set in other public services to reduce overtime
working in the interests of more family-friendly policies. Critically,
however, the Authority believes that it is wrong to regard changing
working arrangements as an end in itself: change should be led
by service improvements, with revised working arrangements being
used to deliver these improvements where appropriate.
15. The Authority recognises that equality
and diversity are still clear weaknesses across the service as
a whole. It is currently undertaking a Best Value review of its
approach to equality and diversity, both in terms of employment
and community engagement, but would welcome any national developments
in support of local initiatives. One useful approach could be
a further national advertising campaign to support continuous
rolling recruitment in the future, to promote the fire service
as an employment opportunity, particularly for women and members
of ethnic minority groups. It is difficult to have this kind of
impact at a local level.
16. The Authority is committed to development
for all its staff, and has for a long time had a relatively high
proportion of non-uniformed staff in specialist professional roles.
It has also implemented the new Integrated Personal Development
System which has been introduced nationally, and has begun to
appoint staff directly into the uniformed service at an officer
level, now this has been made possible by the new legislation.
However, there is an endemic problem with the presumption in the
National Framework that staff can be moved across different employment
groups and dealt with as an integrated whole. Uniformed and non-uniformed
staff have fundamentally different pay structures and conditions
of service, including pensions, and this severely limits the extent
to which they can be regarded as interchangeable, without making
authorities vulnerable to well-founded equal pay and discrimination
claims.
Management issues
17. The Authority welcomes the extension
of the fire service's role by the addition of new statutory duties
and believes that the 2004 Act provides a much more robust framework
for the service. It has ironed out many of the anomalies and obstacles
which were increasingly resulting from the 1947 Act provisions
remaining in force long after they had ceased to reflect the environment
of the service. However some of the old centralised controls are
still in place and have not been reviewed in the light of the
new legislation. An example of this would be the continued requirement
to submit large volumes of detailed establishment information,
after the repeal of S19 of the old Act, which required establishment
changes to be submitted to the Secretary of State for approval.
In 2004-05, 104 establishment-related forms had to be completed,
one of which runs to 66 pages—one for each fire station,
and the number is going up in 2005-06.
18. A related point is that some of the
targets for the service are not keeping pace with the modernisation
agenda. For example, the Authority believes that the specialist
community fire safety teams should be counted against the performance
indicators for women and ethnic minority staff. They are as much
in the front line as firefighters, and spend more time actually
engaging with the public.
JOINT WORKING
BETWEEN THE
FRS AND OTHER
EMERGENCY SERVICES
19. The Authority works closely with other
emergency services especially on plans for strategic risks such
as the Channel Tunnel. The requirements for joint planning and
working under the Civil Contingencies Act can be met much more
easily with coterminous agencies, especially the Police, with
whom the fire service has the closest relationship for planning
for and responding to major disasters. Current proposals for amalgamating
police forces nationally could adversely affect these arrangements,
particularly as the OCA bases the response groupings, such as
the local resilience groups, on force areas.
20. The Authority also has strong links
with the other emergency services through other local partnerships,
aimed at reducing anti-social behaviour, accident and casualty
reduction. A specific protocol has been developed with Kent Police
on arson reduction.
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