Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
20-39)
MR MATT
WRACK, MR
JOHN BONNEY,
CLLR BRIAN
COLEMAN AND
CLLR JAMES
PEARSON
8 FEBRUARY 2010
Q20 Alison Seabeck: I am not sure
the FBU would want to see that.
Mr Bonney: What Brian says about
the "only game in town" is that what you have to realise
is that fire and rescue authorities have committed to this project.
After a period of great caution at the beginning, they have committed
to it, and have invested energy and effort on the ground to work
on this project. To now say blithely, "Okay, we will scrap
that and we will just commission it from somebody else,"
is dangerous in the extreme. One of the points that CFOA has been
saying is that there are now fire and rescue services that are
bordering on having completely obsolete systems in the belief
that they are waiting for FiReControl, and why should they not?
They have seen government money invested in this. Why should they
be developing alternatives.
Q21 Alison Seabeck: I think Devon
and Somerset is one of those that is getting worried about the
gap between one ending and one starting?
Mr Bonney: Exactly. So to blithely
say "Scrap the project" will leave a number of fire
rescue services high and dry, irrespective of the fact that a
quick and easy solution might be offered. There are no quick and
easy solutions to this. That is why the project is complex.
Cllr Pearson: I think the point
is about confidence here. Collectively and as Chairman of Greater
Manchester I have a responsibility to satisfy ourselves that we
can mobilise. Bearing in mind the length of time—and we
had initial proposals of when this was going to be ready—the
thing has been delayed and delayed and it has posed the question
for us locally as to what we can do, what does our plan B look
like. We work collaboratively with our neighbours, Cumbria, Lancashire,
Merseyside, Cheshire and Derbyshire. You asked a question about
specific examples where we have been left out of the loop. I do
have some that I do not want to bore you with in detail but the
bottom line is here the contract is between CLG and EADS. EADS
have other partners like Intergraph and all that sort of stuff.
If Intergraph has a question they ask EADS; EADS then asks DCLG;
and DCLG then come and ask the fire community through the representatives.
As an individual authority that has volunteered on a number occasions
to assist and help with forms of data, the relationship has not
been great, in fact I would describe it as very poor in that we
have volunteered to do things; we have waited six months for a
point or a particular thing and we get it on the Monday saying,
"By the way, can you have this done by Friday." It does
not bode well for a good working relationship and this is the
point about confidence in the project. For those authorities that
have been relying on this, who have not invested in their current
systems and are really quite high and dry if this project does
not go ahead, the whole thing altogether poses the question if
we do not have a regional control—which to be honest is
an over-ambitious step—do we have some degree of a national
programme so those authorities can then link in. Those are the
things that potentially would go to quell the issues that people
do not have confidence in what is being proposed at the moment.
Chair: We will adjourn for 10 minutes
if it is one vote and 20 if it is two.
The Committee suspended from 4.54 pm to 5.04
pm for a division in the House
Chair: If we could restart. Just before
we do, one of the questions that we tried to get an answer to
but did not, and which I would therefore like you give us in writing
afterwards, is specific examples of where you think the end user
requirements have not been met. If you could let us have that
in writing subsequently that would be very helpful. Alison?
Q22 Alison Seabeck: If I can follow
on a little from the relationship between different organisations.
Mr Wrack, in your statement you were quite critical of how the
relationship between EADS and CLG has operated. Would you like
to elaborate, please?
Mr Wrack: I think the question
needs to be put to both EADS and CLG, but I think it touches on
the lack of information that comes back to other stakeholders
and the fact that there seem to be poor relationships. We have
just recently had a change of sub-contractors and I have to say
what surprised us in a recent report from CLG is that this was
presented as a great step forward that CLG had to change its sub-contractors,
to which the obvious questions is: if that is the case why was
it not done some considerable time before? There are difficulties
in the relationships and it clearly touches on all the issues
that we have been discussing earlier.
Q23 Alison Seabeck: In your evidence
you also talked about the fact that CLG made a point of ensuring
there was little contact between stakeholders and EADS. Can you
give me some evidence for that because the way it is written it
is very anecdotal?
Mr Wrack: In terms of stakeholder
engagement there has been very little direct opportunity for stakeholders
to question and discuss with EADS the technical issues. For example,
there are various stakeholder meetings—and this does touch
on the general communication issue—for example a sounding
board that we send people to where the briefings which we are
given are very general briefings from CLG whereas we have people
who are very technically expert in this area and they want the
opportunity to put the detailed technical questions to the people
who will be providing the technical solution and that opportunity
does not arise.
Q24 Alison Seabeck: I understand
that criticism but in your evidence you say that CLG made a point
of ensuring that stakeholders were not involved in the EADS. What
is the evidence for that, please?
Mr Wrack: That is our experience.
Mr Bonney: I mentioned before
the relationship between EADS and CLG. One of the problems stems
from this lack of clear specification at the beginning. What happened
subsequently was the contract was let and there was a lot of infilling
required to be done. If a partnership-type relationship had been
developed, I think that would have been a lot easier.
Q25 Alison Seabeck: And you could
have drawn on the expertise that was available?
Mr Bonney: Also, I think it would
not have resorted so quickly into what we saw, which was a contractual
relationship, which starts to make things much more difficult.
What we found, certainly from the professional Association's point
of view, was not only was there not the organised contact with
EADS, we were kept at arm's length, it was through CLG, but the
relationship between CLG and EADS was adversarial because it was
already in a contractual relationship rather than a partnership
approach. That would have been all right if we had got a very
clear detailed specification but when you do not have that you
end up, if you are not careful, only sorting the problems out
by means of resorting to the legal arrangements. I think that
is fundamentally where the difficulties existed. Things have improved
slightly.
Q26 Alison Seabeck: In the last six
months.
Mr Bonney: We have a number of
solution establishment workshops, as they are called, which bring
stakeholders together, but they are not particularly well organised.
Mr Wrack: And they do not involve
all stakeholders.
Mr Bonney: They do not involve
all stakeholders, that is true.
Q27 Chair: Which stakeholders are
not included?
Mr Bonney: It tends to involve
professional people involved in the project at the moment from
fire and rescue services. It does not necessarily involve, as
Matt quite rightly says, all stakeholders. It does not include
the representative bodies.
Q28 Chair: Which bodies, just to
be clear?
Mr Bonney: The FBU.
Cllr Coleman: Deliberately.
Cllr Pearson: Just to pick up
on the point about SEWs (Solution Establishment Workshops). I
went down to Newport to visit EADS a week or two ago and the question
was in relation to CLG's relationship with EADS. The issue there
came from CLG not really understanding what it was that they were
going out to procure. The issue about the rush to procurement
was that they did not know themselves so EADS signed a contract
saying "We will deliver this for you," and CLG were
not explicit in what it was they were due to deliver. EADS then
procured Ericsson who said they could do it and it turned out
they could not. I believe Intergraph at the time were considered
and said, "No, we can't do this," but obviously we are
five years on and they turned round and said, "We have developed
and we can." The point about SEWs is they are a bit like
a Chinese parliament. The point is there is nobody within there
who can say, "No, this is what the definition is. This is
what it is; go away and build it." That just does not exist.
CLG have a lack of knowledge. The people who are in there from
the professional side, yes, we do it differently in Manchester
as they do it in the West Midlands as they do it in London but
there has not been anything from us as a community to say this
is what it is going to be. That is endemic as to what the issue
is. The point about the timetable of the programme and where we
are up to today, unless we bottom out what some of the key fundamental
requirements are in detail, we are going to end up delivering
something that is not really fit for purpose. I think that is
the issue at the moment.
Q29 Chair: Can I just make a point.
There is a court case going on and certain matters are sub
judice. Any sort of remarks about why EADS switched from one
contractor to another are off limits so could we not go down that
route. Councillor Coleman?
Cllr Coleman: I do worry that
this was a new way of working for fire authorities and many fire
authorities simply did not get it. Many fire authorities diverged
from the FBU's view because the FBU are interested in their members'
jobs, which is entirely reasonable, and there are considerable
reductions in jobs because of this regional control and indeed
it is quite probable that employees of these new controls will
not be members of the Fire Brigades Union, as in London where
the control room staff are not members of the Fire Brigades Union
at all. There has always been that agenda and you can see why
the DCLG wanted to keep the FBU, for example, well away from the
process.
Q30 Chair: Can we try also not to
go down the line of imputing what other people's views are, particularly
when we have the various organisations here and we can get their
views straight from the horse's mouth, otherwise it is going to
degenerate between the various members of the panel.
Mr Wrack: Just to take up that
one point. In terms of the loss of jobs, of course as a trade
union we are concerned about the loss of jobs. The real issue
however is the service that is provided to the public because
no matter how good your computer system is you need somebody to
be able to answer the phone to an emergency call, so the loss
of jobs impacts on the service that is provided to the public.
That is the very real issue.
Chair: The Committee is well able to
make its own mind up about people's motivation. We do not need
other people to do it for us.
Q31 John Cummings: Would you like
to tell the Committee what is happening to the existing control
centres? Are they being adequately maintained and, if so, at what
cost? Are those costs coming from a central budget? Are they coming
from your ordinary resources?
Mr Bonney: The existing controls
continue to be run by local fire and rescue authorities. They
are being funded, and any replacement or upgrading is being provided
by local fire and rescue authorities.
Q32 John Cummings: Are they being
adequately maintained?
Mr Bonney: I can speak for my
professional colleagues that we will adequately maintain them
because that is the only way that we can continue to deliver our
service and clearly we would take that very seriously. The difficulty
is that many of them, although not all, are becoming increasingly
obsolete, and maintaining them and keeping them in a state that
is effective becomes increasingly difficult. There comes a point
where they cannot be maintained any longer and they have to be
replaced. A number of fire and rescue services have done that
in recent years simply because they could not wait for the FiReControl
project. That is why CFOA is very, very clear there needs to be
a second option, because if the project—and I know you want
to come on to that—becomes delayed or is scrapped we cannot
leave fire and rescue services high and dry.
Q33 Chair: The second question of
who pays for it?
Mr Bonney: The upgrade is fire
and rescue authorities. They continue to pay themselves individually.
Cllr Coleman: We have a key deadline
coming which is the Olympics and it is not just a London deadline,
it applies to other parts of the country as well. I do not think
any fire authority, particularly those with an Olympic commitment,
want to be doing a new control room in the first six months of
2012.
Q34 John Cummings: Are you saying
that various projects have been delayed because of the inadequacies
of the new system?
Cllr Coleman: I understand that
Kent have been given permission, for example, not to sign up until
after the Olympics. Am I correct on that?
Mr Bonney: Kent have, yes.
Cllr Coleman: In London as well
we have had special arrangements. We were originally guaranteed
this would all be up and running long before the Olympics came
along. Because the timescale is slipping, nobody wants to be putting
in a new system on 1 January 2012. Even London's last date is
September 2011. If it is not in by then and running, then we will
wait until the Olympics are out of the way. I think that is the
same for many other fire authorities.
Q35 Sir Paul Beresford: A few minutes
ago, Mr Bonney, you actually said that this was the only show
in town. Now you are saying you are looking for an alternative.
Mr Bonney: No, what we have said
is that fire and rescue authorities have not been investing in
their fire controls in the expectation that the regional control
centres would be brought in. We are now saying there is a point
we have now reached with the confidence on the project, although
we are still committed to the project, where we do believe there
needs to be an alternative provided if, for whatever reason, the
project is scrapped. We cannot leave fire and rescue services
high and dry.
Q36 Chair: Sorry, Mr Bonney, I do
not want to misinterpret what you were saying before but in answer
to the previous question I think what you were saying was that
some fire and rescue authorities are unable, with confidence,
to continue to provide the service they should be providing in
the interim before a new scheme comes in and that is why some
of them may be upgrading their existing schemes.
Mr Bonney: Some of them have upgraded
already. For instance, Surrey upgraded about two and a half years
ago on the basis that they could not wait for their regional control
centre to be delivered so they were forced to do that at their
own cost.
Cllr Pearson: There are two elements
to your question. One is the technical side and one is the staffing
side. On the technical element, it is right that there are a number
of fire and rescue authorities who expected this project to be
in by now who have not invested in renewing their control systems,
and their control systems have fallen over. There is an example
in Cheshire where two years ago they had to renew at vast expense.
CLG are picking up the tab for this but this is unnecessary renewing
of legacy systems to keep them going until the magic day when
we cross over. The other part to this is a staffing issue. Most
of us expected that we would not be running control centres by
now, so as part of the overall wider modernisation agenda, we
have taken beds out, we have looked at reducing crews, overtime,
we have gone through wholesale reviews on how we provide fire
safety, we have looked at our borough command structure and taken
out 30 per cent of the officer corps. These are all things that
the current financial situation require us to do. What has not
been done locally in Manchester for us is a full investigation
into fire control and our control centre. It has been sitting
there not being reviewed. That has had an on-running cost for
us because we still pay the same prices and we have not had the
opportunity to go through it and make efficiencies because we
were expecting this project to take that away from us.
Q37 Sir Paul Beresford: Mr Pearson,
you have just said that some of the organisations that have gone
ahead as Surrey had are being paid centrally and yet Surrey and
perhaps others have not. Why?
Cllr Pearson: Sorry, the question
is?
Q38 Sir Paul Beresford: You were
talking about those who were feeling obsolete or were in a situation
of becoming obsolete and had moved ahead.
Cllr Pearson: As part of the overall
project because the delivery of regional control centres has been
delayed, the legacy systems in some of the authorities that have
not been able to survive up to the revised schedule date have
had to be supported. Some have meant a complete renewal.
Q39 Sir Paul Beresford: Who has funded
it?
Cllr Pearson: CLG to some part.
Mr Bonney: I think I can help
there. Where there has been sufficient and very hard lobbying,
CLG have relented and paid a degree of the project replacement
costs. They have not paid for the hardware. They have usually
paid for some of the project management costs, which was the case
in Cheshire, but that was not the case in Surrey, so it has been
a patchwork.
Chair: Afterwards could you give us the
specific data on what proportion was paid for by CLG and what
was not? That would be very helpful.
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