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Memorandum
from
Gloucestershire County Council's Community Safety Overview and Scrutiny Committee welcomes the opportunity to contribute to this inquiry. We do so on the basis of being elected members and not technical or subject matter experts. We would like to emphasise that this is a non-political response from the committee which includes members from the county council and district councils in Gloucestershire.
As far as the members can ascertain the project will not be in the best interests of the residents of Gloucestershire for the reasons identified in the attached submission. In stating these reasons the committee would hope to address the three key areas the parliamentary committee are considering -
· Progress with the project so far · The reasons for the cost and time overruns which the project has experienced · What if any changes need to be made to the government's plans for proceeding with the project
1 Introduction We would wish to emphasise the value of the current emergency fire control facility in place and urge the parliamentary committee to consider carefully the need to continue with the Regional Control Centre (RCC) project. Since the inception of the project the political, economic, climate change and terrorist environments have all significantly changed in a way which could not have been envisaged and catered for. Importantly this committee believe that the concept of having 'all your eggs in one basket' needs to be reconsidered against this background of change. We need to have confidence in the project but as time has progressed along with the delays, the disappearance of efficiency savings and receding resilience arguments, our confidence has waned.
2 Summary The main concerns of the Community Safety Overview and Scrutiny Committee over the project are as follows:
a) There will be no cost savings for the authority once operating in normal state. The opposite may well be the case as, apart from the huge project development cost, the final outcome will cost more to operate.
b) We have serious concerns over the project delay on our existing fire control infrastructure. A new radio system was planned in 2001 as part of South West collaboration. Because this project was stopped by government at the time there are now serious resilience issues with existing ICT systems which are in need of a refresh. If the RCC project is not delivered, this issue still needs to be addressed by the Department of Communities and Local Government.
c) Out of scope activity and therefore residual costs have still not been fully identified
d) The quality and level of service will not match that which is already available locally
e) Ambiguity remains over governance and authority of the resources of the RCC and its eight partners when one or more fire and rescue agencies have unusual demands upon the resources in the centres and resolving these issues will inevitably lead to further delays and costs.
f) No consideration has been given to the long term management of nine RCCs in terms of maintaining national resilience. If we accept, and we do not, that RCC are about improving national resilience, the government need to implement some form of governance, assurance, long term management, asset refresh and operating procedures that will provide uniformity across all nine RCCs. Only recently has the government considered this through what it calls 'in service management'. This is a very good example of the lack of long term thinking and project planning at project inception. This example is a demonstration of how we as stakeholders have little confidence in respect of project management, level of competence employed and more importantly the statutory outcomes these RCCs must deliver.
g) The technology to provide a solution on the scale required is not available nor will it be for sometime, leading to the inevitable reduction in functionality or further delays and increased resources. It is accepted that parts of the technology are available but it is marrying it all together on a national scale which is proving so difficult.
h) Resilience is better served by more controls rather than fewer
i) In 2007 Gloucestershire experienced catastrophic floods and our emergency services performed extremely well. We believe this was due to the simple fact that our senior fire officers have a clear picture and intelligence about the size and scope of the flood emergency at all times. We believe this was due to the locality of our Fire Control being at the heart of the operations. Maintaining this overall command and control for our senior fire officers is essential if they are going to be able to deploy resources appropriately and timely. We have serious doubts that this level of command and control will exist as easily as it does within the tri service centre due to the remoteness of the Taunton based RCC. We think this will be a serious test for any RCC and we would ask the committee to consider this and satisfy itself that the aspect of command and control for brigade commanders is not lost or diminished in anyway through the new arrangements.
3 Progress 3.1 If the original plan was being followed, Gloucestershire would have migrated to the new control in 2009. The proposed date is now September 2011. We question this, as there is still no real evidence to suggest that the technological solution has been developed and is in test phase. This view is supported by the recent publicity around EADs (the contractor) to the project and their software provider which they have recently changed, which does not promote confidence in elected members that the project is progressing well.
3.2 The project predicted 30% savings which were revised to 10%, which now sits at £60,000 across the entire South West region. Further work is ongoing but the emerging evidence is that the final cost will be greater than that currently spent on the existing regional arrangements. As the project has progressed it is evident that the original premise is proving incorrect and that increased cost will rest in someway with the tax payer. If this was guaranteed to deliver a higher quality level of service, this could be worth the investment. However, much of the tactical and operational detail around what is going to be delivered, how it is going to be delivered and by who, is still not clear. The committee can only surmise that further work and consequently further costs are yet to be identified and considered.
3.3 There remains a need to clearly set out to fire and rescue authorities the work which will still reside within their remit and therefore the residual costs. It is of concern that this real issue is not yet fully addressed at this late stage in the project, as it could cause further delay.
4 Reasons for cost and time overruns 4.1 During the floods in Gloucestershire in 2007, the fire part of the tri-service control received 17,500 calls from BT exchanges. It is these types of situations that the RCC project as envisaged would address more effectively. It is the view of this committee that in trying to find the solution to handling that kind of volume or a similar situation there has been difficulty.
4.2 Linking all nine controls and carrying sufficient data to ensure mobilising if one centre becomes overwhelmed or out of action is extremely complex and difficult to resolve within the current parameters. This is why the delays and cost overruns are being incurred, and will continue as perhaps the wherewithal is simply just not available. What further delays and cost overruns are acceptable? And at what point does the project sponsor question if the specification can actually be delivered as opposed to being informed that it can be delivered given time and resources.
4.3 Our concern is that the final outcome will deliver a much slimmed down and less comprehensive service than that already available, as emergency mobilising is so much more than operating a call centre.
4.4 Sir Michael Pitt referred to the success of the tri-service control in Gloucestershire in his report on the lessons learned from the 2007 flooding. He indicated that the arrangements in Gloucestershire for co-ordinating the emergency services during the devastating flooding in the county in July 2007 were a model of best practice and should be adopted in other parts of the country.
4.5 During the snow falls in early January 2010 the Highways Agency website 'crashed' as demand outstripped capability. Running an emergency service calls for levels of resilience in excess of what is the norm. In trying to find a level of resilience which is currently available locally on a small scale is proving very difficult on a larger scale and even if available would come at increased cost. We would site two examples here:
a) A local company switches from an analogue phone system to a digital one and suffers complete failure of the system during a power cut. The solution is to reinstall at cost a number of analogue phones to remedy the situation.
b) Currently in Gloucestershire we have 5 alternative methods to mobilise our resources. The RCC solution will have only two. To provide the same level of resilience across the country we believe would put an unreasonable burden on individual fire and rescue authorities.
5 Governance and accountability These remain issues that need resolution. The statutory responsibility resides with the fire and rescue authority, but until some of the operational questions about how things will actually work are answered, the fire and rescue stakeholders will continue to ask questions and this will continue to delay progress.
6 Conclusion The inquiry asks 'what if any changes need to be made to the government's plans for proceeding with the project?' Subject to further evidence from other consultees supporting our concerns, we would ask that the Communities and Local Government Committee carefully consider recommending an option which leads to the termination of the project.
January 2010 |