UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 872-ii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER:

HOUSING, PLANNING, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE REGIONS COMMITTEE

THE FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE

Tuesday 31 January 2006

MR P YOUNG, COUNCILLOR D BROWNE and MRS S SMITH

MS V SHAWCROSS, MR K KNIGHT and MR R DOBSON

COUNTY COUNCILLOR B WILKINSON, MR P HOLLAND and MR C KENNY

Evidence heard in Public Questions 139-262

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister:

Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee

on Tuesday 31 January 2006

Members present

Dr Phyllis Starkey, in the Chair

Sir Paul Beresford

Lyn Brown

John Cummings

Mr Greg Hands

Dr John Pugh

Alison Seabeck

________________

Memorandum submitted by Devon Fire and Rescue Service

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Paul Young, Chief Fire Officer, Councillor David Browne and Mrs Sue Smith, Deputy Chief Officer, Devon Fire and Rescue Service, gave evidence.

Q139 Chair: May I thank you for coming to this session and explain that we have of course received your written submission, so there is no necessity to repeat points which are already in the written submission because we have that and can use that in our report? What we are seeking to do here is explore other areas or clarify issues. May I start by taking up the points you made in your memorandum criticising the ODPM on the FiReControl project and highlighting the difficulties that it was causing for your planning? I wonder whether you could expand. Is that your only reservation on the introduction of Regional Control Centres?

Mr Young: Councillor David Browne may wish to express a view in relation to the political viewpoint on this issue. We have been very pragmatic and taken the view that it is the intention of ODPM to introduce Regional Control Centres and our role will actually be to make them work from a professional standpoint. We have been disappointed in relation to the management of the project to date in a number ways, not least of which has been the lack of information at various points in the development of the project on issues such as funding arrangements. There is some concern about the absence of adequate information about the financial implications to budgets in Fire Authorities and hence the impact on council tax. I suppose the other example we gave was, whilst recognising issues of commercial confidentiality, the information and the promptness of information being made available to Fire Authorities to advise staff, and we touched on this in the submission, has been very late and has produced some real management difficulties in being able to deal with some of these very practical issues on the ground. There are all sorts of issues in relation to the Regional Control Centres and there are arguments about the importance of local knowledge and all sorts of other issues. Our view has been, from a professional standpoint, that we assume this project is going forward; it is clearly going to happen from ODPM's point of view. What we want to try to do professionally is make it a success. Our view is that we desperately need, from a service delivery standpoint, confidence that we are going to get at least as good a service from the Regional Control Centre as we are able to deliver ourselves and we need to be a partner in this to ensure that that is indeed the case.

Q140 Chair: So it is not simply the lack of clear financial and funding information, although yesterday the ODPM officials did say that they would essentially underwrite any additional cost to Fire Authorities. It is also a lack of confidence in the projects being delivered on time, is it?

Mr Young: Certainly we have been disappointed in relation to the slippage which is taking place in the project, because that has a direct impact on our ability to continue to deliver the service between now and the point at which the project goes live. Another issue that we touched on in our submission was that we have to be confident that the existing arrangements will be 100 per cent effective until the very second at which the switch is thrown to transfer the function from our existing control to the new Regional Control Centre. That brings with it a number of different issues that we have to pay attention to, one of which of course is staff retention. We need to be confident that we have the skilled staff in place and willing to remain there up until the point at which that happens and, of course, that the equipment and systems are effective as well up until that very point. The slippage is causing some problems for us in terms of costs. Had the project been on target, some of the equipment costs that we will now incur would not have happened and we are likely to incur costs to meet the longer time of operational effectiveness that will now be necessary. ODPM has taken the view that they will not meet those costs, so clearly there are some concerns about that.

Q141 Chair: But those particular costs would have arisen in any case if FiReControl had not been on the horizon.

Mr Young: That is true. However, in the context of FiReControl taking place, those costs would not have arisen because the regional control room would have gone live.

Q142 Chair: What impact do you think the introduction of Regional Control Centres will have on your response times?

Mr Young: On the basis of the information we have been given to date, it ought not to have an adverse impact. The information we are being given through the regional project team is that the capacity and capability of the Regional Control Centre will be at least as effective as the current local control centre. So in terms of response times, it ought not to have an adverse impact, if that is true.

Q143 Chair: But not any more effective. It would not shorten the response times.

Mr Young: No, I do not sufficient information available to me to indicate whether indeed it will be more effective.

Q144 John Cummings: In your evidence, you indicate that you are critical of the ODPM's management of the FiReControl project. What impact does its performance have on your ability to maintain morale among staff and confidence in the service on the part of the public?

Mr Young: I do not know whether Councillor Browne might wish to comment about public expectations. In terms of staff, morale of staff in our existing control rooms has been adversely affected by the project; I could not possibly deny that. Clearly the threat to jobs and the implications for long-term security of employment has an adverse impact on morale; that is inevitable frankly. The difficulty at the moment is that the view is that pay and terms and conditions of employment particularly are something which we understand will reside with the companies which are to be established to run the Regional Control Centres. At the moment, from a staff perspective, the one thing they want to know now more than anything else, now that they know where the Regional Control Centre is going to be, is what the conditions of employment will be for them in that new role. That is the very information we cannot give them at the moment, because the view has been taken that that is a matter for the public company which will be established and the longer there is a delay in establishing that company, the longer it will take to give that sense of security to staff about their future conditions.

Q145 John Cummings: Do you see any redeeming features in the project?

Mr Young: I certainly should not wish to sound entirely negative, because my view is that there are some strengths with the project. We have tried to be pragmatic and have tried to take the view that it is the intent of the Government to have Regional Control Centres so, from a professional standpoint my task is more focused on trying to make it a success. My job is to ensure that my employing authority have confidence in their ability to deliver the service to the public.

Q146 John Cummings: And the confidence of the public?

Councillor Browne: Our concerns from the political side are about the complexity of the IT that is involved in this and whether it will be rolled out on time successfully.

Q147 John Cummings: How have you reached this conclusion? How have the public responded? What particular methods have you used to assess public concern?

Mr Young: We have certainly not actively sought to measure public concern about the project. We, as an individual Fire Authority, have not explored that issue. We can only give anecdotal evidence about public opinion and frankly that has been mixed. We have seen expressions of concern in the local media from the public.

The Committee suspended from 4.45pm to 4.52pm for a division in the House

Q148 Chair: May I turn to the issue of FireLink and ask whether you are convinced by the business case for FireLink, either for your area or for the Fire and Rescue Service nationally?

Mr Young: Our view is that we do support the FireLink project; it is the right project for the Fire Service. Our concerns are more issues of detail, particularly in the context of funding arrangements and again it is something we touched on in our written submission. The fact that the police in our part of the country will migrate to a digital radio network at an earlier stage than the Fire Service means that we shall then inherit all of the costs of that part of the radio infrastructure that we currently share with them. Had the original approach continued, which would have been a regional approach to radio replacement, we should not have incurred those costs. It is an issue we are trying to pursue with ODPM, because we feel that those financial burdens ought not to fall on the authority. It is something we are trying to persuade them on.

Q149 Sir Paul Beresford: You mentioned a number of issues which you are pursuing with the ODPM. Was there a positive response or are there Jaguar tyre marks over everything?

Mr Young: The response from ODPM in relation to the earlier issue that I touched on is that they would not reimburse those replacement equipment costs for the existing control rooms. We should like to see them reconsider that. In terms of the issues around radio infrastructure costs as a consequence of us inheriting the upkeep of radio infrastructure because the police are vacating that, there is an opportunity for us to bid to ODPM for financial support to meet those costs. Whether indeed ODPM will be positive about that, of course we do not know at this time.

Q150 Sir Paul Beresford: Bidding against whom?

Mr Young: Bidding under New Burdens and seeking a bid under the New Burdens scheme to get ODPM funding for that. Whether that will receive a positive response, we simply do not know at this time.

Q151 John Cummings: What evidence do you have which leads you to suspect that there could be slippage in the implementation of FireLink? What would be the consequences for your authority, if it had to meet all the costs of maintaining the current microwave radio system on its own?

Mr Young: At this time I cannot recall whether ODPM have actually expressed a view on whether there is further slippage in FireLink. Our concern, in relation to the point I have just made about funding, is not in relation to slippage but to the relative timing of two emergency services, that is police and fire, migrating onto the new system.

Q152 John Cummings: But in your evidence you say that any slippage in the FireLink project would mean your authority, and presumably Cornwall County Fire Service as well, would have to continue to use a now redundant system and carry the entire costs of doing so, estimated to be an additional £214,000 per annum.

Mr Young: Yes, that is right. I am not saying that there is slippage, but should there be slippage, then obviously those costs will continue longer than would otherwise be the case.

Mrs Smith: May I just come in? There has already been slippage with the FireLink project and part of that was to bring FireLink together with the FiReControl project, so both have been subject to slippage. That is one of the issues for us, in Devon particularly, and with other authorities in the South West Region.

Q153 Chair: Just to clarify, you do not have any evidence that there will be any further slippage, but you fear there may be and you were just spelling out the consequences.

Mr Young: Yes, that is right.

Chair: You have already explained that you have now put in a bid to the Government. We have explored that issue.

Q154 John Cummings: Have you had any response back from the Government yet in relation to your request for additional costs?

Mrs Smith: No.

Mr Young: No, we have not; no.

Q155 Dr Pugh: In your memorandum you draw attention to the fact that small Fire Authorities in rural areas are going to have specific problems with the Government's modernisation agenda. Is it just smaller Fire Authorities or is it rural authorities? Can you be more specific as to where these problems lie?

Mr Young: The conclusions of the Audit Commission in their recent publication about the outcomes of CPA inspections in Fire Authorities indicate that they believe that smaller Fire Authorities find it more difficult to take forward the agenda because of capacity constraints. On the basis of the information we are seeing from the Audit Commission, it is not a distinction about rural versus metropolitan: it is an issue to do with size, which is about organisational capacity.

Mrs Smith: And models of types of Fire Authority. There are several different models of Fire Authorities: county council departments' Fire Authorities or standalone Fire Authorities such as Devon is, as a combined Fire Authority and that causes "We are standalone. We are bigger. We run our own show. Our neighbours are county council departments and therefore have less capacity to deal with the issues".

Q156 Dr Pugh: How do you define a smaller Fire Authority? Which are the smaller Fire Authorities?

Mr Young: That is a good question. There is no such definition. You cannot simply turn to something and say that is small and that is not.

Q157 Dr Pugh: The authorities which are likely to have most difficulty. Put it like that.

Mr Young: Typically the smaller authorities in the South West are authorities such as Somerset, one of our neighbours, such as Gloucestershire and, of course, as Mrs Smith has touched on, the different kinds of constitutional model have an impact as well. In the case of a small authority which is part of a county council, they can of course draw on the corporate support of the larger organisation. If you are a combined authority and are small, you cannot do that. You are an independent organisation in your own right, so capacity constraints become more acute.

Q158 Alison Seabeck: You have expressed reservations about the establishment of a regional Fire and Rescue Service. It would be helpful to understand what those reservations are and therefore what is driving you towards looking at a sub-regional establishment between you and Somerset?

Mr Young: There are probably two dimensions to the reservations in Devon about a regional solution: one is a political reservation and the other one is a professional reservation. May I deal with the professional reservation? There is a concern that the sheer size of an organisation the size of the South West Region, extending from Land's End to Tewksbury in Gloucestershire for example, is so large that it provides some real practical obstacles for the effective and efficient management of the organisation. There are real concerns about that, not only on the part of myself but on the part of my colleague chief officers in the South West as well.

Q159 John Cummings: Could you give any practical examples, so I can truly understand your worries?

Mr Young: My colleagues in the Police Service express similar views about proposals for regionalisation of the Police Service.

Q160 John Cummings: They certainly have not done that in Durham or Northumberland.

Mr Young: No, but in terms of geographical size there are some very different circumstances in the South West. You are talking of literally hundreds of miles from one end of the region to the other; hundreds of miles, a very, very large geographical area with very, very sparsely populated rural communities, with certain urban areas as well, such as Bristol and Plymouth. There are some practical problems in day-to-day management, in trying to maintain a relationship with staff, in trying to give a sense of identity with the organisation to local communities who want to have a sense of identity with their local Fire Service. Some of those things are practical problems which are very difficult to overcome in a region the size of the South West. There are political opinions as well that Councillor David Browne might wish to touch on, which are an issue for the Fire Authority as well.

Councillor Browne: To give you an illustration, if you stand at the north-east corner of the South West Region, you are nearer to Scotland than you are to the other end of the region; it is that sort of size and the political dimensions vary across the region. The Cornish, for example, feel that they are a region on their own and they agitate for that. We have taken a slightly more pragmatic view in Devon, but it varies by political party. That is why we have been looking, with Somerset, at a mutual solution of combining with Somerset.

Q161 Chair: Is it that Somerset is more amenable to cooperation than Cornwall?

Councillor Browne: Yes, there is that. Somerset and Devon are very similar in terms of their sparse population and their structures, so we see a good fit there.

Q162 Alison Seabeck: In your note you also expressed some concerns about the inadequacies of constitutional arrangements for the Regional Management Boards. Would you like to elaborate on that and where you think those inadequacies are?

Mrs Smith: The Regional Management Board is a local government joint committee and that is all it is. It is not a corporate body in its own right, it is not an employer in its own right, it does not have any separate legal status; it is just a joint committee. I think there is a misconception in central government within the Civil Service that it actually has more powers than it really has in terms of directing anything. The direction has to come from the individual Fire Authorities through the Regional Management Board, maybe as a joint committee. That is what we mean by constitutional arrangements.

Q163 Alison Seabeck: Finally, there are proposals in place to regionalise police and Ambulance Services. I know that the police are looking at a Devon and Cornwall option, particularly around where I am. How will that intermesh with what you are doing with Somerset and will there be problems?

Mr Young: There is already an absence of alignment between boundaries on blue light services. If you pick the police, of course, we have Devon and Cornwall, we have Avon and Somerset and so on. If you pick the Ambulance Service, we have West Country Ambulance which covers Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. If you pick fire, each county has its own Fire Service still. So there is already an absence in terms of those boundaries. As far as the work that we are doing with Somerset is concerned, clearly it will perpetuate that, there is no doubt, but it will not make any significant difference in terms of the relationship between us and our colleagues in the other services.

Q164 Dr Pugh: Why is co-responding such a divisive topic for the FRS?

Mr Young: Well it is not divisive within Devon Fire and Rescue Service because we very much support the project. We are very committed to it. It is one of the most exciting things which has happened in the Fire Service for a long time and it is about meeting the needs of local communities. It is divisive in the sense that the largest representative body in the Fire Service has a stance of opposition to it; so in that sense, it is divisive. Certainly we, as an organisation, and I know the authority as well, are very committed to it.

Q165 Dr Pugh: Is the difficulty anything to do with the apportionment of costs? Who will pick up the tab if the FRS attends a medical emergency? Does that money come to you from the Ambulance Service because you are in a sense doing their work?

Mr Young: This is something we should like to see addressed by a dialogue between the ODPM and the Department of Health because the current arrangement is that there is no single financial framework to facilitate the operation of co-responders. Everything depends entirely upon a local arrangement between an individual Fire Service and its local Ambulance Service. In some areas you find that there is reimbursement of costs from ambulance to fire and in other areas there is not. What we believe is that if ODPM wish to see the further development of co-responders, and of course it is in the national framework document, the LGA is supportive, the national employers are supportive and an increasing number of Fire Authorities are supportive, then ODPM and the Department of Health need to have some joined-up thinking about how they can actually facilitate that.

Q166 Dr Pugh: That sounds like a very sensible suggestion and it will take a lot of friction out of the process. Can we move to another area of possible friction, integrated risk management plans and the culture of prevention which we looked at yesterday, which we were all told were very much embedded in the service. One restraint appears to be in some areas that the retained service seems less involved in it than it might be. What is the position in your neck of the woods and are you making adequate use of the retained service?

Mr Young: I should not agree that the retained service is less involved. The integrated risk management plan is about the service as a whole and in Devon, for example, retained firefighters and retained fire stations are an essential and a fully integrated part of the organisation. They feature within our integrated risk management plan completely.

Q167 Dr Pugh: The Retained Firefighters' Union told us yesterday that they were not always consulted in all areas. Are you a model of good practice then?

Mr Young: I should not suggest that. Certainly the issue of consultation is a separate issue from the involvement of the retained firefighters. In terms of using retained firefighters as a resource within the Fire and Rescue Service, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, that they are fully utilised. If there is a view that there is lack of consultation, then clearly that is an issue which will vary from one authority to another. We believe that we are very much engaged with the Retained Firefighters' Union, as we are with all representative bodies and Mrs Smith may well wish to comment on that.

Mrs Smith: We have a very good relationship with the Retained Firefighters' Union. We have been working very, very closely with them recently on a new salary-based retained duty system.

Q168 Dr Pugh: Do you consult with them?

Mrs Smith: We have consulted with them almost weekly in the last six months actually, but at least monthly and specifically about the new retained duty system. Yes, I personally consult with them. I have regular meetings with John Barton and occasionally Derek Chadbon, who I know was here yesterday; they know me very well and I know them very well. It would be unfair to say that in Devon they are not consulted. They actually do have local negotiating rights with Devon as well, which is a new departure, so they have very strong representation.

Q169 Dr Pugh: So you are a model of good practice then.

Mr Young: Quite possibly.

Q170 Lyn Brown: The Audit Commission reports that you are being successful in increasing the numbers of women in the workforce. What are you doing that is so right? My second question is: given that you are on course to meet the targets, why do you think that the ODPM targets are unachievable?

Mrs Smith: In answer to your first question, the reason why we are actually doing better than some - and I should actually say that we are still not doing as well as we should like - is that we have had a great increase in recruitment of women to the retained workforce and that is about trying to make the job seem more family friendly. Part of the new retained salary scheme which I just mentioned is about changing the culture, so you actually know that you have a job to do as a retained firefighter, you know what you are going to be paid and you can do it for a reduced-hours contract as well. All those issues in terms and conditions of service for the retained workforce have actually emphasised to members of the public who might want to join the retained workforce what the benefits are. We have actually proactively campaigned within small towns and focused on particular small towns where we have had a recruitment problem which has generated additional women into the retained staff. The bigger issue for us really is recruitment to the whole-time service and part of that is limited by the numbers that we need to recruit at any one time and the numbers that apply at any one time. For every time we advertise for a whole-time firefighter, we get thousands of applicants literally on the whole-time service and obviously they all go through a set process. We have to start that off with some positive action to encourage women to apply, but even if they apply, there is quite a regime to go through in terms of actually getting to the end result. We are still getting more women firefighters, but not enough.

Q171 Lyn Brown: May I ask what your retention is like, when you get your women firefighters there?

Mrs Smith: It is not bad. I would not say it was any worse for women, particularly in the retained service, than it is for the men.

Q172 Lyn Brown: What are the barriers to staying once they are there?

Mrs Smith: It is about the critical mass really, is it not? If you are only 58 out of 1,400, then there is an issue in terms of being accepted as the norm. As I said, we are trying to overcome all the barriers which people identify like physical amenities and all those sorts of things; the Fire Authority is putting resources into those.

Mr Young: May I just add a pragmatic point to that? You asked why we still think that the target is unachievable and the reason we think the target is unachievable is because when the target was originally published we took the view, even then, that it was unachievable because, although our staff turnover rates in retained firefighters are high, and that is not peculiar to Devon, the staff turnover rates in whole-time are very low. We knew that if we were to meet that target, there would be one particular year when 50 per cent of all of our recruitment would have to consist of women and, from experience, we knew it was unrealistic frankly. Therefore we still do not think it is achievable. We are doing adequately, not as well as we should like, but we still do not think it is achievable.

Q173 Lyn Brown: Your black and minority ethnic staff also do not reflect your local population. Why do you think that is and do you think you are doing as much as you possibly can to promote diversity?

Mrs Smith: They do not quite reflect the population. They are not too far adrift but they do not quite reflect and the numbers have increased over the last year or so. There was a time when we were closer than we are now actually, but we are talking about one against point seven, so it is fairly small in terms of numbers.

Q174 Lyn Brown: Point seven?

Mrs Smith: It was point seven but it is now one point something.

Q175 Alison Seabeck: I was interested in your comments about women coming into the retained force. Is there an element of them finding that slightly more attractive because the shift patterns or the arrangements are generally more flexible?

Mrs Smith: One of the points of the new duty system that we are hoping to implement - and I am still waiting to hear from the Retained Firefighters' Union whether they support it or not - is that we are offering different contracts, more flexible contracts, shorter-hours contracts, those sorts of facilities to help recruitment.

Q176 Mr Hands: A question on comprehensive performance assessment or CPA. Do you think the CPA process, in its interaction with Fire Authorities, has given a thorough and robust assessment of yourselves and other authorities?

Mr Young: In terms of the remit that CPA had, which did not embrace all aspects of the Fire Service, in the context of that, we believe it was robust, yes. We really felt as though we had been assessed at the end of the process. Because we got a good rating, we feel that it was an accurate one as well. The issue that it did not deal with, which has yet to be addressed and we realise will be addressed, is the issue of the operational service delivery dimension of the service. Ironically, from the general public's point of view, to be frank that is the bit they are more interested in.

Q177 Sir Paul Beresford: How much did the CPA cost?

Mr Young: That is a good question.

Mrs Smith: To us, it is actually the loss of time in terms of managing the process rather than actual cost to the authority.

Q178 Sir Paul Beresford: I was hoping you would include that.

Mrs Smith: I do not have a figure for you on that one.

Sir Paul Beresford: What is your gearing?

Q179 Chair: Would it be possible for you to provide us with a figure afterwards, without wasting a lot more of your time on it?

Mrs Smith: Yes.

Chair: We do not need it to be accurate but a ball-park estimate would be helpful.

Q180 Sir Paul Beresford: Would you include your gearing, please?

Mr Young: Yes.

Q181 Mr Hands: Just coming back to the operational service, would you have preferred it to have included those considerations?

Mr Young: From a personal point of view, I should have liked to have seen an holistic approach to the assessment which actually dealt with all aspects of the service. That is purely a personal point of view.

Q182 Sir Paul Beresford: Is that not likely to come? Yesterday we had a group of officials. We had the Director of Fire Resilience, we had the Head of the Fire Service Inspectorate, we had the Head of the Fire Service Improvement Team and we had the Head of the Fire Service Effectiveness Division. They sound like a bunch of hornets coming down on you in addition to CPA.

Mr Young: We are quite used to being inspected and we have been inspected for many years. There are some advantages in actually it taking an holistic approach because, frankly, from a practitioner's point of view on the ground, it gets it done and finished rather than repeating the inspections over time.

Q183 Sir Paul Beresford: They ought really to all come together and come to see you for less time.

Mr Young: We have always had the view that the degree of inspection from all sorts of different organisations has been excessive. Of course we would say this would we not? The more that can be rationalised and the impact on staff time minimised, from an organisational standpoint, the better.

Mrs Smith: I think I would emphasise that we are a fairly small organisation as a combined Fire Authority and yet we are subject to the same regimes as a large county council. In terms of audit, that is an issue.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed.

Memorandum submitted by London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Ms Valerie Shawcross, Chair, Mr Ken Knight, Commissioner for Fire and Emergency Planning and Mr Ron Dobson, Acting Deputy Commissioner, London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, gave evidence

Q184 Chair: Good afternoon, would you like to just say who you are?

Ms Shawcross: I am the Chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority.

Mr Knight: Ken Knight, London Fire Commissioner.

Mr Dobson: Ron Dobson, Acting Deputy Commissioner.

Q185 Chair: May I start off? Your memorandum outlines the reasons for your decision to commit to the FiReControl project. To what extent did you really have a choice?

Ms Shawcross: The Fire Authority recently took the decision that we should join in the FiReControl project and the feeling of the members was that, although we do have a new regional fire control centre which only opened in 2004 and it is functioning extremely satisfactorily and efficiently, it would very much add to our resilience as a service if we had complete inter-operability with the regional control rooms which would by then be created in the rest of the country.

Q186 Chair: So it was advantageous for you to be part of the national project?

Ms Shawcross: It is advantageous for London to be able to call upon other regions within the service if we have problems, but we should also want to make a contribution to our national resilience by being part of a national network.

Q187 Chair: Would the national network have been able to function without London being part of it?

Ms Shawcross: It would function without London; that would be the point. There could be occasions on which we should need to call in the support of adjacent control rooms and it would undermine our ability to do that.

Mr Knight: It is mutually an advantage, both to the regional project and to London, that it has inter-operability technically, not just for London events but for events which are nationwide and we have seen the deployment of vehicles from Maryhill in Glasgow to the Buncefield oil terminal. Inter-operability technically and the similarity of equipment are helpful. It is also a great advantage to us to be able to spread calls in what we call spate conditions. We currently shed those calls to places like the Metropolitan Police Service and to Scotland Yard. It means they can be handled by another Fire Authority, by fire control operators and that gives us an advantage as well. We operate, as you know, a very large control already, a regional control. It handles something like 270,000 calls a year, about 30 emergency calls an hour and we are very comfortable with the regional control concept and very comfortable to link in with the regional control project which is being proposed.

Q188 John Cummings: In your evidence you state that your commitment to FiReControl is subject to future review. Why are you unable to commit to the project unconditionally?

Ms Shawcross: Although the authority has a track record of tremendous change management over the last five years, we have always done it cautiously. We like to see business cases. We want to be sure that the technology is stacking up, that it is performing. Since the single strongest piece of value that this project adds to London is our ability to inter-operate and pass on demands to other authorities, to other regional control rooms, it is obviously important that we know the whole system.

Q189 John Cummings: When will the review take place?

Ms Shawcross: The Fire Authority is a hung authority and we are subject both to borough elections and assembly elections. It is something we should need to fit in with both our technical and our political timetable.

Q190 John Cummings: Well it is obvious that you do not command all-party support.

Ms Shawcross: I think it was unanimous; we agreed that we should support the regional control room. The experience of all of our members has been that the regional control room is absolutely uncontroversial in London.

Q191 John Cummings: The Committee have been advised that your decision did not command all-party support.

Ms Shawcross: I think it did. We may have had a dissent from a member of UKIP on the authority who is concerned that regionalism is connected with the European Union.

Q192 John Cummings: So is it causing difficulties in implementing the project?

Ms Shawcross: The Fire Authority has had a single control room in London since 1988; previously there were several control rooms in London. There has been a single control room in London since 1988 with a fall-back, which is kept warmed up in case of technical failure. The technology started to age and in 2000 we initiated the project to replace the control room we had. That was with all-party support. The new control room has functioned incredibly successfully and certainly it stood up extremely well during the incidents of 7/7. In fact I doubt very much that we could have commanded our resources as well as we did in July had we not had a regional control room.

Q193 John Cummings: Just for the record, are you saying that there is not a split?

Ms Shawcross: The Fire Authority is very strongly in favour of this project.

Mr Knight: May I just say that in operational terms we have laid down the caveats and we want to have those discussions with the ODPM and we have had a very successful single control since the beginning of the 1990s, having had multiple controls in London and now have a regional control, moving to a new regional control in 2002 and that is due for refresh in 2011. Therefore it is timely for us to be at the end of the regional control project, but particularly to be live and ready for the important event of the 2012 Olympics. That is critical in our discussions with the ODPM.

Q194 John Cummings: So you do not foresee any difficulties in implementing the project and you are confident that you will continue to maintain public confidence in the modernisation programme despite the split within the authority.

Ms Shawcross: I am sorry; we have obviously given some misimpression here. The Fire Authority is very committed to our regional control room and would like to see us playing a part in a national network of regional control rooms. We should like the rest of the country to enjoy the benefits that we very strongly enjoy and that includes efficiency benefits, ability to provide better training and career structures for the many women who work in the Fire Service in the control rooms and the ability to handle large-scale and critical situations very competently. It makes absolute sense to me that the Fire Service should have a network of regional control rooms. The only thing I find peculiar is that we do not have them yet.

Q195 John Cummings: Would you be more likely to commit unconditionally to the FiReControl project if the Government were to publish a more detailed business case?

Ms Shawcross: We do not commit to anything unconditionally at all until we are clear about the legal and financial and operational requirements. As more detail becomes available, we shall be confirming our level of commitment.

Q196 John Cummings: What would the business case have to demonstrate in order to gain your support?

Ms Shawcross: The business case would have to show that there was no undue financial disadvantage to the Fire Authority, but we do not expect that to be the case.

Q197 Alison Seabeck: Just picking up on some of the points John has made about the success, in your view, of the Regional Control Centre in London, you talk about delivering a cost-effective service. Have you been able to quantify exactly what the savings have been to the service since you moved to the new control centre? Do you think that that will translate across to Regional Control Centres across the country, given that some of them are very rural and are quite different from London?

Ms Shawcross: We certainly can show that per incident handled, London is vastly cheaper than the other Fire Authority control rooms around the country. In terms of the latest upgrade of our control room, we actually benefited in terms of some technical improvements. Perhaps Ron could explain?

Mr Dobson: I can certainly demonstrate that there have been significant efficiencies between when we had three separate divisional controls and we moved to one regional control in the early 1990s. We can certainly demonstrate too that having moved to our very modern control a couple of years ago, there are certainly efficiencies there in terms of call-handling times, efficiency of calls and time taken to handle calls. There are several efficiencies. I am afraid I could not give you figures right this moment, but there is certainly a range of areas where we have achieved significant efficiencies by moving to a regional control and then updating that control recently and having the very modern, state-of-the-art control room that we have now.

Q198 Chair: Would it be possible, without much trouble, for you to provide us with some figures subsequently?

Mr Knight: I am sure we can. The ODPM report also shows calls handled per operator and effectiveness and efficiency of regional controls.

Q199 Alison Seabeck: In your paper you talk about the reduction in malicious calls and false call-outs. How has that been achieved? How are you identifying and managing those calls as they come in?

Mr Dobson: We restructured our brigade a few years ago now into a borough base and we have a borough commander at group manager level who looks like one of us and who is responsible for performance in each borough in London and the City of London. We have managed the reduction in malicious calls particularly via engaging with the local boroughs and the police locally as part of the crime and disorder partnerships to identify those areas where we are getting the most malicious calls, engaging with them through the police and other partnerships within the borough and actually getting in touch with those people and reducing it by personal contact. We have run a range of local intervention schemes to engage particularly with youths within London where most of the malicious calls have actually come from. We have achieved some really significant reductions across London generally and in particular boroughs we can demonstrate that these interventions that we have done on a local level with partners in the borough have been really effective.

Q200 Alison Seabeck: Are they cost effective?

Mr Dobson: Absolutely; yes.

Q201 Chair: So it is not related to the Regional Control Centre at all? It is not a technological fix.

Ms Shawcross: The technological aspect is that we have started to use mobile phone technology, talking to the mobile phone operators. We do now have an arrangement for mobile phone abusers to be warned and then cut off. That has been extremely helpful.

Q202 Alison Seabeck: You have expressed concerns, a slight impatience almost, that the system is a tad overdue. Are you clear what arrangements will be put in place to meet the interim gap which is likely to occur here?

Mr Dobson: London had already instigated a project to replace our analogue mobile communication system prior to us being involved in the FireLink project. A couple of years ago we stopped that procurement and actually engaged in the FireLink project. Those abortive costs were picked up by the ODPM. We are keen for FireLink to be delivered on time in 2008 because we see a range of operational benefits in relation to the delivery of that system, but in the meantime we have a requirement to ensure business continuity and operational continuity and therefore we have been maintaining our existing analogue system. We have also recently extended the lease on our hilltop sites, so that if there is a further delay, there will be no impact on our business continuity; we can still continue to deliver our service.

Q203 Alison Seabeck: But there will be cost implications.

Mr Dobson: Yes, there could be some cost implications. I do not have the exact figures, but there certainly could be some cost implications.

Q204 Alison Seabeck: In terms of the delay and your discussions with ODPM, once they give the go-ahead, what is your feeling about the precise time lapse before the roll-out will actually happen and when it will actually be on stream?

Mr Dobson: From our discussions with ODPM, we are hopeful that we should be one of the first authorities which actually gets rolled out as part of FireLink. We are hopeful that if the project does deliver on time, which we hope it will, we shall also be rolled out during 2008; as early in 2008 as we can be.

Q205 Alison Seabeck: Have you had any reassurances from ODPM that they will meet any of the additional costs?

Mr Dobson: Not at the moment. We are continuing to press for those.

Q206 Lyn Brown: The ODPM argue that FireLink, FiReControl and New Dimension are essential factors to strengthen our fire resilience. Do you agree or do you think it could have been done better?

Ms Shawcross: The Civil Contingencies Act and the New Dimension programme have been absolutely central to driving forward our ability to deal with resilience issues, but that is not the end of the story. Now we have an integrated risk management planning process which allows us to collect data and plan on it and act on it, which is not how it used to be in the Fire Service, we also have our own risk assessment which means that we took the view that equipment and training would be required which would be complementary to the national programme but specific to London and I am sure that would be the same elsewhere in the country. To some extent, that is reflected in the financial split. The Government have provided certain kinds of equipment and training and we have been very much involved in that programme and supported it. Equally, we have upgraded and increased some of our own equipment which was prepared to deal with the Tube in particular, because we see that as a particular risk.

Mr Dobson: Part of our intervention in the risk management plan, the London safety plans one and two, is inevitably that one of the risks that London has faced, and we are there to assist with, is the terrorist threat. What we have done is to make sure that in London's safety plan deployment of our resources, and additional funding which we have attracted in order to increase our resilience, is focused towards that terrorist threat.

Mr Knight: Alongside the Government's New Dimension programme, of which you have heard, which we are a key part of and clearly where much of the critical risk still is in the capital city, we also have quite separately a London resilience programme, which has identified additional use and additional equipment, as you might expect.

Q207 Lyn Brown: Have you been adequately consulted over the programmes? Do you think you have been involved?

Ms Shawcross: We have been involved both politically and technically very centrally right from the beginning of the programme and we have had no difficulties of communication. The only issue there has been for the Fire Authority has been that of finances. There is a view in the Fire Authority, which I share, that we think there should have been a greater level of subsidy coming from the national pot to London because at the moment we do not get a capital city allowance as part of our programme of funding, as the Metropolitan Police do. Certainly there are special risks in London and we also play a particular role in supporting the rest of the country when there are major incidents.

Q208 Dr Pugh: You are saying you are dealt with on differentially worse terms than the Metropolitan Police. Is that the point you are making?

Ms Shawcross: There is not a component of the Fire Authority's funding in London that is specific to the fact that we have a capital city risk, whereas there is for the Metropolitan Police. Whether or not the Met get enough, I do not know.

Q209 Dr Pugh: But you are not a security force in the same way the police are.

Ms Shawcross: No, but we are of course looking after sensitive national institutions in the same way that the police are. We attended the fire at Buckingham Palace.

Q210 Dr Pugh: Would you accept that people in the northern cities who have funded fire brigades and things like that, which they probably believe are under-funded in many respects, would in a way regard it as special pleading by the capital city, would they not?

Mr Knight: The risks remain throughout the United Kingdom, but it is generally accepted in the security service and elsewhere that the predominant risk, in fact the predominant population, is here in the capital city and that is why there is a special arrangement in place for the London resilience programme. The point is being made, and it has been a cross-party point being made within the Fire Authority, that the additional expenditure, for example, on the equipment used on 7 July, none of which was New Dimension equipment, was all London resilience funding equipment, funded from LFEPA and it was felt that actually there ought to be some recognition of the capital city role in terrorist attacks.

Q211 Dr Pugh: Do you think, on an evidence basis, mile for mile, you could demonstrate that there are in fact additional costs incurred simply by virtue of being a capital city that are not there by virtue of being a city.

Mr Knight: I am confident.

Ms Shawcross: Yes.

Q212 Dr Pugh: Have you submitted the evidence to ODPM and tried to sustain that argument?

Ms Shawcross: We constantly try to sustain that argument, but we have never persuaded them of the principle.

Q213 Dr Pugh: And what do they say?

Ms Shawcross: We have never persuaded them of the principle.

Q214 Sir Paul Beresford: Do you know the cost of CPA and other inspections?

Ms Shawcross: We were not subject to CPA. We were inspected as part of an IPA project which was looking at us in the context of the Greater London Authority. There was an attempt to translate those scores and those findings into CPA terms, but there was some mismatch. I could not tell you the costs off the top of my head, but we can report that.

Q215 Mr Hands: Going back to resilience again, what specific operational changes were learned or came about as a result of 7/7 and 21/7 in terms of reacting to major events? One of the things that strikes me is that the nature of the two attacks was actually fairly close to what had been trained for and what many commentators and outsiders had predicted. How well set do you think you are for something that is really totally unprepared for, that people have not really thought of yet?

Mr Knight: You are absolutely right, the exercises and training that we did before that event and continue to do with the other agencies not only showed their worth but worked extremely well. You are absolutely right that the Osiris exercise in Bank Underground was a very similar exercise to the reality; same number of crews and so on. What it showed us was that four multiple major incidents, requiring some 200 firefighters simultaneously deployed, require a very fast strategic response to an incident of that type and command and control facilities put in place. What it also showed us is that our integrated risk management planning of moving pumping appliances from the centre of London on the old wartime standards to a risk-based approach to some outer London areas also proved its worth and worked extremely well and we had a very fast response from the whole of London. Where we were found wanting, and we have highlighted this to the authority, was that although we recognised we had taken delivery of ten fire rescue units for London resilience, which are not part of the New Dimension programme, we professionally advised the authority that a further six would be required in order to maintain that level or an escalating level for that level of attack. I am pleased to say that with the authority's support, and indeed the Major of London's support, that is now part of the forthcoming budget. I would just ask Mr Dobson, who has led on London resilience throughout the process, to add any points there.

Mr Dobson: The point I should like to make really is just how integrated we are in terms of the threat assessment of the risks that London faces with the other emergency services, particularly the Metropolitan Police and also the security services. The sorts of other threats, if you term the attacks of 7/7 and 21/7 as conventional explosives or conventional attacks, the other sorts of unconventional attacks which may involve chemical agents, are the sorts of things we have also been planning for and training for and the brigade has been equipped through the New Dimension programme and through the authority's own provision of resources to deal with those threats as well. If you take Osiris in September 2003 as an example, it was not just an attack on the Tube system, it was also an attack involving a chemical agent. All the firefighters who were involved in that were using gas type chemical protection suits and other chemical procedures. The exercises we have run in London over recent years show we are aware of the other threats, we have prepared for those and we are prepared for them.

Q216 Mr Hands: In terms of preparing for the unexpected, which I know sounds a bit of an oxymoron, has anybody studied the work last year of the 9/11 Commission which was almost a case study in the unexpected and at that time, in a totally different city, but the complete breakdown of fire and police interaction in New York City and whether that might be repeated in the event of a similarly unexpected catastrophe here?

Mr Knight: I am confident it will not and I am very well aware, not only of that report, but that relationship. Just to reassure you, we have very active contacts with the other capital cities such as Paris, Berlin and Madrid and we are mirroring that sort of activity. I say why I am confident: we have a longstanding arrangement through the London Emergency Service Liaison Panel, LESLP, which has a clarity about the roles of emergency services and local authorities and others and it was clear that no-one was tripping over each other on 7 July or 21 July and everyone was clear what their role was and we have since had many visits from all parts of the world to share that experience with them and we have a duty to do so. I am confident we do not have those same tensions between primacy at a major incident of that kind.

Q217 Mr Hands: You state in your submission that you have made good progress in improving resilience. How easy is that to say in the absence of another major incident?

Mr Knight: We should not at all be complacent to say that we are at the end of such attacks. We should say, professionally, that we are probably in the middle of such attacks and we have to remain prepared and prepared for a very long time. Our continuous improvement in equipment, in training and preparedness, along with all the other emergency services and through the London Regional Resilience Forum which is particularly dynamic in looking at a range of risks, sometimes natural disasters, sometimes terrorist attack, will continue to maintain that readiness. We were not found wanting on 7 July, I am pleased to say, and I am confident we shall not be found wanting in the future.

Q218 Lyn Brown: In your evidence, you state that you have a target to reach level five of the local government equality scheme as soon as is practical. That is a fairly long timescale. I just wondered what level you are at now.

Ms Shawcross: The Fire Authority does have a very strong equalities function department and a programme and we took a view that we were not in the business of ticking boxes and jumping other people's hurdles. We are in the business of really changing the culture of our organisation and its recruitment and improving its outreach and making sure the community fire safety work we were doing and the social engagement programme have really met people's genuine needs. We decided that the change management that that needed would have to be paced. We could have accelerated and ticked the level five box very quickly, but we are not going to do that until we are confident that we have successfully implemented the change we needed to make all the way through the service. If the Committee wanted to visit the service, you would be confident that what we are actually doing is not just superficial, on paper; we are actually making a change.

Q219 Lyn Brown: Why do you think it is harder to achieve a workforce which is representative of the community it serves for uniformed staff rather than non-uniformed staff?

Ms Shawcross: It will get easier. It is important that you look at equalities issues as part of a diagnosis of the core health of the management of your organisation. Since we now have the Fire Services Act, under the new settlement a lot of old human resources practices which were imposed on us have gone. For example, there used to be a disciplinary code which meant that there was a sort of court-martial style procedure, an external officer would come in to investigate a complaint and it would almost be dealt with between the firefighter and their watch manager or whoever it was, as though it was an argument rather than an issue of line management. We have now been able to make those basic legal and structural procedural changes, which will give us the possibility of improving the grass-roots quality of our human resources management. That, in my view, has been where the problem is and so, 18 months on from that, that is where we shall start to see the improvements. The uniform service has, in the past, suffered from bullying, sexism, a culture which excluded people and we can only address that culture by actually improving the quality of the line management, improving the skills and the empowerment of the line management all the way through the organisation and therefore become able to implement the policies that the Fire Authority has. I see it as a key indicator of the health of the organisation and we are moving on with it now; we are starting to make some very good progress.

Q220 Lyn Brown: Do you think you have lessons for other Fire Authorities to learn?

Ms Shawcross: Obviously we do share practice within the Fire Service and we go on visits and we look at what other services are doing and we invite people to look at what we are doing; not just within the ODPM's beacon project, but outside it. Sometimes that is more interesting, because it is less structured and you can go where you need to go. We have tried to target people with some specific outreach programmes and given women taster events, that kind of programme. I have to say, to some extent the equal opportunities law is not terribly helpful because it does put an iron curtain down in front of some of the practices you would want to carry out. We took legal advice, counsel's opinion, very early on as to how far we could go in trying actively to promote recruitment of women and ethnic minorities. A core issue, from talking to the women in the service, has always been what experience women get when they work in the service. They have always had a really appallingly bad experience and it is only now that we are starting to improve that experience. Women are not stupid and they talk to each other and they ask women who work in the service what it is like. I feel confident now that we are getting to grips with the culture of the organisation and, with improved management, that the women are starting to get a better experience and that will flow through into better recruitment. We have nearly doubled the number of women we had five years ago, but it was from an extremely low base.

Q221 Lyn Brown: You state that you wanted the Government to review their national targets and to ensure they are based on empirical evidence. What leads you to think that the targets are not based on empirical evidence and how precisely would you change those targets?

Ms Shawcross: We noticed very early on and I would echo the comments of our colleagues in Devon, that the targets did not seem to be based on any understanding of how there was a flow-through of staff within the service and what mechanisms for change were available to us. They are simply unrealistic because they do not reflect the number of posts that we are advertising and recruiting. Equally, they do not reflect the fact that, as my colleague from Devon said, when you advertise a job you do get a majority of traditional workforce white men applying; it is an extremely popular career amongst that group and you cannot dismiss those applications. They have to be looked at and dealt with. The point we would make is that not all the tools we needed went with the targets.

Q222 Lyn Brown: How would you change the targets?

Ms Shawcross: We should want to ---

Mr Knight: It is that lack of empirical evidence. Even now we are absolutely committed to the diverse workforce just to deliver the core business we want to. We are having discussions with the ODPM and certainly we should say more realistic targets for us would be around the number of joiners, not the number in establishments. So, for example, we should be more satisfied to talk about 25 per cent BME joiners and 12 per cent women joiners by 2009, not the proportion of the workforce which is so static.

Q223 Lyn Brown: Given the evidence of your Chair, maybe another one would be how many you were able to retain.

Ms Shawcross: The retention has improved; that has been something we have been looking at all the way through and retention has improved. We also looked at the disproportionate number of ethnic minorities who were suffering disciplinary action. We have tried to be very open about all of that programme. I agree with the Commissioner, that we should much prefer to have our targets cast around what we are actually doing. If we have a year when there is no recruitment, then ---

Mr Knight: There needs to be some sophistication there as well. How many are attracted by it? How many join? How many stay? It is a very blunt instrument just to talk about them as the number in establishments. It is joiners and the sub-set below that drilling down into what makes people want to join and stay.

Chair: Thank you very much for your evidence. I am sure the Committee would like to take the opportunity of expressing our thanks to you and the other emergency services for dealing with 7/7 and 21/7. All of us were here in London and fortunately, as far as I know, no Member of this House suffered harm. Clearly we are very appreciative of the way in which the emergency services responded to those two events.

Memorandum submitted by Lancashire Combined Fire Authority

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: County Councillor Bob Wilkinson, Chair of Lancashire Combined Fire Authority, Mr Peter Holland, Chief Fire Officer and Mr Chris Kenny, Director of Support Services, Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, gave evidence.

Chair: Thank you very much for joining us. My colleague, John Pugh, will start off the questions.

Q224 Dr Pugh: In your memorandum you state that there is a case for Regional Control Centres but you state categorically that there are going to be special problems in the North West. May I ask you a two-part question? Are you convinced of the need for Regional Control Centres and their benefits, or are you just convinced that they might have benefits for other parts of the world apart from the North West?

Mr Holland: Perhaps we should just introduce ourselves first. I am Peter Holland, Chief Fire Officer.

County Councillor Wilkinson: Bob Wilkinson, the Chair of Lancashire Combined Fire Authority.

Mr Kenny: Chris Kenny, the Assistant Chief Fire Officer.

Mr Holland: May I start first in terms of the controls? Yes, we are convinced from the Government's perspective and it was built into the national framework, we have supported the project 100 per cent from its start-off point. Our concerns really emanate from the costs associated with the project and the estimated savings that will be made. In the ODPM's own circulars, they pointed out that the larger busier services will not save as much as the smaller quieter services. Certainly we in the North West are the next biggest in operational terms to London, hence the concerns of the North West and ourselves in Lancashire. We need to see the sums worked out locally just so we know how it is going to impact from our point of view.

Q225 Dr Pugh: It is not so much a regional point but a financial point you are making here; it is to do with the size of the authority.

Mr Holland: It is certainly a financial point from the authority's perspective.

County Councillor Wilkinson: From the authority's perspective we do not see any financial benefits to a regional control, because of the amount it is costing now and the amount it will cost in future. What we do not want to see is the public paying more for a worse service.

Q226 Dr Pugh: Do you see any service benefits?

Mr Kenny: There are lots of benefits with the proposals for regional controls. When you look at the technology that is going to be included in the regional controls, the automatic vehicle location, the caller identification, the more robust inter-operability, we do see benefits. One of the problems we face is that the business case that has been done has been a national business case and we cannot translate those national figures into how it will affect the region or in fact Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service.

Q227 Dr Pugh: It is not so much the project you are bothered about, it is how the finances will stack up and impact on the general level of service you can offer.

Mr Kenny: Correct.

Q228 Dr Pugh: Forgive me for saying so, but that sounds like positioning which local authorities will go in for at a certain point in order to enhance their position. Have you had a discussion with the Government over this and if so, what has been the result of it?

Mr Kenny: We have got the FiReControl project regionally, in which we engage with the national project. We are keen to produce clarity because when we are trying to sell the benefits, people will ask at what cost it comes. We are trying to engage nationally to ask what exactly the FiReControl project will deliver. Is that written in stone, will that be reduced in the future and what will that cost be for both the regional Lancashire Fire and Rescue Services?

Q229 Dr Pugh: Yesterday we seemed to get a degree of clarity because the Government officials were very keen to say that whatever additional cost there was, you would not pick up the tab, the tab would be picked up by the Government. On that basis, is that the kind of clarity you are looking for and would that satisfy you?

Mr Kenny: The concept of New Burdens is something that is quite easy to trot out, that these will be the benefits and this will be picked up if it is a New Burden. Defining New Burdens is more complicated. A full business case was never presented: it would be very helpful to be able to say we are now totally clear on which costs are ours, which costs are theirs. New Burdens seem to be allocated more on a piece-meal case-by-case basis, rather than strategically, exactly defining who picks up what and when.

Q230 Dr Pugh: So you are suspicious of the Government. You think that they may introduce new costs but then tell you that they are not actually New Burdens at all, they are burdens you have traditionally shouldered in another form.

Mr Kenny: It would certainly benefit both ourselves and the public we represent to have that clarity from the start.

County Councillor Wilkinson: I attended a meeting this morning and asked how these New Burdens would be paid.

Q231 Chair: Sorry; a meeting with ...? Was it with ODPM? We do not need to know exactly who.

County Councillor Wilkinson: With the ODPM; people from the ODPM. I asked how these New Burdens would be paid and the stock answer, which I expected, was that it will be built into our grant. That did not give me a lot of confidence.

Q232 Dr Pugh: You have heard that before.

County Councillor Wilkinson: I have heard it a few times before.

Q233 John Cummings: Many FRAs have expressed reservations about the benefits and efficiency savings that will derive from the shift to Regional Control Centres. Are you aware of any impact this is having on public confidence in the fire and rescue services and, in turn, the fire and rescue services' ability to perform well?

Mr Holland: Certainly issues have been raised in newspapers. Some lobbying has been going on by the staff; quite understandably. The staff are concerned about their futures; these are very professional dedicated staff who do a first class job. They are involved in saving people's lives, handling calls and keeping callers on the end of 999 calls. They are concerned about their future so they raise issues, quite understandably, with the local media. In terms of consultation, it is not an issue for us to go out locally and consult with the public on. We are involved in a national project here, but we are engaged very closely with our staff to try to reassure them and help them work through the future. This is why, in our response, we have talked about how we deal with the human resources aspects and have put in a plea - and I am delighted that we are here to be able to make that plea so that you can assist us - for some speed in deciding just what pay the staff are going to receive, what conditions of service they are going to receive, how they are going to be selected, how redundancies, if any, are going to be dealt with. The staff do not know that and clearly that it going to help them plan their futures when that is determined. Also, importantly, going back to the first issue about costs, it helps us sort out the financial situation. Clearly redundancy costs are a major issue.

Q234 John Cummings: So you believe it is affecting performance?

Mr Holland: I do not believe it is affecting performance. These are very professional people. The staff are continuing to work remarkably well, given the fact that morale has undoubtedly gone down.

Q235 John Cummings: You are certainly very critical of the FiReControl project for the tardy manner in which certain human resource issues such as selection, terms and conditions, pay, relocation and redundancies have been addressed. Can you explain the impact in your area of the failure to address these issues in a constructive and timely manner?

Mr Kenny: At the minute, because of ownership of the project, the project sees those terms and conditions issues sitting with the new employer, so that is dependent on defining who the entity is. At the minute we are at an impasse, awaiting clarification of those things. Once those things are clarified, they will feed back into the costs which will allow the project ----

Q236 John Cummings: Are you confident that they are going to be clarified?

Mr Kenny: There has been a major step forward recently in that a more strategic working group has been set up with regional HR directors and Lancashire is certainly involved in that. We are hoping that that might provide a trigger to enable the ODPM and the employers to engage and move this subject forward.

Q237 Lyn Brown: Do you think the move to the Regional Control Centres is going to have a negative impact upon your equality targets?

Mr Holland: In respect of the staff that we employ?

Q238 Lyn Brown: Indeed. Do you think you will be laying off lots and lots of women? Do you think it is going to have a ---

Mr Holland: We employ 41 members of staff in our control room: there are two men and the remainder are females. It is certainly going to reduce the number of uniformed females in Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service sadly.

Q239 Chair: May I turn to FireLink and ask whether you are convinced by the case for FireLink for your area and for the Fire Service nationally?

Mr Holland: As you probably picked up from our response, we moved over to the Airwave system three years ago and it has worked extremely well for us. We are concerned more about the transitional period, that we might lose the enhanced functionality that we have enjoyed over these last three years and indeed we have developed the system. We are going to have to move slightly; we are still going to have Airwave, but there is going to be a transition onto a new model of radio and that potentially could cause us to lose some operational functions within the system.

Q240 Chair: Is the new system less flexible than the one you have at present then?

Mr Kenny: Our provider is now the preferred provider for FireLink, so we are now in a situation where we are very hopeful that the technologies are very, very similar, if not identical. Before then, we thought we might lose a lot of technology in this solution.

Q241 Chair: So the concerns that you did have were before you knew that the preferred supplier was essentially the person that you were already being supplied by?

Mr Kenny: The concerns still remain about how that transition is managed, but certainly our concerns are more to do with the difficulties we faced in bringing in Airwave and knowing that those same challenges will be faced by the national project with FireLink. We are keen to help and support the national project to ensure the lessons that we have learned are not going to create difficulties for the national project.

Q242 Chair: Do you think it would be possible for the national roll-out to avoid some of the problems you experienced because of learning from your experience?

Mr Holland: We certainly hope so.

Mr Kenny: We are engaging with the project and we do have good relations with the FireLink project to be fair. One thing we fear is that the amount of change that is going to occur in quite a short period of time will be a challenge for any organisation to absorb with FireLink and regional controls and change in procedures all happening simultaneously.

Mr Holland: May I just make one other plea, because it is something which is not included in the FireLink project at the moment? The handheld radios which we use on what we call the fire ground, when we are at an incident, are not part of the FireLink project at the moment and from an interoperability point of view, it is essential that they are brought within the FireLink project for the future; that gives us the ability to talk to adjoining fire and rescue services.

Q243 Alison Seabeck: You say you have had Airwave and you were very positive about it, about how it worked and you are competent in that system. We heard evidence yesterday from people who said that, where police forces had a similar system, they have had an awful lot of problems. Did you have any initial teething problems with it which were worrying or has it been plain sailing?

Mr Holland: Yes, we did have teething problems, but they were soon ironed out. We rolled out just after the police did. The reason we moved over was because the police were moving over. We were going to be losing our radio if we did not move with them.

Q244 Alison Seabeck: So your experiences generally were positive?

Mr Holland: Extremely positive.

Q245 Alison Seabeck: On the interoperability element and the handheld units, I assume this is just purely for the Fire Service. You would not want to have that open to other services like the police to feed into your system. That would need to be separate.

Mr Holland: No, we do feed into the police. We can talk to the police on our mainstream radio. The handheld radios that our officers have can talk to the police, but we do not have it for wider use on every fire engine, for example. Those radios are really for talking to ---

Q246 Alison Seabeck: Are there clear lines of command at an incident? The last thing you want is somebody from the police force trying to tell you what to do.

Mr Holland: You would be on a different channel.

Q247 Chair: Pursuing the argument about these hand-held appliances, presumably you are not alone in Fire Authorities in believing that it should be part of the system.

Mr Holland: I read through the submissions before I came here today and several of the submissions that you have are actually in support of that.

Q248 Chair: So why have you been unable to persuade the ODPM?

Mr Holland: It is cost. You are talking about a significant amount of additional money on the project.

Q249 Chair: If it is not implemented at the start, would that prevent it from ever being implemented, or could it be added on afterwards?

Mr Holland: It could be added on, for sure, yes.

Q250 Lyn Brown: Does your recruitment freeze extend to the retained firefighters?

Mr Holland: No, it does not. It was brought in in August 2003, with some reluctance I might add, but it certainly impacted on our ability to work towards our targets.

Q251 Lyn Brown: Do other Fire Authorities have frozen recruitment amongst front-line staff?

Mr Holland: Almost every fire and rescue service has reduced the number of whole-time staff they employ over the last couple or three years. Yes, it would be fair to say that.

Q252 Lyn Brown: Can you tell me whether or not your Fire Authority faces particular difficulties trying to increase representation of black and minority ethnic communities?

Mr Holland: We certainly do and I am clear that the freeze in recruitment was a major setback. We had just started recruiting about three months before that and we had been very successful in getting applications from under-represented groups, so it was really a very difficult decision, as you might imagine. We have recently increased our staffing in community fire safety work. These are non-operational members of staff who wear uniforms and go out into the community. Of the 26 we have recently taken on, 10 are females and five are from black and ethnic minority communities; we are really pleased about that, and hopefully, when we lift the freeze on recruitment, which will be very soon, we shall be able to extend that to the whole-time staff as well.

County Councillor Wilkinson: We have to support the view that London had, that the target should be the people we are going to employ, rather than the total service now. Especially in our case, we are employing people on a contract which is different from a firefighter's contract. They are only small numbers but there are large numbers of ethnic minorities and females within that small number.

Mr Kenny: May I bring in another point as well? The thing about modernisation is matching skills to posts, so not all new posts are going to be operational firefighter posts. When you look at increasing diversity in the organisation, to limit those performance indicators just to firefighter posts is flawed. A great benefit could be got from widening those parameters.

Mr Holland: If you look at why the targets are there, it is for the wider community's perception of the Fire and Rescue Service. These people are working out in the community, so from a perception point of view they will see black and Asian firefighters, female firefighters out in uniform. It is really important to include them.

Q253 Chair: Is there not a danger that it might encourage further segmentation in the workforce so that you would have good representation of women and ethnic minorities in the lower paid part of the workforce, common in many organisations I have to say.

Mr Kenny: One thing I should say is that you often get a transition from those posts into the operational side. It is a way of introducing people to the organisation; it is certainly a stepping stone. You often find that is the case with the retained service, for example, so I still think it is very much a positive step.

Mr Holland: We should certainly not want it to be seen in any was as a negative. So long as it is taken into account in the overall numbers, you could separate whole-time staff, separate non-operational staff if you like, but I am very happy to be measured on our performance on recruiting firefighters once we start recruiting.

Q254 Lyn Brown: In the London evidence one of the things they talked about very bravely and openly was the culture of sexism and racism which prevailed. Do you have similar experience?

Mr Holland: We did a cultural audit about four years ago in the service and, not surprisingly, the Fire and Rescue Service reflects society. What the audit did show was that behaviour is much better in the Fire and Rescue Service whilst people are at work than outside. There is a management inevitably around that which is good news, but you are talking about a huge cultural change.

Q255 Lyn Brown: London talked about changing the way their human resources operated and dealt with issues. Instead of considering something to be an argument between two individuals, they saw it as something which might need to go into a disciplinary process. Have you gone through the same cultural change?

Mr Holland: Yes, we have. We would rather things did not end up going down a disciplinary route, but it depends on the nature of the issue. We have spent a lot of time and effort in the six and a half years I have been Chief of Lancashire engaging with staff and having workshops and discussion groups to try to change people's perceptions.

Q256 Alison Seabeck: You talked about the difference between behaviour at work and behaviour out of work. Were you talking about behaviour out on a shout as compared with behaviour in the downtime in the station? Are you talking outside the station?

Mr Holland: There is absolutely no evidence at all of any sexism, racism, homophobia when people are ---

Q257 Alison Seabeck: It is just that it was not clear.

Mr Holland: I am sorry, it was badly worded.

Q258 Dr Pugh: May I ask you about the restructuring which is taking place in the other emergency services which could create a problem, a headache for you? Do you see co-terminosity between emergency services as the ideal? If it is the ideal, how much of a disadvantage is its absence?

Mr Holland: We have co-terminosity in Lancashire with all three services and it works extremely well. We are about to lose the Ambulance Service; on 1 July they are becoming a North West Ambulance Service and it looks as though the police are going to combine with Cumbria. That disappoints me and it is a challenge for us to ensure that we do not lose the effective relationship that we do have across the services. It makes it more difficult, but it happens in other parts of the country now. There are only six or seven services where there is co-terminosity across all three services.

Q259 Dr Pugh: So you are testifying to the benefits of co-terminosity. You do presumably accept that it is an ideal, but there is going to be a fair amount of discussion, a fair amount of consultation before the position resolves itself in Lancashire or anywhere else and meanwhile you are going to have to make plans for the future within your own service. Is the uncertainty with regard to other types of restructuring going to be a handicap whilst you are trying to think ahead?

Mr Holland: Long-term planning is clearly a concern. We are reassured and our Chairman was told this morning by ODPM officials that there will not be a regional Fire and Rescue Service. It seems difficult to comprehend when regional control rooms are being built and the Ambulance Service is becoming a regional one. It seems almost inevitable that it is going to happen to the Fire and Rescue Service in future. It does create uncertainty, there is no question.

Q260 Dr Pugh: If there is going to be a North West Police Force, or something larger than you currently have at the moment, would you sooner have it decided earlier than the Government intend to have it decided?

Mr Holland: I should certainly want to be involved in the discussions. The issue professionally from a Fire and Rescue Service point of view is that there is no evidence that larger Fire and Rescue Services are more efficient than smaller Fire and Rescue Services, in fact there are some very efficient smaller Fire and Rescue Services in existence now.

Q261 Mr Hands: A question on comprehensive performance assessment or CPA, do you think the recent CPA review and process has enabled a robust and thorough review of the Fire Service in your case?

Mr Holland: We found it extremely helpful in focusing our efforts towards modernising the service on the issues it focused on. It was clearly lacking in that it did not look at the thing which is most important to the public, that is delivery of service to the public, other than judging us on outcomes, clearly very important outcomes, on reducing fire deaths and injuries and fires generally.

Q262 Mr Hands: On balance did you find it beneficial compared with the additional costs involved? How much do you think it cost the authority?

Mr Holland: In cash terms we spent around £20,000, but officers' time was involved which we have not quantified. We could try to put some numbers on that for you, if that would be helpful.

Chair: It would be, if you would not mind. Just drop us a note about it. Thank you very much indeed, it has been very helpful.