Fire Commission and outside bodies update

Purpose of report

For information.

Summary

The report outlines issues of interest to the Commission not covered under the other items on the agenda.

Recommendation Members are asked to note the report. Action Officers to continue to provide updates to members

Contact officer:	Jess Norman

Position:	Policy Adviser

Phone no:	0207 664 3221

Email:	Jessica.Norman@local.gov.uk

Fire Commission and outside bodies update

PCC and fire governance

The Statutory Instrument to change the governance of North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service from the Authority to the Police and Crime Commissions (PCC) was laid before Parliament on the 6 September and came in to force on the 15 November. Julia Mulligan is now the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner (PFCC) for North Yorkshire.

Governance of the Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Services has also transferred to the now Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Northamptonshire Stephen Mold.

National Audit Office Report

On the 11 May the National Audit Office published a report into the Emergency Services Network (ESN) / Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP); the replacement to the Airwave system which is currently used by 107 blue light in England, Scotland and Wales for communications between control rooms and the field.

The aim is that the ESN will have the full functionality of the Airwave system with better high-speed mobile data at a lower cost than the current system. New technology allowing ESN to take priority over other users at critical points will allow the ESN to be hosted on already existing commercial networks at less cost than a bespoke private network.

The report raises concerns about the management of the programme, in particularly the management of suppliers and contracts; time and costs overruns; and risk management.

Implementation of ESN is now due to cost £9.3 billion to 2037, an increase of £3.1 billion above the 2015 business case. Some of this is directly related to slippage of timescales, for example £1.4 billion of this cost is due to extending Airwaves to cover the interim time until ESN becomes functional and £0.5 billion is due to an increase in contingency. The remaining £1.2 billion is due to increased costs of the actual programme.

Project sponsors have expressed concerns about the cost increases and the fact they are not certain as the current estimated costs are bases on Home Office assumptions which have not been tested with users.

Although the Home Office still expects ESN to be cheaper than Airwaves in the long term, £9.2 billion compared to £12 billion for continuing use of Airwave. The breakeven point where the costs are outweighed by savings is now 7 years later than planned and is based on no further delays and assumptions about police efficiency savings which have yet to be accepted by the police.

The report is available to read online here.

Fire Statistics

The Government released their latest set of incidents statistics at the start of May. The fire service attended 576,586 incidents in the year ending December 2018 of which 31 per cent were fires. There was a two per cent increase in incidents attended and a five per cent increase in fire incidents compared with the previous year. Primary, dwelling and accidental fires all continue to decrease year-on-year; the increase in fire incidents is due to an 11 per cent increase in secondary fires, its highest level since 2011/12 Q1. The increase of secondary fires is attributed to hotter and drier weather last year between April and September. Overall the number of incidents and fire incidents has decreased 27 per cent and 39 per cent respectively from 10 years ago.

The full set of statistics can be found on the Government website.

In January the Government released their statistics for response times to fires attended by the fire service. As previously the statistics continue to report a gradual increase of response times over the last 20 years, but this year’s statistics show no change to average response times for primary fires overall from the 2016-17 statistics. This year’s statistics showed that in significantly rural services average response time had increased by 12 seconds compared to predominately rural and urban services where the average response time had decreased by 2 seconds and 4 seconds respectively.

The full set of statistics can be found on the Government website.

Water safety

Historically water rescue and flooding incidents attended by fire and rescue services were recorded through the national Incident Recording System (IRS) as ‘special services’ making it difficult to distinguish from other miscellaneous services and impossible to analyse.

For the first time this January flooding and rescue from water information has been included in the Home Office statistical data under its own section for the period April 2017 to March 2018 in England.

The data shows that unlike fire incidents which have been declining over the last decade, water related incidents appear to fluctuate, peaking in 2012/13 with 19,607 incidents. Last year there were 16,688 incidents in England, and the peak periods within the year appearing to correlate with wet weather and flooding and hot weather and swimming activity.

Friends against Scams

Friends Against Scams (FAS) is a National Trading Standards Scams Team initiative which aims to protect and prevent people from becoming victims of scams by empowering people to take a stand against scams.

FAS have been in touch with the LGA to highlight what frontline services and elected members can do to help them protect the public from scams.

Ways in which members of Fire Commission may be able to help FAS include encouraging their FRS to become a ‘FAS Organisation’ by making a pledge to actively promote the FAS initiative, and becoming a SCAMbassador and use your influence to raise the profile of scams at a national level. For more information on how to do this please contact sara.hope@surreycc.gov.uk or see their website here.

Her Majesties Inspectorate for Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS)

HMICFRS published their first tranche inspection reports in December 2018 and held a Chief Fire Officer, FRA Chairs, PFCC and equivalent event in January to support the ongoing development of the inspection regime. HMICFRS were able to share learning from the first tranche of inspections and received feedback on the inspection process from inspected authorities.

HMICFRS second tranche of inspections has now concluded and the final reports are being prepared for release in mid-June. Tranche 3 is underway with field work planned to commence in early June.

HMICFRS continue to work with colleagues from the LGA and other organisations on the development of a Corporate Governance Inspection programme and intend to consult on the programme shortly. Inspections would be by exception only.

HMICFRS have confirmed that they will be repeating the public perception survey in summer 2019 on the same timeline as the 2018 survey. The survey will be conducted over the summer, with collation and analysis of the results during the autumn and publication alongside the Tranche 3 inspection results and State of Fire report in December 2019.

LGA Annual Fire Conference and Exhibition 2020

Next years Annual Fire Conference will be held on the 10-11 March 2020 at the Grand Hotel in Blackpool. The event website will be available through the LGA fire webpage shortly and bidding for workshops slots will open in the summer.

New Fire Authority Members guide

The LGA is planning on publishing a new member’s guide in mid-June. The guide will be downloadable from the LGA Fire and Rescue publication page and can be shared via email or by linking to our webpage. We would encourage members of Fire Commission to promote the guide to new or junior members who may find it useful. We will also be distributing it through our fire bulletin, which you can sign up to here.

Home Office campaign resources

The Home Office has launched a national campaign around the fire fighter role. The LGA has supported the Home Office with this by hosting key resources including role model resources and a myth busting document on our website. To view and share these resources, please see here.

Government funding for private tower blocks with ACM cladding

Following sustained pressure from several groups, including the LGA, the Government has announced a £200 million fund to fix private tower blocks with combustible ACM cladding where freeholders and developers had refused to make necessary changes to assure building safety. The LGA responded to welcome the announcement, the fill response can be read here.

Outside Bodies

Fire Standards Board

The FSB independent chair and vice-chair, Suzanne McCarthy and Alison Samson, were appointed in January and since then there have been two meetings of the Board. Both meetings were attended by Cllr Nick Chard and representatives from the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), Home Office, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and Police and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan.

The Board has agreed several key aspects of the Boards work, including a commitment to produce concise standards for the broadest practical application and to pilot the standards process at the earliest opportunity.

Strategic Resilience Board

The Strategic Resilience Board met in April where the LGA was represented by Cllr Les Byrom and Cllr Ian Stephens. The meeting considered key aspects of nation resilience like the progress of interoperability work, business continuity and future proofing.

Emergency Services Collaboration Working Group – Task and Finish Group A: Duty to collaborate and inspections

The Group met in April where the objectives of the ESC working group were set out; to support the sector in assessing what ‘good’ collaboration looks like and how best to evaluation collaboration activity. The Task and Finish Group agreed their purpose was to consider inspection approaches for collaboration and duty to collaborate; to identify with HMICFRS and CQC existing learning; to make recommendations to Ministers to improve awareness and activity on duty to collaborate; and to consider what a potential framework for effective assessing and gathering the outcomes of collaboration may look like.

Following this meeting HMICFRS and CQC met to consider the current picture and next steps. They identified a lack of data, evidence and evaluation as a key issue for the landscape of collaboration. They considered potential resources that might help services understand what good looks like and to evaluate their collaboration arrangements.

HMICFRS External Reference Group

The ERG continues to meet regularly and last met on the 15 April where FSMC was represented by Fiona Twycross. The ERG considered the ongoing inspection regime, monitoring following inspection, future inspection cycles, and corporate inspection.