Agenda and minutes

The Chair welcomed members to the meeting and thanked them for attending at short notice.

Apologies were received from: Cllr Paul Kirton, Cllr Jason Zadrozny, Cllr Byron Quayle, Cllr Frank Biederman, Cllr Rowland Rees-Evans, Cllr Jane Hugo, Cllr Tina McKenzie-Boyle, Cllr Peter Hogarth and Cllr Richard Rout. Cllr Nicolas Barlow was substituting for Cllr Peter Hogarth.

There were no declarations of interest.

Minister for Building Safety & Communities, Lord Greenhalgh, to attend

The Chair welcomed the Minister for Building Safety & Communities, Lord Greenhalgh, to the meeting and invited him to address the Commission on the Government’s proposals for reform outlined by the Home Secretary in a Parliamentary Statement the previous week.

The Minister thanked the Chair and the wider Commission for the opportunity to put forward the proposals and to address questions or concerns.

He said that a White Paper on fire reform would be published shortly after the local and PCC elections in May and would go out to a 12-week period of consultation, during which time there would be extensive engagement with the sector. He briefly outlined the 3 pillars of reform – professionalism, people and governance – and emphasised that although the proposed changes to governance had received most attention, the people and professionalism strands were fundamental to transforming the sector.

Members comments:

PFCCs and Governance:

·       There was strong disagreement with the proposed mandatory transfer of governance from the existing FRAs and county councils to Police & Crime Commissioners. Members spoke in favour of the LGA line that transfers to PCCs should only take place where they were locally supported and there was a strong business case for it. The Minister noted the Commission’s views and acknowledged that mandation was controversial. He said that he would continue to listen to views during the consultation.

·       It was considered that reform of governance was a distraction when there were many other more important issues for the sector to tackle around, for example, building/fire safety, diversity and inclusion, culture and the role of the firefighter.

·       The current variety of governance models was not considered to be detrimental to service delivery and some members felt that it was a strength in reflecting different local circumstances across the country. HMICFRS had not identified governance as a major problem in the sector.

·       The link between fire and local government was considered to be very important and could be lost, along with the experience and expertise in FRAs, with mandatory transfer. The Minister reassured members that continued local scrutiny and links with local government would be key to the success of the reforms.

·       Concern was also expressed that a lot of excellent partnership working, for example in county councils where they were the Fire Authority, would be put at risk by transfer to PCCs. Collaboration was considered to be strong across all blue light services, especially since the Covid pandemic struck, yet the focus of this paper was on police and fire. The Minister responded that it was important that all governance models contributed to the consultation. There would be challenges in disaggregating fire services from county council structures which would need to be overcome. He disagreed that collaboration would be negatively impacted by transfer to PCCs and said that a silo mentality should be challenged in all governance models. Joint executive oversight of police and fire did not mean that the services themselves were being merged.

·       There was a lack of evidence of the effectiveness of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.