Minutes:
Luke Edwards gave a presentation on current work in the Home Office. He focused on the progress of the Fire Reform programme, where services were and preparing for the Spending Review.
Luke outlined the three pillars of the Fire Reform programme: Efficiency and Collaboration; Accountability and Transparency; and Workforce Reform. Luke highlighted successes so far including £22 million of commercial savings and that national contracts are now in place. He stressed that benchmarking is needed across the sector to monitor progress and acknowledged there are still significant challenges across the sector, including:
· Learning from Grenfell and new requirements around building safety
· Delivery or renewal of national capabilities: Emergency Services Network, National Resilience and information systems
· Understanding future demand, technology and its implications for capability and skills
· Capacity to respond to major incidents
· Leadership, diversity and workforce reform
Luke then outlined the work of the Senior Sector Group and expectations of the Spending Review:
· Health spending commitments have taken up any extra available funding within government, other departments are therefore likely to have settlements going forward as any increase would cause a deficit in other areas.
· There is a need to continue delivering more outputs with the same staffing levels as currently exist.
· The aim is to submit a case to Treasury by the end of June to argue the case for funding for the sector as part of the Review.
· In order to mitigate the flat-rate settlement the sector need to be looking at what efficiencies could be made such as further improvements in procurement so for example capacity could be built into protection.
Members made the following comments:
· On the duty to collaborate, the fire service has worked with the police, but the sector has not seen the same collaboration with the NHS in all areas. Matt Hancock, Minister for Health and Social Care, is behind this work, the Home Office needs to be equally supportive in terms of resource.
· Discussions around the Spending Review need to factor in county council fire budgets are not ring-fenced and so their budgets are particularly vulnerable. Any business case also needs to be clear about the differences between urban and rural services and differing needs which are poorly understood now.
· National recruitment, particularly of on-call firefighters, is really important, but does the Minister recognise there is problem with the fairness of on-call pay?
· The Home Office may need to be willing to highlight to the Treasury that reductions and efficiencies in the fire sector may have been bottomed out.
· The Home Office needs to consider the unions in their plans to broaden any role or strengthening collaboration.
· Climate change is starting to create challenges for emergency services in the UK. How does the Home Office see that affecting the firefighter’s role?
Luke Edwards responded:
· There have been examples of collaboration across the NHS with the fire service, but a lot more can be done with the support of the Home Office.
· The Home Office is keen to continue working to understand the detail across the different services in the context of the Spending Review.
· The Home Office will seek the Minister’s view on on-call pay, the environmental challenge and how to manage long term change in firefighter activities.
Rod McLean
Rod McLean, Head of the Fire Safety Unit, Fire and Resilience Directorate gave a presentation on the Call for Evidence in The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
The Fire Safety order applies to the common parts of buildings and has been in place since 2006, with light touch reviews of the Order in 2009 and 2013. A full review is now therefore timely and will take into account the findings from the Hackitt Review.
Rod highlighted that as this is a call for evidence rather than a consultation, it is important that stakeholders within the sector do feed into the Home Office on the sector’s understanding of the effectiveness of Fire Safety Order in practical terms. Bespoke changes to the legislation are likely to be made following the review and guidance will be updated.
Rod detailed the next steps for the call for evidence feedback, with the findings being published in parallel with the Building Safety consultation paper, around June 2019. There will be a joint stakeholder and communications plan with the Minister of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Members made the following comments:
· This needs to actually be an independent fire safety review.
· There is a concern that the sector does not have the capacity to deliver key pieces of the refreshed legislation, as it is likely to be. For example, a low volume of fire engineers in the fire sector and the long lead-in time for training these professionals.
· A key part of the review should be around the independence and rigour of fire risk assessmetns for buildings.
· Other stakeholders like the Fire Industry Association need to input in to the review to give a representative response.
· 2020 is hugely frustrating as a timeline for progress around changing the sector, as the Hackitt Review was published in 2018. Some of the implementation plans are taking too long. We have been aware of the fire engineer issue, government should help services use the apprenticeship levy to address this issue.
· The use of sprinklers has been made compulsory in Wales in residential buildings, will a similar call be made in England?
Rod McLean responded:
· Efforts have been made to ensure the fire safety review is as independent as possible.
· The Home Office is aware of the capacity issues around fire engineers, would like to help address this and shares the frustration about pace.
· The issue of sprinklers in high-rise buildings is part of Approved Document B which sits with MHCLG and will be considered as part of their technical consultation.
Decision
Members noted the presentation.