Agenda item

The Chair welcomed Ian Taylor, Senior User and Business Change Lead for the National Fire Chiefs Council, to the meeting and asked him to introduce his report.

Ian explained that the Emergency Services Network (ESN), the product of ESMCP, would replace the existing Airwave service as the next generation of communications for the emergency services in Great Britain, providing secure and resilient mobile broadband capability with near universal coverage across the country. He said that ESMCP was

a cross-Government Programme led by the Home Office. He added that governance arrangements were in place locally and were predominantly officer-led but there was a vacancy on the Fire Customer Group for two LGA members.

Ian said that two years ago, the programme was in a state of flux but, after a reset, it was now back on track with a revised Full Business Case due out for consultation in Spring 2020. It was hoped that the full roll out of ESN would take place by 2024.

In the meantime, Ian said that County Durham and Darlington FRS became the first users of an ESN service in July 2019 and other FRS’s were keen to take early capability.

Ian reported that £21.6 million of Local Transition Resource Funding had recently been agreed with the Home Office for implementation of ESN contingent upon greater levels of assurance on spend.

Ian went on to say that since 2015, ESCMP had appeared before the Public Accounts Committee on 8 occasions and been the subject of 2 National Audit Office reports, the last of which made 6 recommendations which were laid out in paragraph 18.

Ian said that work was still being done on the Airwave system to ensure that it remained working up until the time of switch over.

Finally, Ian acknowledged that FRA’s had concerns about potential additional costs of introducing ESN due to the loss of the 60% Government grant funding they currently received for Airwave. He assured members that the NFCC was working on quantifying these costs and potential business benefits.

Following Ian’s presentation, members raised the following comments and questions:

·       Concerns about potentially higher costs for FRA’s were echoed by members.

·       Was there confidence about good countrywide coverage with ESN? Ian agreed that coverage was key and this was one of the key issues they were working on. He added that ESN was on a different frequency to Airwave which gave better coverage.

·       It was suggested that emergency services staff regularly used personal mobile phones for communication as the current system was not fit for purpose. Ian accepted this was the case and argued that ESN should address this.

·       It was stated that S.151 officers did not have the authority to sign off expenditure on Local Transition Resource Funding. Ian said that the Home Office wanted a greater level of assurance over spend and this was designed to achieve that.

·       Were the experiences of the trial authorities being documented? Ian said that they were and had been very positive. He added that County Durham and Darlington FRS were delivering a workshop on this at the conference.

·       Was the ESN system being future-proofed? Ian reassured members that future-proofing was a key part of the system development and he added that lots were retendered on a regular basis to ensure that ESN kept pace with advances in technology such as 5G.

·       Where could members look at for examples of best practice in this field? Ian said that the US system was very enterprise focussed but that there were lots of schemes with little interoperability. He added that the UK was considered to be at the forefront of this technology.

·       Was Artificial Intelligence being looked at as a means of making systems more efficient? Ian said that new technologies were taken forward as part of the NFCC Digital Strategy.

·       Was the NFCC collaborating with universities and tech hubs on this project? Ian confirmed that there was considerable interest being shown by various academic institutions.

Decisions

Members noted the ESMCP update.

Actions

Conservative and Labour Group Lead Members to appoint LGA representatives to the Fire Customer Group.