Minutes:
The Chair welcomed the new Minister of State for Building Safety, Fire & Communities – Lord Stephen Greenhalgh to the meeting.
The Minister introduced himself to the Commission and spoke about his background as Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council and Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime at the London Assembly.
He then spoke about the HMICFRS Inspection process, the State of Fire & Rescue report and the 3 pillars – prevention, protection and response. The inspection process had found that the response pillar was generally very good in most services but that in a significant number, the prevention and protection pillars were not up to the required standard. He said that he had written to Chairs of FRAs, CFOs and other stakeholders (including the LGA) requesting a formal response to the State of Fire & Rescue recommendations and was awaiting these with interest.
The Minister said that in his view, 2017 had been an annus horribilis for the sector with the Grenfell Tower fire and the Manchester Arena bombing. Lessons needed to be learned from these incidents and sensible reforms implemented. He spoke briefly about the Government’s building safety reform agenda and the £1.6 billion that had been allocated to remediate unsafe cladding.
The Minister then outlined his 3 priorities for positive change in the fire and rescue sector:
1. Professionalism – he stated that he wanted to see the changes that had taken place in policing 6 years ago to be introduced in the fire & rescue sector through the Executive Leadership Programme.
2. People – lots of different areas of expertise were needed in the sector, particularly in order to adopt best practice on prevention. Therefore, services needed to think about the talents of individual employees and make best use of them.
3. Governance – he stated that police governance reform had worked well, particularly in London. Reform of fire and rescue governance needed to learn from the police model but not lose local government expertise. He added that better use needed to be made of the fire estate.
The Minister finished by emphasising the importance of joining up reform of fire and building safety and his job role and remit reflected that.
Following the Minister’s address, members raised the following points and questions:
· The sector was considered to be in the shadow of the police in terms of profile and needed more support and vision. The HMICFRS process was a positive step for reform and members were positive about working with the new Minister to implement this. The joint post between MHCLG and the Home Office was also welcomed. The Minister said that he would be looking closely at the data and formulating a plan for reform which he hoped all political parties would get behind. He added that the challenge to the sector from 10 Downing Street was that firefighters needed to be active when not responding to incidents.
· How in practice could reform of building safety and fire be linked together and made to work? The Minister said that he had established a fire/building safety board across the Home Office and MHCLG which would look at the evidence by drawing on expertise from across the board.
· Members asked the Minister to comment on the financial challenges facing the sector and what support was he able to offer? The Minister said that extra funding for services to help tackle Covid-19 had been agreed by the Government but he admitted that the situation would be challenging going forward. However, he pledged to do everything he could to put forward the sector’s case to the Treasury.
· The Minister was urged to travel out of London and see how services were being delivered in different parts of the country. The Minister accepted a range of invitations to visit FRS’s and agreed that different areas faced different challenges and that there wouldn’t be a ‘one size fits all’ reform solution to these.
· It was stated that the concerns that HMICFRS identified about the culture in FRS’s also impacted on the productivity of these services. FRS’s needed to be out in the community more and more ‘flexing’ of the role was required. The role of the Police had changed as society had changed but FRS’s hadn’t. Concern was expressed about restrictive practices adopted by the Fire Brigades Union and how this was impacting on attempts at reform and increasing productivity. The Minister agreed that there was a good case for sensible workforce reform.
· Community resilience and emergency planning had suffered significantly in recent years due to lack of investment and remedying this was considered to be crucial in the light of Covid-19. The Minister agreed to take this back.
· It was suggested that the financing of FRA’s, and in particular the council tax precept, should be reviewed and brought into line with the Police. The Minister agreed to look into this issue.
· FRS’s should be a statutory consultee on planning applications.
· The difficulty of meeting response time targets in the more isolated rural services was highlighted and it was suggested that there needed to be greater collaboration between the blue light services. The Minister said that central Government should be an enabler for different approaches that suited particular local circumstances – they shouldn’t mandate what local areas do.
· The Minister was urged to reconsider the cross-party report on sprinklers as many FRAs wanted to see this introduced. The Minister agreed to look at it again.
The Chair thanked the Minister for his time and informed Fire Commission members that FSMC Lead Members were now having regular meetings with him to take these issues forward. He agreed to report back at future meetings of the Commission.