Agenda item

The Chair invited Roy Wilsher, NFCC Chair, to introduce his report.

Roy highlighted several points from the report to members:

·       The structure put in place by the NFCC with a gold group providing overarching support and leadership to the sector during the crisis had worked very well.

·       The fact that it had been a national approach, with the tri-partite agreement, was very important.

·       The NFCC had linked in effectively with other professional organisations such as the National Police Chief’s Council and Public Health England.

·       Daily calls were taking place with key Home Office officials.

·       NFCC secured early recognition of all Fire and Rescue staff as ‘key workers’ to enable access to school places and allow travel to work where necessary.

·       Workforce absence had remained remarkably low at 5.4%.

·       The NFCC was now looking at the transition to recovery and returning to business as usual but also being prepared for a possible second wave.

Following the introduction, members raised the following points and questions:

·       Members thanked Roy for his role in putting together the tripartite agreement.

·       What impact had Covid-19 had on the day to day work of services and also on the NFCC’s wider work around reform? Roy said that the new duties were adopted on the understanding that normal day to day responses to situations would continue. He added that work on wider reforms continued.

·       Had any entire watches been struck down by Covid-19? Roy said that none had been.

·       Could a report be put together on what the sector had been doing during the crisis over and above their normal work? Roy agreed that this was important and could bolster the sector’s case for future spending rounds.

·       Could some of the new responsibilities drawn up as part of the tripartite agreement be adopted permanently by services? Roy said that they would need to have the agreement of the FBU to extend the current agreement past 26 June when it was due to be reviewed, but he felt that the new responsibilities would be important in making FRS’s more central to emergency response planning in the future.

The Chair then made two requests:

1.     That he write to each FRA and CFO on behalf of FSMC thanking them for their support during the crisis.

2.     That FRA chairs provide evidence of what their services had been doing during the crisis to inform a report to the next meeting of the FSMC in June.

These requests were both agreed.