LGA Governance


Agenda item

Agenda item

Fire Commission and FSMC Priorities for 2020-21

Minutes:

The Chair invited Lucy Ellender, Senior Adviser, to introduce the update.

 

Lucy outlined the proposed priorities for Fire Commission and Fire Services Management Committee for the coming year – People (inclusion and diversity); Professionalism (responding to inspection/reviews, fire/building safety, Spending Review, transparency and standards); Governance (PCC review and good governance); Climate Change; and Learning from Covid-19.

 

Following Lucy’s introduction, members made the following contributions:

·       Ian Stephens – Must keep a strong focus on climate change.

·       Nick Chard – Need to set the priorities in a hierarchy. The Minister’s priorities must be paramount, especially building safety.

·       Rebecca Knox – Using the learning from Covid-19 to improve working practices should be a key priority. Transforming culture and relationships should be a golden thread running through all of our work.

·       Les Byrom – Fire and building safety has to be the main priority for FSMC and making buildings safe as quickly as possible. Lead Members should seek to input into the Fire Safety and Building Safety Bills as they go through Parliament.

·       Keith Aspden – agree with the proposed priorities – they accurately represent all the issues facing the sector at the moment. We should make clear to the Minister and the Home Office that governance reform should not be a top priority at this difficult time.

·       Rachel Bailey - Carbon reduction is uppermost in the capital investment decisions of Cheshire Fire Authority. The importance of capital spend is going to be crucial moving forward if we are to reduce the sectors carbon footprint.

Lucy thanked members for their comments and said that they will help inform the priorities report going to FSMC on 16 October.

 

Decision

Members of the Fire Commission endorsed the proposed priorities subject to the above comments.

Supporting documents: