Presentation from Steve Healey – Deputy Chief Fire Officer, Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service and Andy Cole – Assistant Chief Fire Officer, Dorset & Wiltshire Fire Service
Minutes:
The Chair invited Steve Healey (SH), Deputy CFO of Lancashire FRS, and Andy Cole (AC), Assistant Chief Fire Officer, Dorset & Wiltshire Fire Service, to address the Commission.
SH gave a presentation on the work of the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) in respect of on-call firefighters. He emphasised the vital importance of on-call staff to English FRSs and highlighted the problems of recruitment and retention that the NFCC’s project was looking to address. A project business case was being developed including a data-driven analysis to demonstrate the value of on-call firefighters. A strategic/practitioner forum had taken place on 6 June which FSMC’s Cllr Mark Healey had attended on behalf of the LGA. SH called for the support of FRA members in addressing the challenges and highlighted some of the variations in on-call contracts that had already been developed locally to try and tackle problems with recruitment and retention. However, he stressed that the problems went deeper than just pay and conditions and touched on work around broadening the role as part of Fit for the Future. The NFCC, with partners, hoped to address these issues as part of the project.
Members’ comments and questions:
· SH was asked for his view on the feasibility of mobilising pumps with 3 firefighters rather than 4 or 5 in order to make more efficient use of staff. SH responded that it was ultimately down to individual services to make those decisions in consultation with representative groups, based on resources available. However, the Manchester Arena Inquiry had shown that it was wrong to put up artificial barriers preventing crews attending incidents.
· Welsh FRA members expressed concern about some of the recommendations contained in two reports written by the Chief Fire & Rescue Adviser and Inspector for Wales around broadening the role.
· The work around ‘developing the role’ was very timely given the receptiveness of the current Fire and Health Ministers to the EMR agenda. The current negotiations through the NJC were proceeding, and this was considered to be the way forward for retained duty firefighters and the service as a whole.
· It was suggested that the contractual system for on-call staff needed to have greater flexibility in order to help retain staff. For example, minimum hours stipulations were not helpful. The Devon and Somerset FRS model was held up as a good example in this regard.
· Examples were cited where the lives of young people, who hadn’t engaged with formal school education, were transformed by becoming on-call firefighters. On call recruitment could help improve the diversity of the workforce.
· There were increasing challenges for on-call firefighters in getting to their stations on time to attend an incident, often due to problems with local highways. Some services were using Rapid Response Units to follow pumps in these circumstances. SH agreed that services needed to start thinking more innovatively about getting equipment and firefighters to incidents.
· As climate change related incidents started to increase, was there likely to be an issue with employers being more reluctant to release on-call employees? Andy Cole briefed members on the ‘demand dashboard’ being developed by Dorset & Wiltshire FRS to give potential recruits an accurate overview of the scale of operational work they would likely be facing. This was designed to try and address the problems with retention of on-call firefighters in the service and would be shared with other FRSs shortly.
· It was suggested that employers, particularly small employers, who released staff for on-call duty should be recognised in some way.
Decision:
Fire Commission noted the presentation.