Agenda item

John Wright, Senior Advisor, introduced the paper and draft response to the consultation. He outlined the key themes of the response:

·         Support for collaboration between blue light services.

·         Legislating a duty to collaborate could stifle innovation.

·         Collaboration is best left at the local level.

·         Governance changes are unnecessary.

·         The consultation ignores the potential complexities associated with PCCs involvement in the governance of county FRAs

·         Changes must have the support of local people and the government should not be able to overrule local decisions.

Members welcomed the draft response. There was a discussion during which members made a number of comments:

·         The clause about PCCs making a hostile takeover of fire authorities should be removed from the proposals.

·         The response is representative of the national picture and should not be framed in a way that makes it appear that all areas face some difficulties collaborating with the ambulance service. Most areas enjoy good collaborative relationships with their local ambulance trust.

·         Integration with the local community is a fire service strength which other blue light services do not have.

·         There should be clarity around who pays for the putting together of a business case.

·         The fire service is good at collaborating with other services.

·         The consultation only considers PCCs taking over FRAs and not vice versa.

·         The strength of the fire brand allows the service to reach into places other emergency services cannot.

·         Members disagreed that PCCs are more democratically representative than FRAs. They also felt that, because Police and Crime panels have no power over what a PCC does, local democratic control of the FRS would be lost in any transfer of governance.

·         The fire service’s strength lies in community wellbeing.

·         Any move towards establishing a single employer must be supported by both workforces before such a change takes place.

·         Some of the strengths of the current system, peer challenge, and organisational experience could be lost if FRSs merged with police under the governance of the PCC.

·         The consultation doesn’t address the savings that can be made from preventative work. The current health and wellbeing work undertaken by the FRS saves other services money.

Decision

·         Members were unanimous that the proposed legislation was not required.

·         Members agreed to forward individual fire authority responses to the consultation to the LGA.

Action

·         Officers to make amendments to the draft response as per members’ comments.

·         Officers to collate fire authority responses to the consultation on receipt

·         Officers to forward the final LGA response to members of the Fire Commission.