A Life & Death Consultation
West Sussex County Council has launched a consultation on their plans for our fire & rescue service for the next four years. The consultation, available on the Council's website, closes on 28 May 2018. As is all too common, the questions asked seem innocuous and people may be tempted to say yes, but you need to look at the detail behind them.
1. Do you agree with priority one: Reduce the number of emergency incidents and their consequences through the continuous improvement of prevention, protection and response activities.
More dangerous cuts
Hidden in the detail behind this question are proposals to cut the number of firefighters on fire engines from five to four and even to send some fire engines out with less than four firefighters. Both of these proposals will increase the consequences of emergency incidents, not reduce them as claimed, and may well cost lives.
A fire engine crew consists of an officer-in-charge and a driver, who have specific tasks at emergencies, plus two to four firefighters who take the direct action necessary to rescue people or fight the fire. Standard crewing in West Sussex has, for very good reasons, been five for many years, but now, without justification, the County Council want to cut it to four. That means the firefighters who carry out the actions necessary to rescue people or fight the fire are cut by a third.
It also makes no sense when it will mean having to send extra fire engines to incidents to ensure there are enough firefighters to safely protect the public and to take effective action. That will inevitably mean it will take longer to get the required number there and is a waste of limited resources, especially at times when only 10 fire engines have crews.
Crews of less than four are dangerous for the public and for firefighters
This is because they cannot use the main rescue ladder (it takes four to lift it), and they cannot use breathing apparatus. Any such move is not aimed at improving the service, but can only be intended to massage the response times and mislead the public in to believing that they are being met. On paper they may improve, but it won't help the public if a vehicle arrives with an inadequate crew that can do very little until help arrives from the next town.
It also puts an unreasonable pressure on firefighters to ignore safety procedures in order to help the public. Firefighters, with protective clothing and firefighting equipment, will be expected to standby whilst members of the public, without protective clothing and firefighting equipment, may be risking all to carry out a rescue. No self respecting firefighter would do that, but cowardly senior managers, who put the firefighters in that position, will be able to discipline them for ignoring procedures.
Crewing with four, instead of five, is a less safe system of work.
Crewing with less than four is simply dangerous.
Review the emergency response standard
If this review was about improving the standard then I would welcome it, but I feel sure that what lies behind this proposal is an attempt to lower the standard. The service will be allowed to take even longer to reach emergencies, so that they can then say they met their targets.
The County Council has already given the fire & rescue service generous targets that they should be able to meet nearly 100% of the time. However, the Council has also cut resources and fails to employ enough firefighters, which is why targets are often missed.
Most of the county has targets of 12 or 14 minutes for the first fire engine to arrive, but in Hampshire it is 8 minutes across the whole county and in Surrey it is 10 minutes. There is no excuse for longer response times in West Sussex, after all, fires don’t burn any slower here and West Sussex lives are just as valuable as those in neighbouring counties.
Waiting
Automatic fire alarms are suspected fires and must be attended
West Sussex County Council want to revise the response to automatic fire alarm (AFA) calls to reduce the number of attendances when there is no fire. After years of the eminently safe policy of encouraging people to fit automatic fire alarms, to evacuate when they operate, and to wait for the fire service to arrive, fire & rescue services are increasingly putting the public in danger by expecting them to search to see if there is a fire.
Despite examples of people being killed as a result of such policies, it seems that West Sussex are also considering not attending all AFA calls. So, whilst trained and equipped firefighters stay on their fire stations, untrained members of the public will have to fend for themselves.
One recent sad example was in Plymouth, where two separate callers reported a fire alarm sounding, but the fire service did not attend. Around 90 minutes after the first call, a third call resulted in fire crews arriving to find a fire in the house next door to the original caller and the occupier dead in her bedroom. Shamefully, Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Service put the blame on control staff, even though it was the service's policy that was the root cause of this tragedy.
Around one in ten calls originating from automatic fire alarms are to fires that need firefighters to deal with them. Many others are to fires that have been put out before firefighters arrive and wrongly get recorded as false alarms. West Sussex must continue to treat automatic fire alarm calls as suspected fires and respond accordingly. To do anything else is inviting more avoidable tragedy.
2. Do you agree with priority two: As part of West Sussex County Council, the fire service must work with local communities, districts and boroughs to keep West Sussex safe?
The details in the plan may well lead to fire service resources being diverted to help other departments and organisations meet their
obligations, whilst undermining effective response to emergencies and effective
enforcement of fire safety legislation. We have already seen the Crewing Optimisation Group, which is supposed to be there to increase the number of fire engines available each day, being diverted on to community work. There is little evidence that such work has positive benefits, but there is clear evidence that inadequate crewing of fire engines results in longer response times and more deaths and property damage. West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service must focus on fully meeting their statutory responsibilities before considering taking on non-statutory work.
3. Do you agree with priority three: Collaborate with emergency services and other local and national partners to improve the service to the public.
As with question 2, this may well lead to fire service resources being diverted to help other organisations meet their obligations, whilst undermining effective response to emergencies and effective enforcement of fire safety legislation. Priority must be given to properly meeting the statutory requirements of the Fire & Rescue Services Act and the Civil Contingencies Act, before volunteering to take on the responsibilities of other services, such as those of the National Health Service. This also hides the potential
for cuts and more expensive collaboration failures, such as the joint mobilising system with East Sussex Fire & Rescue
Service. The system is several years overdue and must have cost a significant amount of money. Exactly how much is not known, as they have refused to
disclose details, by hiding behind the legal proceedings exemption in the Freedom of Information Act.
4. Do you agree with priority four: Develop and maintain a workforce that is professional, resilient, skilled, flexible and diverse.
Once again we have statements about what will be done to develop staff and to improve diversity and inclusion. Similar statements have been made previously, but the Council is still failing to provide sufficient
numbers of properly rewarded staff to ensure a quick and effective response to
emergencies and to carry out an adequate number of fire safety inspections.
In particular, Retained (Part-time) Firefighters are being neglected and the Council is failing to attract and retain enough of them. They frequently use the excuse that it is a national problem and that social and economic changes have made things worse. Yet, if that is true, then why are things worse in West Sussex than in neighbouring fire & rescue services and worse than the average in England?
And why has East Sussex manged to increase their Retained Firefighters by 14%, since 2009, whilst in West Sussex Retained Firefighters have decreased by 31%?
Source: Home Office Fire Statistics Table - Staff in post (Full time equivalent)
Retained Firefighters - Just 52 Pence Per Hour
Of course, one of the contributing factors may well be that they are
only paid 52 pence an hour for providing, on average, 4,500
hours of cover over and above the time they spend on their full-time job. There are many other factors and it is high time that West Sussex County Council set about identifying all of them and then started fixing them.
5. Do you agree with priority five: Provide customer-focused value for money services.
West Sussex County Council has not been providing a value for money fire & rescue service, it has been providing a slightly cheaper, but much less effective service. For over 60 years the County Council, the Home Office and several Chief Fire Officers agreed that at least 46 fire engines were needed to protect the area that is now West Sussex.
Despite more emergencies, more complexity and more responsibilities, the Council has cut that to just 35, which is inadequate. The failure, on occasions, to crew more than two thirds of those fire engines is nothing less than irresponsible neglect of duty on the part of the County Council. This plan will make a poor service even worse.
People don’t want value when it comes to life saving services.
They
want a quality service that responds quickly and effectively when they are in trouble.
The County Council is failing residents.
6. Are there any other comments you would like us to consider relating to the Integrated Risk Management Plan 2018-22?
The priorities should be:
No more fire engine of firefighter cuts.
Fire engines to normally be crewed by five
firefighters, with an absolute minimum of four.
At least 30 fire engines available around
the clock.
No reduction in response standards.
Fire alarm calls to be attended and treated
as potential fires.
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