May 2018 Update

Selsey Academy fire - more details

After delaying tactics by East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service, I have now received the first part of the incident log for this fire. I first submitted a Freedom of Information request in October last year. (Note: East Sussex operate the Sussex Fire Control and carry out call handling and mobilisation for all calls to fire & rescue in both East and West Sussex).

It was previously reported by West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service that the first crew arrived 16 minutes after the first '999' call, but the log shows that it actually took 18 minutes. Response targets vary in West Sussex, based on their own classification of risk, from 8 to 14 minutes for the first fire engine and from 11 to 17 minutes for the second. So the first fire engine to arrive at this fire did not even meet the target for a second fire engine in a lowest risk area. With Selsey having a resident population of over 10,000, plus several thousand more in holiday accommodation at the time of this incident (August), it is difficult to consider it 'low risk'.

It must be remembered that it was only luck that resulted in Selsey's retained (part-time) crew eventually attending the incident. The Sussex Control had them recorded as not available, but as news of a major fire spread around Selsey, their firefighters called the Sussex Control to say they could respond. Had that not happened, it would have taken 31 minutes to get the minimum of 9 firefighters to this fire. That number was agreed, after a review by several fire & rescue services, as the absolute minimum to ensure safe and effective initial firefighting and rescue at any building fire.

The call was received at 07:52. Of the nearest six fire engines, only two were available. They were the wholetime crewed fire engines at Chichester and Bognor Regis, which were both sent with a total crew of eight firefighters. Three minutes later, a retained crew from Arundel was ordered to attend by the Sussex Control. It is not known if this was to provide the mandatory ninth firefighter, or if it was because more '999' calls were being received.

The incident log also reveals that the Emsworth fire engine is listed before Arundel in the attendance priority schedule, and both Havant and Emsworth are shown before Arundel in the dynamic mobilising list. The dynamic mobilising list is supposed to more reliably show which of the available fire engines can arrive the quickest. It is therefore not clear why the Arundel crew was sent at that time.

At a County Council meeting, Cabinet Member David Barling tried to pass the buck for the initial delay and he clumsily insulted Selsey's firefighters in the process. He then claimed that it was OK, as “lots of other engines all turned up within a few minutes of each other”. So, let us look at that in more detail.

We now know that the first fire engine, from Chichester, arrived eighteen minutes after the first ‘999’ call. The Bognor Regis crew arrived one minute later, as did the Selsey crew that had luckily become available. A total of 14 standard fire engine crews were required to contain and attack the fire. It took 31 minutes to get four of them there. After 1 hour and 5 minutes there were just eight. After 1 hour and 44 minutes it was up to ten, and it was just under three hours (2 hours and 56 minutes) before the final fourteenth fire engine arrived.

Not exactly “within a few minutes of each other”. Now I am sure the Cabinet Member will be prompted to say that they were not all requested at the start. True, but nearly three hours to get enough resources there to control the fire, raises serious questions about assessment, decision making, travel distances and resource availability. This is not intended to be critical of the junior and middle ranking officers who attended, but questions need to be asked. Is training adequate? Have cuts reduced resources to the extent that they are consciously, or subconsciously, overcautious about requesting assistance?

Previous reports have suggested that pressure is being applied to officers in charge to keep assistance requests low. Even without that, officers are painfully aware of the inadequate number of pumps often available. If that is discouraging officers from requesting the right number of resources, then that may explain the very long gap between the first call and the final fire engine to arrive. The speed and weight of attack are fundamentals in effective firefighting. Anything that undermines those principles is dangerous for the public and firefighters alike.

As a comparison I took a look at the response to the Chichester Sainsbury’s fire in 1993. There were fourteen fire engines in attendance in just 45 minutes, and all twenty-six arrived in under two hours.

It may not be the only reason, but the County Council's serious cuts in funding and resources must have played a significant part in the stark difference in the responses to these two incidents.

Deciphering the Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service Proposals (Cuts)

In case anyone is in danger of being seduced by the reassuring platitudes in the cynically named “Planning for a safer Hampshire”, or the sound bites from Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service officers, here are some facts.

THEY SAY	THE TRUTH
Response times will stay the same or improve	A deception, as the current response time is for proper fire engines with crews of at least four firefighters. Future response times will often be for a converted van with just two firefighters. The response time for a proper fire engine, with a proper crew, will be significantly longer for incidents right across Hampshire.
Smaller vehicles can deal with 70% of incidents	They have not mentioned that the 30% that they cannot deal with will be the most serious and most life threatening incidents. They don’t mention that full crews on proper fire engines can deal with, or initiate significant action at, 100% of calls. They don’t mention that calls from the public do not always report the nature of the emergency accurately, and they do not always report its severity properly. Firefighters arriving in response to a call to a rubbish or a chimney fire can find it is actually a building on fire.
We refuse to compromise the safety of Hampshire residents	Fine words, but they have to be compromising safety by replacing fully equipped and crewed fire engines with inferior vehicles and inadequate crews. They must also be compromising safety by increasing response times for a response that is capable of dealing with incidents.
We refuse to compromise the safety of our firefighters	The proposals represent an appalling breach of trust on the part of fire & rescue service managers. By sending an inferior vehicle, carrying just two firefighters, they know that at some point those firefighters will be faced with an impossible dilemma. The choice between helping the distraught parents of trapped children, by entering a burning building to try and save them, or of following fire & rescue service instructions and waiting until more firefighters arrive from the next town. Any self-respecting firefighter will take the extra risk to try and save a life and managers know that. Yet they are cynically creating a situation where, if the firefighters succeed they will be praised, but if not they will be condemned for breaking the rules. That is a disgrace.
We are committed to being one of the best fire & rescue services in the country	They say that because they know it sounds reassuring. However, the best fire & rescue services in the country have proper fire engines with five or six firefighters on each. Hampshire will mostly have converted vans with just two firefighters on them, so they know they have no chance of achieving this commitment
It’s really important that we meet the needs of the communities of Hampshire	It is important, but they know they cannot, or will not do that. They say it to deceive people in to thinking that they will listen to what the public want. They know most people will want proper fire engines with full crews, but they have no intention of providing that to everyone. Many communities will end up with a second or third class service.
Ensuring that we match resources to the risks	The risk of people losing their lives in a fire or accident, or of losing their home or business, exists in every part of Hampshire. No matter where they live, people deserve the same level of resources coming to their aid quickly. Unfortunately the fire & rescue service are ignoring the real risk and cutting resources. The most severe cuts are in rural areas where the risk to the individual is actually greater, because it already takes firefighters longer to get there. Just because calls are less frequent in those areas, as there are fewer people, does not reduce the risk to those people. The risk of death for people in rural areas and across Hampshire at night will increase if these proposals are implemented.
There has been a significant reduction in the number of emergency incidents attended	They did not increase resources when the number of incidents doubled, trebled and even quadrupled, but they are dishonestly using the recent reduction to justify cuts. Even though there are still twice as many calls as in the 1950s and 1960s, when there were more fire engines and more firefighters available. No fire service has ever decided how many fire engines to provide, and where they should be based, simply on the number of calls expected. Those decisions have always been taken to ensure that fire engines can reach anywhere quickly, and so that larger fires and simultaneous incidents can be properly resourced.
The latest technology to save lives and protect property across Hampshire.	They know that it is firefighters that save lives, not technology, but technology sounds impressive. They hope that people will not realise that cutting crew sizes will endanger public and firefighter lives.
A smaller vehicle that could make a hole in the wall of a burning room, and we would be able to pump water in straight away. This would make it safer for people inside	The equipment has its uses, but the claim that it will help save lives is a deception. The high pressure, abrasive lance, which cuts through concrete, is actually hazardous to people inside. The manufacturers have many years of reports on the effectiveness of their equipment from fire services across Europe. They have confirmed that none of those reports records people inside, or firefighter lives being saved with this equipment. They also don’t mention that responsible fire services add this equipment to their fire engines, so that crews have a range of options available to them. They don’t stick it on vans as a substitute for proper fire engines.
Our standard fire engines (with crews of four to six firefighters) are not always the most appropriate response	They are the most appropriate response, because they can cope with whatever they find when they arrive. Unfortunately, they want to gamble with firefighter and public safety by sending vehicles with less water, equipment and firefighters that will often prove to be totally inadequate for the incident they are faced with.
We propose to introduce four crewing models to effectively match the risk of our stations	They misuse the term ‘risk’, when they are actually talking about frequency of calls. If your home catches fire in a busy station area, you may get a proper fire engine with five firefighters on it arriving quickly, but if it catches fire in a quieter station area you may just get a van with two firefighters on it. But don’t worry, they will be able to hold your hand whilst you all wait for a proper fire engine to arrive from a fire station further away.
More staff on duty when we need them, and less during the periods of lower activity	Periods of lower activity require exactly the same number of firefighters to attend incidents, as they do during busy periods. They want you to think that, miraculously, incidents are somehow less severe during periods of lower activity. They are not. In fact they are often more severe in the quiet early hours, because no one sees the fire until it becomes a serious one, so more resources are required, not less.
Incident statistics	The incident figures shown for each station are quite misleading, as they do not show the actual workload for each fire station. They don’t show calls to standby at other stations, relief crew calls, or calls in to neighbouring counties. They also don’t show the community safety and prevention work that the crews do. Emsworth for example are shown as attending 66 incidents in 2013/14. No over the border incidents are shown, yet in 2014/15 Emsworth attended 55 incidents in West Sussex. They also provided cover at West Sussex fire stations on 19 occasions.

Appalling lack of fire cover in West Sussex

Latest News Release:

Recent fires in Crawley on Saturday (14 March) and Worthing on Tuesday (17 March) have exposed serious failures to ensure that fire engines in the County are properly crewed.

When called to a fire at Celandine Close in Crawley, only one fire engine at Crawley and one at Horsham had sufficient firefighters to crew them. When they arrived at the incident and requested help it had to come from Surrey. Two other fire engines at each of these stations were not crewed, and there were no fire engines crewed at East Grinstead, Haywards Heath or Turners Hill.

A spokesperson for the West Sussex Fire & Rescue Stop the Cuts group says, “Details show that if there had been a serious fire in a larger building in Crawley, those crewing shortages would have resulted in most of the fire engines coming from Surrey and East Sussex. Having to rely on fire engines from as far away as Brighton to get just ten fire engines to Crawley is unprecedented.”

At Worthing a disabled woman had to wait over nine minutes to be rescued when her home in Clifton Road caught fire, even though the fire station is only a mile away. One crew each from Worthing, Littlehampton and Shoreham were sent.

The spokesperson said, “Two of Worthing’s fire engines were at another incident, but more than one incident at the same time is not unusual. West Sussex County Council did not properly consider this when planning more cuts. It is also clear that there were crewing problems, as nearer fire engines from East Preston and Lancing were not sent”.

Cuts due to take effect in April will see another 5 fire engines, 21 wholetime firefighters and 15 retained firefighters removed from fire stations. The County Council has claimed that a new Crewing Optimisation Group of 16 wholetime firefighters will improve the crewing of retained fire engines. This has been described as an untested and inadequate attempt to cover up inadequate resources.

Tony Morris, who has a ‘Stop fire engine and firefighter cuts in West Sussex petition on the County Council e-petition website, said, “This new group will not work weekends, so would have been of no use at the Crawley incident as it was on a Saturday. Many people have seen through the County Council’s false improvement claims and, as well as over 1,600 signatures so far on the petition, many councils, organisations, firefighters and members of the public are strongly objecting to these cuts.”

He concluded, “These failures are just the few that we get to hear about. The frightening reality is that there are not enough firefighters to properly protect West Sussex now. These further cuts will put firefighters and the public at increased risk.” 

A timely reminder

If anyone needs a reminder of what this campaign is about, take a few minutes to watch this video. 

Fires like this are just as likely in West Sussex as they are in Paris. These people were all rescued because well trained and well equipped firefighters arrived on properly crewed fire engines very quickly. 

West Sussex County Council cuts will ensure that fewer firefighters will take longer to arrive. That is madness.

Paris Firemen Rescue Eight Parisians from Fiery Inferno on Rue de la Huchette

West Sussex County Council cuts to the Fire & Rescue Service are unjustified and dangerous

Just a reminder about why the online petition is so important. 

Please also note that the Council say only signatures from people living, working or studying in West Sussex and showing a valid West Sussex post code will be counted. If you live outside the County please use your West Sussex work or study address and postcode. After signing, you have to confirm the link sent to you by email, so if you do not receive that email, please check your spam folder.

West Sussex County Council cuts to the Fire & Rescue Service are unjustified and dangerous

Relative changes since 1978, using the official figures for each year shown

This chart illustrates that, whilst fire deaths and incidents fluctuated, the number of fire engines to protect residents never fell below 45 until 2011. That is because 45 fire engines were the minimum necessary to reach any location quickly, as well as providing enough to deal with simultaneous incidents and with those requiring several fire engines.

Every Chief Fire Officer since 1948, when control of the fire service passed to West Sussex County Council, has considered that to be an absolute minimum. Every Chair and the Members of the relevant County Council committee have supported that from 1948 until 2010.

Political interests have now replaced proper risk assessment. Since 2010 three fire stations have been closed and six fire engines and their crews cut. Response times and fire deaths are increasing. In 2013/14 the availability of retained (part time) firefighters was 16% below standard, with some fire engines not crewed more often than they were crewed.

The professional case for those cuts was weak, and the professional case for a further cut of firefighters and another five fire engines is non-existent. The number of incidents is still well above 1970s and early 1980s figures, yet further cuts of fire engines and firefighters are planned.

Their claims that 'prevention is at the heart of everything we do', is just hot air designed to deflect attention from the frontline service cuts. Over 12,000 inspections in 1989, yet by 2012/13 that was down to just 1,400. With 34% of those inspections finding premises that were unsatisfactory, you have to wonder how many premises that were not inspected are also unsatisfactory.

There is no doubt that further cuts will increase response times, and that will result in more deaths, more injuries, and more property damage. That is not acceptable.

The following charts show the actual numbers for each of those years.

Gatwick Airport – a critical consideration

West Sussex County Council will be debating expansion at Gatwick Airport next week. The content of a letter sent to all County Councillors is shown below:

"There appears to have been an important omission in the debate regarding a possible second runway at Gatwick Airport. That omission concerns consideration of the ability of hospitals, the emergency services, local authorities etc. to cope with an aircraft accident, or other major incident at the Airport.

I believe that the Council should insist on a second runway only being permitted if additional funding is given to those services that have to respond to major incidents at the airport. This is just as important as the infrastructure to support the airport. That funding could come from the airport operator or the Government, but to proceed without it would be reckless. 

It is quite clear that the ambulance service and hospitals are struggling to cope with winter pressures, so their potential to also cope with hundreds of casualties from an air crash must be in serious doubt. The Police have also suffered staffing cuts that affect their ability to deal with major emergencies. The ability of WSCC Social Care to provide support to uninjured survivors and relatives of the injured or deceased is another vital service that has been affected by budget cuts. 

The latest aircraft using Gatwick include the Airbus A380, versions of which carry over 550 passengers, with versions carrying 900 passengers being developed. When you consider that the aircraft involved in the Kegworth air crash in 1989 was only carrying 118 passengers, you get an idea of the significantly greater demand on local services if a larger aircraft crashes at Gatwick. At Kegworth 82 people were seriously injured and it took over seven hours to free them all from the wreckage. The local authority fire service needed 22 fire engines and over 100 firefighters at the incident.

It should also be borne in mind that the Civil Aviation Authority say that planning should consider more than one aircraft being involved in an accident, and the surroundings of the Airport should also be taken in to account. With a busy commuter line at the end of the runway, an aircraft collision with a crowded commuter train must also be considered. Casualties could run in to the thousands.

More specifically for West Sussex County Council, cuts and crewing difficulties have made the fire and rescue service much less able to cope than in previous years. The emergency landing at Gatwick Airport at the end of December showed that, instead of resources increasing to cope with increased risk, they have actually been reduced. The time taken to get resources to the airport has increased significantly, as they have to be sent from stations much further away. The proposed 2015-16 cuts will make this even worse.

When aircraft carried fewer passengers, WSFRS were able to get the full response to the airport by sending fire engines from stations no further away than Horsham. However, at the December incident fewer fire engines had to come from as far away as Bognor Regis, Shoreham and Worthing, with some taking well over an hour to arrive. With the potential for several hundred trapped and injured casualties, that is just not acceptable.

It should also be of concern to Councillors that the pre-planned response has been reduced. A public inquiry would not accept that an emergency service, given notice of a potential crash, did not use the time to assemble sufficient resources to deal with a crash. The current response would have been inadequate for smaller aircraft, so it is wholly inadequate for today’s aircraft.

Please note that the Airport Fire Service depend heavily on support from West Sussex and Surrey Fire & Rescue Services. The Airport Fire Service is only required to provide a full response to crashed aircraft within the airport boundary, and a reduced response to crashed aircraft very near to the airport. They have no responsibility for building fires, chemical incidents, road or rail crashes on or near the airport. They, and the rescue work at an air crash, are a statutory duty of West Sussex County Council.

I would urge you and your colleagues to properly consider this aspect before deciding on your recommendation regarding expansion at the Airport.

BBC South Today

BBC South Today coverage here. Intro - 15 seconds in and the main item - 7 minutes 25 seconds in

Protests continue

Good to see in the "Midhurst & Petworth Observer" that Midhurst Town Council is calling for a full County Council debate on the cuts. Also good to see four letters condemning the cuts. 

Unfortunately there is one letter from Petworth's County Councillor that continues the myth, "the service will actually be improved". I don't know if she is deluded or deceived, but she is emphatically wrong. With judgement like that many of our County Councillors need to be very careful, as con men are likely to see them as easy prey.

More shocking evidence of the damage fire cuts are causing

The FBU have just published a very detailed and interesting report that sadly confirms our worst fears about fire service cuts. Notable in the report are:

How cost effective the service is nationally, at £50 per person or £100 per household. That compares with full breakdown cover for your car from the AA at £292, and full homecare cover from British Gas at £377.

So how much does West Sussex County Council think their residents’ safety is worth? Well County Council figures show it is not £50, but a derisory £35 per person to provide the fire and rescue service. Next year they only think we are worth £33 each. 

As for the cuts making no difference, research carried out for the Government has shown that fire service response times are increasing. Initially they thought this was related to traffic, but the research has shown that when traffic volumes stabilised, response times kept increasing. That increase seems to mirror the decrease in the number of firefighters and fire engines.

They also calculated that a one minute average increase in response times resulted in 78 extra deaths and £85 million more property damage each year. They also said that by 2025 there could be up to 350 extra deaths annually.

Chief Fire Officers up and down the country are warning of the dire consequences of cuts to the fire and rescue service. Why is our Chief Fire Officer not joining them and why is he continuing to deceive people by pretending the cuts are improvements?

For those who would like to read the report, it can be found here

Other people's comments on the cuts

For those who are not on Facebook, I thought you may like to see some of the comments made by other people. Many of them are or were in the service so they know how bad the cuts will be:

"One other issue I will add to your list is the apparent gagging of our serving firefighters. It appears that they have been told/warned by officers not to comment. That cannot be within the spirit of free speech or human rights, they also contribute to the tax pot, so why shouldn't they have their say?"

"They are increasing crewing at Littlehampton but failed to disclose at the meeting how much it was going to cost to upgrade the facilities. Littlehampton has plenty of retained and the wholetime personnel would be better being positioned where there is a shortage. The money being wasted by modifying Littlehampton could be used to save services elsewhere. The fire brigade employed an outside consultation company to work on the cuts and obviously they found in favour of the brigade who was the paymaster!! Why if we are trying to save money didn't they do it in house?"

"The outside consultation company, used invited audiences and asked loaded questions to lead to the audience to agreeing to the proposed cuts !! The invited audience were paid £40 each to attend the meetings!!!!!"

"I have just read some of the cabinet papers on the cuts, one of the reasons given to remove appliances from Midhurst, Petworth and Storrington is that the second appliances are often unavailable. What the CFO and DCFO have failed to inform councillors is that this is because of the lack of a robust recruitment system over the past two decades. Recruitment has been left to local firefighters without much resource. No WSFRS Management team, do not blame our frontline firefighters, YOU are to blame for appliances not being available."

"The Conservative administration's idea of democracy does not extend as far as allowing scrutiny committees to actually vote in favour or against the decision."

"Terrible outcome. The councillors are a disgrace. I thought the chairman may have not supported the cuts but that was not to be. I wonder if he would have voted differently if his house had been lost when we attended and put out a bathroom fire years ago !!!!"

"Don't you know that they don't care because they will always give a reason 'it wasn't their Service's fault', when somebody dies. It has happened after closures or changes from being 24/7, and when RDS pumps aren't available anymore." 

"Unfortunately Tony the chief fire officer doesn't care about West Sussex or its residents. It's a shame he is just a hatchet man who is going to use West Sussex as a stepping stone to new heights. If he was a West Sussex resident things would be different."

West Sussex fire service cuts must be referred to the full Council

Reckless and Foolish

The fire service cuts decision must not be left to one man. Such a crucial decision must be debated by the full County Council. The people of West Sussex deserve to know which of their representatives will vote for slower response times, more deaths and more property damage, and which of them will vote to protect the people of West Sussex.

Lionel Barnard is clearly receiving some very poor advice from his officers and it is beginning to make him look foolish, as well as reckless. Among the ridiculous statements he has been prompted to make about the fire service cuts are:

‘All 800,000 people in West Sussex knew about the consultation’. Utter nonsense. Even if the proposals had been included in the County Council’s “West Sussex Connections” newspaper, which it should have been, it would still not be true. It is becoming clear that very few people knew about it.

‘I’m sure that if people had seen any dangers they would have replied’. The consultation document deliberately omitted the dangers and falsely claimed ‘no reduction in performance’, ‘improves flexibility’ etc. It even included blatant lies, such as ‘moving a fire engine from Horsham to Littlehampton, when they were actually cutting a fire engine and crew. The dangers were deliberately concealed.

‘We had a thousand replies, which is not as many as you might expect’. Yet, he then went on to say he did not have an expectation, which makes no sense. 1,000 replies is actually a very high figure for a County Council consultation and shows how deeply concerned people are.

‘The types of incident crews respond to has changed’. They have not, West Sussex firefighters are still responding to fires, road crashes, floods and a variety of other emergencies, just as they have done since 1948. The proportion of each may have changed, but all of them still require the speedy response of one or more fully crewed fire engines.

‘This is about improving our service’. Do his advisers really think the public are that gullible? A service that will take longer to arrive at many incidents, that has fewer fire engines to attend major incidents or multiple calls, and that will see more fire deaths and property destroyed is most definitely not an improved one.

‘This is about building a fire service that is fit for the 21st century’. No it is about slowly dismantling a vital public service, making it less fit than it was in the 20th century. Resources will be the worst since before World War 2.

‘Prevention is the name of the game.’ Chief Fire Officers and Councillors have been saying that for many years. My Grandfather was saying that in the 1920s, my Uncle in the 1950s, so the only change is who is saying it. Prevention has always been part of the service’s work, but it can never replace an effective response.

‘I’ve taken the decision that I have because the evidence is there to support it’. What Lionel Barnard claims to be supporting ‘evidence’, is nothing more than wishful thinking and illusion. The most striking evidence is that fire deaths have been increasing in West Sussex, that the proposals will result in more deaths, that response times will increase, that they have been failing to crew stations properly, and that more fire engines will be under-crewed or unavailable in the future.

Finally, the figures don’t add up. Between the consultation closing and the Environmental Services Select Committee meeting the saving claimed for cutting fire engines at Midhurst, Petworth and Storrington dropped from £41,400 to just £21,000 each. The extra cost of changes at Littlehampton was £382,102, but by the meeting that had changed to ‘awaiting the costings’. Other costs resulting from the changes have not been determined, so to cut services when the real savings are unknown is reckless.

The first duty of government is to protect their citizens. County Councillors must not neglect that duty, they must refer the decision to full council.

Web: wsfrscuts.blogspot.com 

Facebook: West Sussex Fire & Rescue Stop the Cuts 

I have written to County Councillors today asking them to call the decision in. If you want to do the same you can check who your councillor is at this link: WSCC Councillors

My email is reproduced below:

Dear County Councillor,

 

I believe that it is essential that you protect the people of West Sussex by calling in Lionel Barnard’s decision on fire service cuts for the following reasons:

 

1. Despite his and the Chief Fire Officer's assertions, the evidence is simply not there to justify the decision. Aspirations and wishful thinking are not evidence. Examples include: 

• “In the last five years we have reduced the levels of risk considerably across the county”. Not true, the evidence shows that the number of fire deaths in that period has increased significantly (from 1 in 2008-09 to 6 in 2012-13).

• “The number of emergency calls we receive has reduced substantially”. Calls increase and decrease over time, but if you look at the full figures, the overall trend is that on average they are still increasing. Calls in 2012-13 were 9,504. Yet every year before 1987 they were lower and fluctuated between 3,000 and 8,000. Recent reductions from unusually high numbers have slowed and there is no evidence that they will not rise in future. 

• “Recent reductions in calls are attributable to prevention work”. We might hope that prevention work plays a part, but there is no evidence to support this claim. Things the County Council has no control over, such as changing weather, social habits, and technology all play a much more significant part in decreases or increases in calls. Much of the recent decrease has also been artificial, as it results from a policy decision to refuse to attend certain incident types. 

• “Getting to the root cause of emergencies, and broadening the preventative role of firefighters even further, will help us to build safer and stronger communities and improve the lives of people in West Sussex”. There is no evidence that this aspiration will be achieved. Similar claims have been made and such work has been going on over many years, yet there are still thousands of emergencies every year in West Sussex.

• Group crewing will see “no reduction in performance”. Not only is there no evidence to support this, but common sense says that if you have fewer firefighters, then absences resulting from leave, promotions, transfers, sickness, injury, jury service, parental leave etc. will reduce the number available for duty. That can only reduce performance.

2. The evidence that response times will increase and more lives and property will be lost is clearly stated in the WSFRS supporting documents.

 

3. The consultation was an abject failure. Councillors, the public and the independent social research company were given reassuring and misleading claims about the effects of the proposals. Figures about an increasing number of fire deaths in recent years and an expected increase in fire deaths and property loss, as a direct result of the proposals, were not included in the consultation document or at the forums. Claims that a fire engine was to be moved from Horsham to Littlehampton were false. Claims that all the proposals had been analysed were also false. Claims that removing a fire engine from 3 stations would improve flexibility were false. This means that the consultation report is based largely on feedback from people who had not been given all the relevant facts, which makes it meaningless.

4. The proposals go against government recommendations that more fire engines should be crewed by retained firefighters. This will cut another four retained crewed fire engines, on top of the five cut in 2011. Properly managed retained stations are significantly more cost effective than wholetime crewed ones.

 

5. Figures quoted in the consultation document and supporting documents are different to those in the report to the Environmental Services Select Committee (e.g. the savings for proposal 3 reduced from £41,400 to £21,000 for each station, and the £200,000 cost of proposal 6 vanished completely). The committee was also given inaccurate figures in Sean Ruth’s report regarding fire deaths. It is difficult to have confidence in any of the figures quoted.

 

6. The most effective and least damaging option of a merger with a neighbouring service has not been properly considered.

7. The costs to implement these cuts look likely to be greater than the claimed savings. Redundancy costs and building costs at Littlehampton, which worryingly have yet to be calculated, could see any saving wiped out.

 

8. It is not true, as Lionel Barnard outrageously claimed on radio, that all of the 800,000 people in West Sussex knew about the consultation.

 

9. It is not true, as claimed by Lee Neale, that there is nothing more they could have done to make people aware. Publishing it in ‘West Sussex Connections’ would have been just one way of ensuring many more people were aware.

10. Lee Neale claims that on a daily basis, "we are constantly looking at where our risk is, we are constantly looking at the resources". Such nonsense may keep him occupied with charts and maps, but it does nothing to help those who need a fire engine quickly. The real risk is right across West Sussex, it does not change regularly, and the only mitigation is to have sufficient fire engines and crews spread sensibly across the County. Chief Fire Officers and County Councillors have done that well from 1948 to 2010. Please don't increase the damage done in 2011 with further cuts   

  

Petworth emergencies raise fire service concerns

So the Operations Manager thinks their 'systems worked'. Well he may think leaving 10,000 people at Selsey without their fire engine, to achieve a 16 minute response time in Petworth is a system that is working. Most rational people will see that as a system that is not only failing, but is getting worse day by day. 

http://www.midhurstandpetworth.co.uk/news/local/petworth-emergencies-raise-fire-service-concerns-1-6304973

Environmental & Community Services Select Committee

If anyone else wishes to email their concerns to the members of the  Environmental & Community Services Select Committee, their addresses are:

andrew.barrett-miles@westsussex.gov.uk, 
heidi.brunsdon@westsussex.gov.uk, 
dennisn@westminster.ac.uk, 
graham.jones@westsussex.gov.uk, 
michael.jones@westsussex.gov.uk, 
roger.oakley@westsussex.gov.uk, 
simon.oakley@westsussex.gov.uk,
joan.phillips@westsussex.gov.uk, 
john.rogers@westsussex.gov.uk, 
graham.tyler@westsussex.gov.uk, 
derek.whittington@westsussex.gov.uk, 
philip.circus@westsussex.gov.uk

You are welcome to use any or all of my points in the previous post.

More misleading and inaccurate information from the Chief Fire Offcier

The Environmental & Community Services Select Committee meet on Thursday to consider a report from the Chief Fire Officer about the cuts. You will not be surprised that the report contains inaccuracies and misleading information. I have emailed the committee members to point the worst of these out (see below). The numbers below refer to the paragraphs in the CFO's report that can be found with the agenda on the WSCC website http://www2.westsussex.gov.uk/ds/cttee/ecs/ecs180914age.pdf

Dear Committee Member,

At Thursday’s meeting I believe that you will be taking, for the first time, decisions that are matters of life and death. I would therefore be most grateful if you would read these comments alongside the report by Sean Ruth (Executive Director Communities, Public Protection and Chief Fire Officer).

Para.	Claim	True or false	The reality
1.4	“There has been an increase in the average response times to building fires in England”	True	The closure of fire stations and reductions in the number of fire engines across the UK have increased response times. Some deaths have been attributed to these closures and cuts. These proposals will make that situation worse.
1.4	“The severity of fires and numbers of casualties has decreased”	Partly true	Despite some decreases, the cost of fire damage has increased. The number of fire deaths in West Sussex has increased every year since 2008-09.
1.4	“National trends over the last decade” etc.	Misleading	The number of incidents fluctuate annually, so just looking at the figures for two years, ten years apart, does not give you a trend.
1.4	“WSFRS has followed the national trends”	False	The changes in West Sussex have not been shown in this paragraph, because they are less impressive. If you take the last 30 years and look at a more reliable four year average at each end of that period, the figures are: Total incidents attended up 45% Special services, including road crashes, up 78%. Fires have dropped, but only by 1% Fire engines have already been cut by 13%.
2.3	Removing a fire engine from service at Horsham will, “improve Service performance”.	False	Improving response times for Littlehampton’s 1st fire engine at night will come at the cost of poorer response times both day and night in the North of the County.
2.4.4	Cutting the number of firefighters at immediate response stations will, “maintain existing crewing levels where possible”.	Worrying	‘Where possible’ indicates that the CFO knows this proposal will see reduced crewing levels more often, so he has built in a get out clause.
2.4.4	Cutting the number of firefighters at immediate response stations will, result in “no reduction in response standards”.	False	There is no evidence to support this contention. It has not been analysed or risk assessed. Common sense says that with fewer firefighters there will be more occasions when fire engines become unavailable. The cuts will reduce the ability of stations to withstand absences resulting from leave, promotions, transfers, sickness, injury, jury service, parental leave etc.,
2.5.5	Removing the 2nd fire engines at Midhurst, Petworth and Storrington, will have a “minimal impact on performance”.	False	Even the overly optimistic Modelling and Analysis Technical Report concedes that this proposal will result in ‘more cost in terms of life and property damage’. A full analysis using more data is likely to show that cost will be much greater.
2.5.5	Removing the 2nd fire engines at Midhurst, Petworth and Storrington, will “improve flexibility”.	False	Removing the 2nd fire engine significantly reduces flexibility. There is no improvement in flexibility offered by the 4x4s, as these stations already have them.
2.6.2	Removing the 3rd fire engine at Crawley will have “minimal impact on Service performance”.	False	Even the overly optimistic Modelling and Analysis Technical Report concedes that this proposal will result in ‘more cost in terms of life and property damage’. A full analysis using more data is likely to show that cost will be much greater.There has also been a recent increase in fire deaths and fire rescues in Crawley.
2.6.2	Removing the 3rd fire engine at Crawley will be “more proportionate to risk and operational demand”.	False	Crawley has the highest number of calls in West Sussex and more occasions when more than one call has to be dealt with at the same time. It is already under resourced and this will make the situation even worse. It will also reduce cover in other areas when their fire engines have to deal with calls in Crawley.
2.10.2	Remove the 2nd fire engines at Midhurst, Petworth and Storrington will save £63,000	Not sure	The documents issued with the consultation suggested that the saving for each station would be £41,400 (total £124,200). Which is correct? If the saving is only £63,000, surely there are alternatives to avoid the extra deaths and property damage.
2.10.2	Reductions in management and Support Services will save £290,000	Not sure	No detail has been published, so it is impossible to know if this figure is correct
2.10.2	Total saving = £1.6m	False	Proposal six is an increase in spending of £220,000, and proposal 8 will incur additional costs arising from overtime and recall to duty payments. The saving cannot therefore be £1.6m.
3	“Alternative Options Considered”	True, but worrying	It was quite right to rule out the other crewing options, but why was that the only alternative considered?
5.2.2	“There were only two specific alternative proposals submitted”	Misleading	Alternative proposals were not requested. Had they been there may well have been more.
5.2.2	Merger - this has previously been considered by the County Council.	Misleading	Previous consideration is not a reason for excluding this option. There has been time to overcome any obstacles to a merger with East Sussex, and time to consider a merger with Surrey or Hampshire. A responsible review would have looked at these options as they would be highly likely to save over £1m without affecting service provision.
5.2.3	A full report on the consultation feedback will be presented to the select committee meeting by ORS	Misleading	Whilst ORS have done a professional job, their research has been undermined by the misleading information and omitted information provided by WSFRS. Consequently, for example, forum attendees and consultation respondents were not aware of the additional cost in terms of life and property damage associated with some of the proposals, or that claims of West Sussex becoming safer omitted the increase in fire deaths. The samples at the forums were extremely small, so are not representative. For example, the FBU response gives the views of around 30 times the number of staff who were at the staff forum. ORS says that consultation with informed audiences is especially valuable. The 300 or so firefighters represented by the FBU are clearly well informed, so their views should be given considerable weight.
5.3.1	“The figures for fatalities in West Sussex for the last three years have risen from 4 in 2010/11 to 6 in 2013/14.”	False	There were only 3 fire deaths in 2010/11. Actual figures were: 2008-09 = 1 2009-10 = 2 2010-11 = 3 2011-12 = 4 2012-13 = 6
5.3.2	“The Service do not believe that it has deliberately been misleading or provided inaccurate information”.	Misleading	So is ‘the service’ saying it accepts that it has been misleading and has provided inaccurate information, but did not do so deliberately? Deliberate or not, omitting information such as the predicted increase in lives lost and property damaged from both the consultation document and at the forums has denied people the full facts.
5.3.3	Proposals one, two, three, five, six and eight” will improve service delivery.	False	The limited night time improvement from proposal one at Littlehampton is offset by the reduced service delivery at Horsham both day and night. Proposal six may offer limited improvement, but that will be more than offset by the reduced service delivery from proposals one, two, three, four and five.
5.3.3	There will be some improvements to service delivery and improvement in the Service’s resilience through proposal eight.	Unclear	There is nothing new in this proposal, so it is unclear how there will be an improvement. If there is any improvement, it will be more than offset by the reduction of 5 fire engines.
6.0	Resource Implications and Value for Money	Unclear	The additional costs are vague, but it looks like far more will be spent to achieve these cuts than will actually be saved.
8.1	Equality Impact Report	Misleading	The Equality Impact Report has completely failed to consider the more significant effects of proposal 3 on the rural poor, rural elderly and rural ethnic minorities, and the more significant effects of proposal 4 on the elderly, poor and ethnic minorities in Crawley Borough.
8.5.1	The Service has met with the Gatwick Airport Fire Service Manager, who raised no objections to the proposals.	Misleading	I have no reason to doubt this, but he has no responsibility for fire cover at Gatwick. It is West Sussex County Council that is responsible, so he no doubt would not wish to interfere.
8.9	The Service believes that its proposals, when implemented, will improve emergency cover in certain rural parts of the county.	Misleading	This is unbelievable spin, as there is no evidence to support the claim.

  

There are also some unanswered questions that you may wish to have answered: 

• Why were some proposals not analysed and risk assessed, especially as the consultation suggests that they all were?
• Between 11 and 17% of attendances fail to meet the standards, so why are they not investigated and reported to County Councillors?
• How bad are the worst examples of those attendance failures and why did they occur?
• Why has WSFRS not followed WSCC initiatives to significantly reduce senior and middle management positions?
• If money is short, why are officer cars being replaced with more expensive and more polluting 4x4xs?
• Why is it suggested that the 4x4s are for flooding, when they are not designed for flooding and standard advice is for them not to enter flood water?
• Why are there twice as many cars in WSFRS, as the proposed number of fire engines?
• Why has WSFRS not followed WSCC policy on reducing travel by car in favour of using public transport?
• At the restaurant fire in Petworth on 12 September why were the nearest available fire engines Arundel, Selsey, Haslemere and Horsham.