Damaging consequences of "Chief Fire Officer to retire" fiasco

There is another aspect of this ‘Chief Fire Officer to retire’ story.  What Council services will have to be cut to pay for two Chief Fire Officer pensions, in addition to the salaries of an existing and a new post?

Deputy Lee Neale, who retired recently, was doing Sean Ruth’s job, whilst he was off doing something else. Lee Neale would have been paid as Chief Fire Officer, so he is now presumably getting a Chief Fire Officer’s pension, instead of a lower Deputy’s pension. If Sean Ruth gets his way, that will be another Chief Fire Officer’s pension, presumably with a lump sum payment out of the budget, plus his continuing salary. Not forgetting of course, the new Chief Fire Officer’s salary.

At a time of austerity, when jobs and services have been cut, that is contemptible. Cabinet Member David Barling claimed last month that the Council could not afford to review the service’s increasing failures to meet response times. Something that would have cost significantly less than this travesty and something that would have benefited West Sussex residents.

There is also the damage this will do to firefighter morale. Many serving firefighters, who risk their lives instead of driving desks, are facing increased payments for a less beneficial pension and will have to work to the age of 60 to collect it. Now they see their chief officer trying to get his hands on his very much better pension, at the age of 50, and wanting to stay in his very well paid job.

So much for us all being in this together, all having to tighten our belts, etc, etc. If County Council Leader Louise Goldsmith has any credibility, then she ought to consider if this inept move has brought the County Council in to disrepute, and who should be held to account for that. 

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   

  

CONSULTATION RESPONSES WILL BE IGNORED

FIRE CHIEF LETS THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG

CONSULTATION RESPONSES WILL BE IGNORED

Not only has this consultation been inadequate and misleading, it now appears that responding to it may be a waste of time.

In a recent radio interview, Deputy Chief Fire Officer Lee Neale said, “There is a view that if we aren’t getting hundreds of thousands of responses there must be a degree of contentment or agreement with the proposals we are putting forward.”

No local consultation will ever get hundreds of thousands of responses, even national ones rarely approach such numbers. It appears that they have decided to ignore any objections from the public.

It is quite outrageous to assume that people who have not responded, all agree with the proposals.

Many will not be aware of the consultation, others will have been lulled in to a false sense of security by the misleading consultation document, and many will believe that their views will be ignored. From what Mr Neale said, those people would appear to be right.  

The consultation does not meet the standards expected of a public consultation and should therefore be set aside.