Diverted emergency calls cannot be actioned
West Sussex County Council has gone to great lengths to hide details of their inadequate deal for Surrey Fire & Rescue to handle West Sussex emergency calls. The reasons why are now becoming clear.
At Friday’s Fire & Rescue Service Scrutiny Committee, thanks to determined questioning by Councillor Michael Jones, it emerged that the back-up, or 'buddy', fire control that receives West Sussex emergency calls when Surrey fire control cannot, is unable to send any help.
When Surrey fire control is busy, those in trouble will have their calls diverted to the 'buddy' control at Merseyside Fire & Rescue. Callers will understandably think, after giving details of the emergency, that help will be on the way, but it will not. Merseyside will have to pass the details to the already busy Surrey fire control before any help is sent.
So, whenever Surrey fire control is overwhelmed with calls during periods of heavy demand, there could be lengthy delays. That is bad enough but if Surrey fire control must be evacuated, or if they suffer a serious technical failure, this unacceptable lack of resilience will mean no help is sent to emergencies in West Sussex or Surrey.
The Government paid West Sussex County Council and East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service millions of pounds to help set up the combined Sussex Fire Control Centre at Haywards Heath. Part of that funding was to provide the technology for a 'buddy' control that would receive emergency calls for Sussex and could then send local fire engines to the emergency. Work was underway for Cambridgeshire Fire & Rescue to be able to do that.
Despite progress to provide that resilience, and the millions
of pounds of national and local taxpayer's money spent, West Sussex County
Council abandoned the Sussex Fire Control agreement just four years after it
began handling West Sussex emergencies. Not only doing the dirty on East Sussex
but abandoning proper resilience for the inadequate resilience of Surrey’s fire
control.
This is another example of inept and hasty decision making by WSCC's Cabinet, and inadequate scrutiny by County Councillors.
Cabinet Member’s ‘Del Boy’ reassurances
Cabinet Member Duncan Crow once again deliberately misled the meeting. He claimed that Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) had said staffing levels in the Surrey Control Room were adequate.
They did not.
The report he referred to was not about standard staffing, it was about arrangements during the pandemic. He failed to mention that the report also said that Surrey had provided more trained staff for the control room during the pandemic. It is also doubtful that HMICFRS has the knowledge and expertise to properly assess control room staffing levels.
The Cabinet Member also decided to play politics by criticising Michael Jones for daring to ask legitimate questions about inadequate staffing levels. Levels that were clearly inadequate, as after Michael Jones first raised concerns, standard staffing levels were increased by two on each shift. He also rightly questions if this will be enough when East Sussex hand responsibility for their call handling to Surrey. Something forced on them by West Sussex County Council's hasty and ill-considered desertion from the Sussex fire control.
Mr Crow’s naïve claim that, “clearly there are always going to be the right number of staff to operate that control room”, is just unsubstantiated fantasy. Listening to his assurances is rather like listening to TV character Del Boy Trotter telling you all his products are guaranteed.
Mr. Crow has also been blinded by the false notion that new technology allows staffing levels to be reduced. Technology may simplify some operator tasks, but enough staff must be available to receive emergency calls, speak to other services, and undertake the many other actions that can only be carried out by a person, especially at busy times.
Emergencies are random events and the need for several staff to be available to deal with sudden increases in demand cannot be replaced by technology. It is even more vital following the revelation that the Merseyside ‘buddy’ control must contact the already busy Surrey control before any help can be sent to West Sussex emergencies.
Inadequate answers
It is concerning that Assistant Chief Jon Lacey, as the control project manager, either did not know what call queuing is, or chose to avoid the question by talking about prioritising incidents.
Call queuing is where an emergency service chooses to accept the ‘999’ call with the caller then hearing a recorded message saying the control room is busy and asking them to stay on the line. The call is not diverted to another control and the wait to speak to an operator could be lengthy.
West Sussex residents deserve a proper answer to this question.
Deputy Chief Mark Andrews suggested that slight improvements in the number of times Surrey's control alerted West Sussex stations within two minutes of receiving an emergency call was a success.
However, he failed to mention that at no time since Surrey took over, in December 2019, has their best performance even equalled Sussex fire control's worst performance. It seems their "state of the art technology" is not as wonderful as they want us to believe.
Worse performance is not a success.
It was also disappointing that Councillor David Edwards question about moving fire engines around the county did not get a straight answer from Chief Fire Officer Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton. He referred to fire engines being moved to different areas, something the Chief Officer said was a regular occurrence.
He asked if there were occasions when a fire engine was moved to another area and an emergency call is then received in the area that the fire engine had been moved from.
The straight answer is yes, on occasions, fire engines are moved further away from the location of the next call.
That happens because the
dynamic cover tool they keep referring to is not one of these:
The dynamic cover tool cannot tell them where the next incident will be, fundamentally it only knows where and when previous incidents have happened. That may indicate an increased likelihood of incidents in certain locations and at certain times, but it cannot predict them.
Moving fire engines to maintain response times in one area inevitably means increased response times in the area it came from. It is always a gamble, the odds may be slightly better but you, or more accurately the public, can still lose out. The County Council has already significantly lengthened the odds of getting a quick response by cutting a quarter of the front-line fire engines in West Sussex.
A life-threatening emergency can occur at any time and in any part of West Sussex.
A quick and effective response at any time, to any part of West Sussex is vital.
The dynamic cover tool may sound like a technological advance,
but it cannot advise relocating limited resources any better than a fully trained
control room operator. It may also make worse decisions, as it does not have the flexibility that a skilled
control room operator has to consider all the factors in play at a particular
time.
It is quite incredible that WSCC has chosen a fire control arrangement that is less resilient than arrangements 20 years ago. When West Sussex had their own control room in Chichester, an immediate evacuation would see emergency calls diverted to the East Sussex control room. Unlike Merseyside, East Sussex were able to contact West Sussex stations to ensure help was sent.
West Sussex County Council has once again increased the risk to residents
They must urgently ensure that a fully resilient fire control back up is provided
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