Information Commissioner not fooled by County Council excuses

The Information Commissioner rejects 

West Sussex County Council's claims

Some may recall the refusal of my freedom of information request for details of incidents where the County Council's target response times were not met. Initially they claimed that "the information you seek would be likely to endanger the physical or mental health of any individual or the safety of any individual." 

The internal review upheld the refusal but then bizarrely claimed, "this Authority does not hold data relevant to your request." A dishonest claim when that core performance information is used in reports to Councillors and to Government. The Information Commissioner's report says:

The Council has been given 30 days to locate the information and to provide a fresh response. We will have to wait to see if they finally provide the information they hold or try some other excuse to conceal worrying performance information.

Poor performance is no excuse for unlawful secrecy

How bad is the performance?

Well, as they won't make it public it is not possible to be exact. However, for example, firefighters have reported it taking 25 minutes for the first fire engine to arrive at a critical fire in Rogate, because the nearest fire engines did not have firefighters to crew them.

I have also had reports of a critical fire in Wisborough Green, where four Horsham firefighters had to struggle until back up crews arrived from Dorking (18 miles), and Chichester (21 miles). Again, several nearer fire engines did not have firefighters available to crew them.

Now there may be other reasons for problems on that day, but with details kept secret there is no way of knowing.

The public deserve to know the truth

Ineffective Fire & Rescue Service Scrutiny Committee 

This committee should be asking for details of the worst failures and investigating why it has been kept from them. If they were scrutinising properly, they would be demanding the information from Cabinet Member Duncan Crow. They should also be asking why he is allowing legitimate freedom of information requests to be unlawfully rejected. 

When a Conservative controlled committee fails to properly scrutinise the worst effects of Conservative cuts to the fire & rescue service, the public are going to be suspicious. Those in the service can only do their best with the resources they have. By not investigating the Council's inadequate resourcing, which has resulted in a failure to provide an effective service, the scrutiny committee is neglecting their responsibilities.

Effective scrutiny of deteriorating performance is long overdue

Another unlawful Freedom of Information refusal by WSCC

A Mr Robert Dymond requested attendance details, times, and messages for the 2023 fires at the Angel Hotel in Midhurst and the Harvester in Littlehampton. All quite legitimate performance information that is provided on request by other fire & rescue services. With their casual disdain for the legislation and West Sussex residents, the County Council refused the request. The disingenuous grounds given for refusal were that the information is already available through the 'Request a Fire Report' process. 

Not only is the attendance detail requested not usually included in fire reports, but the County Council will only provide a fire report to the occupier, or someone connected to the occupier who has a legitimate interest (e.g. building owner, or insurer). I would be very surprised if Mr Dymond would meet that requirement for both incidents. I hope that he requests an internal review and, if that is unsatisfactory, he will submit a complaint to the Information Commissioner.

Once again, the County Council is illegally hiding performance data from the public

Consultation on a plan that is not a plan

Now I know it says it is a plan, but it is just a list of objectives with no plan on how to achieve them. Completely lacking in detail, unrealistic, and with no funding to make any improvements. At best it is a wish list, at worst it is just County Council spin.

Take 3.1, where they say they are going to enhance the availability of fire engines. There were similar claims, sorry objectives, in the two previous CRMPs, but availability has got steadily worse. They ask, "To what extent do you think the Service Delivery objectives outlined in this plan will improve WSFRS’s ability to respond to fires and emergencies quickly and effectively?" 

The only informed answer must be:

This 'plan' is meant to be West Sussex County Council telling Government how it will meet its legal obligation to provide an effective service. It is already providing a less effective and less safe service than it has ever done, and nothing in this document indicates that they will act to reverse the decline. Indeed, with some of the reviews mentioned, the County Council is likely to make West Sussex firefighters and residents even less safe and less well protected.

Should you complete the consultation? Yes, I think you should, the more people that tell the Council this plan is inadequate the better.

Consultation closing date - 22 September 2025

 

Whatever happened to the previous consultation about response standards?

This closed in February, but the outcome does not appear to have been published or even shown to the scrutiny committee. It was intended to deviously change the standards so that more failed response times would in future look like the standard was met, even though the actual times were the same. This chart shows how the last published response time failures would be reduced by the new 'standard'.

So, have consultation responses not been published because the public rejected the proposals?