Shocking weakness in West Sussex/Surrey fire control deal revealed

 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:

Not available in Fire Controls

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

West Sussex County Councillors continue the Fire Control cover up

 Whitewash Report

Today, the Fire and Rescue Service Scrutiny Committee will discuss a Task and Finish Group report that was supposed to address concerns about Surrey Fire Control managing West Sussex emergencies. 

Unsurprisingly, with 3 Conservative Councillors (Lionel Barnard, David Barling, and David Edwards), and just one Liberal Democrat Councillor (Bob Smytherman) on the group, the Conservative Chairman has produced a whitewash report that simply endorses the Conservative controlled council's poor decisions. 

You may recall that Labour Councillor Michael Jones asked to attend the Task and Finish Group but Chairman Steve Waight, supported by other Conservative Councillors, refused to let him. He used the excuse of proportionality, but based that on election seats won, not on the wishes of West Sussex voters. Only 51% of all votes at the last County Council elections were for the Conservatives, yet they grabbed 75% of the places on this group.

No proper investigation of concerns, just pre-election political spin

Meeting held behind closed doors

The report, produced after just one secret meeting, claims that Members heard 'evidence' from West Sussex and Surrey Fire and Rescue Services, yet it appears that no real evidence or written reports were provided to the group. 

The report says that the Scrutiny Committee agreed to establish the task and finish group “in order to scrutinise the first year of the JFC.” Yet the minutes of that meeting say, “Resolved – that the Committee: … Notes the concerns regarding the joint control room, and reemphasised that a Task & Finish Group would examine this in further detail in January 2021.”

The report makes no mention of those concerns and instead claims that “Its purpose was to scrutinise the Joint Fire Control Centre’s work since its establishment on 4 December 2019 (JFC), specifically examining:

• Whether the JFC collaboration project had produced the project deliverables;

• Whether the JFC delivered the project to agreed cost and savings;

• What improvements the JFC collaboration has achieved in the last 12 months since;

• The improvements and benefit deliverables over the next 12 months;

• Future partnership expansion opportunity during 2021; and

• Staffing implications.

Concerns ignored

It is unclear who decided on the 'purpose', as the meeting on 30 September 2020 did not set out those specifics. It is evident that the Conservative Chairman decided to ignore the concerns raised at that meeting, and previously at the Environment, Communities and Fire Select Committee on 13 January 2020. That committee agreed that the new Fire & Rescue Service Scrutiny Committee should be given a detailed report on the safety critical notice, the staffing levels and the robustness of the IT systems.

That report has never been produced.

The whitewash Task & Finish Group report is simply full of unsubstantiated spin - "efficient staffing system", "modern state of the art technology", "market leading", "transformed", "more effective and efficient" etc. Yet there is no evidence at all in the report to show that the arrangement is safe, effective or reliable.

The report is so detached from reality that it even claims the Emergency Services Network (ESN) can transmit data faster than Airwave, yet the Government’s ESN project has suffered significant problems. The Public Accounts Committee was told this month that the ESN Network is delayed and taking £650m from the Treasury every year. The latest expected operational date is 2025, six years behind schedule. Of course, that assumes it does not fail completely like the technology for the Government’s regional fire control project failed.

Control Room staffing still inadequate

It seems staffing has been increased from six to eight per watch, with the minimum on duty increased from five to six. However, it does not say if this is to cater for East Sussex calls when they join the scheme, or if there will be a further increase when East Sussex join the arrangement. 

If there is no further increase that represents at least an effective 50% cut in control operators to answer and manage emergencies for Surrey, East Sussex and West Sussex. It will mean more frequent overload and delays as emergency calls are diverted to other control rooms, and will occur during less busy periods than previously.

For every incident there can be several actions that need to be taken by control staff

Just two extra staff for over three times as many incidents is irresponsible

Cabinet Member Duncan Crow previously claimed there is no delay when emergency calls cannot be answered in the Surrey control room because all operators are busy. That is untrue, there is inevitably a delay as the '999' operator has to wait for a specified time before trying Surrey's back up number and then try that number for a further specified time before transferring the caller to another control room. Critical minutes lost for anyone in danger. Exactly how long that delay will be, and which control room the call will be diverted to, has not been disclosed. The Cabinet Member was asked last December, but failed to provide a proper answer.

The concerns of firefighters and the public have been ignored and the Council continues to refuse to publish any evidence to support their claims about the dodgy deal with Surrey County Council.

The public and firefighters deserve

better from the County Council

Bullying & dishonesty at West Sussex County Council meeting

I am afraid the debate on the fire & rescue service motion at last week’s County Council meeting brought out the worst in some Conservative County Councillors. Instead of focusing on the improvements being proposed, they resorted to political attacks and bogus facts to deflect from their failure to provide an adequate fire and rescue service.

This is the motion, from County Councillor Michael Jones:

‘This Council notes with dismay the findings of the recently published Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) Inspection report on the West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service (WSFRS) with a rating of “needs improvement’ for Efficiency, a rating of ‘needs improvement’ for Effectiveness and a rating of ‘inadequate’ for People. It is also the only service in the country not to get a ‘good’ rating in any category.

This Council recognises that staff in WSFRS do an excellent job in protecting people in West Sussex but that they have been let down by a failure of political leadership at the County Council, which has allowed cost-cutting and budget pressures to take priority over the maintenance of what HMICFS considers acceptable standards.

This has been exacerbated by decisions from the Cabinet that have seen fire stations closed, and second and third fire engines being removed from some remaining stations. Reports from the former Chief Fire Officer confirm they were major reasons for increased response times. Despite the Council’s extended response standard for most of the county of 14 minutes, the service has been unable to meet it, as the inspectorate notes, since 2014.

This Council also recognises that this is the second inspection in recent months that has seen a vital service, important to the welfare and safety of all West Sussex residents, being judged as insufficient to meet the required standard and it has become unsustainable for this council to have confidence in a Leader and Cabinet who have presided over such an outcome. This Council therefore expresses that it has no confidence in the Leader and Cabinet.

This Council therefore calls on the Leader and the Cabinet Member for Safer, Stronger Communities (or their successors, if and when they are appointed) to:

(1) Completely withdraw the cuts to WSFRS proposed for 2019/20 that were put on hold for one year, and prioritise the recruitment of additional firefighters to replace those cut since 2010.

(2) Stop prevaricating on the clearly unfair funding that WSFRS is receiving compared to other surrounding fire authorities and to finally press the Government for urgent additional funding to properly resource the very stretched service, something which the Leader and the Cabinet Member have failed to do, despite being mandated over six months ago by a full meeting of this council dated 14 December 2018.

(3) Urgently progress the updating of outdated software and communication equipment in the Fire and Rescue Service to ensure that there is a clearer picture of operational staffing levels and gaps.

(4) Ensure as soon as possible that the Fire and Rescue Service launches an anti-bullying campaign to stamp out any instances of bullying and harassment, which will finally carry out advice that was given to WSFRS following the results of a staff stress survey as long ago as 2017.

(5) Take steps to increase the diversity of the workforce, particularly in respect of more female firefighters and more from the BAME communities, and to work with councillors and other bodies across the county to reach out to local people from these minority groups to encourage them to consider becoming both wholetime and on-call firefighters.

(6) Do more to tackle shortages of on-call firefighters and the need to finally accept some of the deep rooted problems with recruitment and retention of on-call firefighters will need more than marginal changes, but a whole new approach that recognises that:

(a)   more wholetime firefighters are needed to guarantee availability in certain areas of the county; and

(b) recruiting and retaining On Call Firefighters crews can be easier in larger settlements within West Sussex, and the first step should be restoring the third fire engine and oncall firefighter crew at Crawley Fire Station.

(7) Launch a review, led by an independent person external to this Council, to determine whether alternative governance arrangements for WSFRS may be necessary, given the findings of the inspection report. The review would investigate whether it is still in the best interests of the service for current governance to continue if the County Council, squeezed by continuing Conservative national government cuts, concludes that it cannot afford to meet its duty to resource the service to the level required to protect the residents of West Sussex with acceptable levels of service and performance. The terms of reference for this review to be drawn up with all relevant parties in WSFRS, and to include their employees’ trade union representatives.’

County Councillor James Walsh proposed an amendment that added the following to the motion, which Michael Jones accepted:

'This Council also asks the Leader to publicly apologise to both the staff of the West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service and to the people of West Sussex, for the failures of this Council that have resulted in this poor inspection being received.'

Inept or deliberate misinformation?

That motion was perfectly reasonable and clearly intended to help improve our fire & rescue service. However, Jacquie Russell, new Cabinet Member for Safer, Stronger Communities, was the first to accuse others of being 'political', whilst forgetting that she is a politician and was appointed to a political position in a political Cabinet. 

She then falsely claimed the service’s budget had been increased by 6.4% since 2016/17. I don't know if she was simply inept, or was deliberately intending to deceive, but a simple check of the County Council’s annual reports on the fire & rescue service would have shown her that funding was cut from £25.9 million to £25.5 million.

West Sussex Fire and Rescue Authority Annual Report and Statement of Assurance 2016-17

West Sussex Fire and Rescue Authority Annual Statement of Assurance 2018-19

The Cabinet Member then went on to claim that the cost of providing the service in West Sussex was £21.98 per person, which is again wrong, it is £29.92 per person. Later Councillor Steve Waight said that this was not about money, as Kent got a ‘good’ rating by spending just £20.57, which is also wrong, it is £38.61. 

The figures they quoted were not how much was spent on the fire & rescue service, it was the Inspectorate’s calculation of firefighter cost per person. The Inspectorate clearly state those figures cannot be used for comparison on performance, as wholetime and on call firefighter numbers, and costs, differ significantly.

Fire & Rescue Service	Total spent	Population	Cost per head
Kent	£70.75 million	1,832,300	£38.61
West Sussex	£25.5 million	852,400	£29.92

 Source: total spent - Kent & West Sussex annual reports. Population - Home Office Fire & Rescue Service data

Too little, too late

Now Jacquie Russell did go on to tell us that Council Leader Louise Goldsmith has finally written to the Minister of State about the unfair funding that West Sussex receive for the fire & rescue service. However, she did not explain why it has taken her so long to do this. 

The FBU highlighted it last year, I notified Louise Goldsmith of the Government's unequal treatment of West Sussex in September of last year and Michael Jones raised it at a County Council meeting last December. His proposal that the Leader and the Cabinet Member for Safer, Stronger Communities should jointly write to the relevant Government Minister was passed by 48 votes to 6. Louise Goldsmith was even one of those who voted to do that, but inexplicably delayed for over six months.

More worrying perhaps was that the six votes against included the Cabinet Member at the time, Debbie Kennard, and the new Cabinet Member Jacquie Russell. With that sort of failure to support the service, Mrs Russell's appointment does not bode well for the future of our fire & rescue service.

David Barling blunders in with more fake news

David Barling used to be the Cabinet Member responsible for the fire & rescue service and frequently claims to understand the service better than many of his Council colleagues. So it was surprising to hear him criticise others for inaccuracies, but then use a string of fake facts himself. Presumably, because if he had used the truth there could have been no criticism of others or the motion.

David Barling claimed that the fire station closures were not to save cash and that the “the fireground had moved"! When they closed the stations they made much of the money they would save and made no mention at all of the fireground moving! They didn't of course because it would be bonkers to say “the fireground had moved". Had everyone living on Bosham's fireground magically moved closer to Chichester? Of course not.

He also said that "the stations were badly served" because not enough people came forward to be "retained firemen" and that meant the fire engines "very rarely went out.” He said that he knew that because he "listened at the time". Clearly he didn't listen very well and failed to read the reports proposing the closures.

If he had he would have seen that one of the stations they closed, Horley, was "going out" over 1,000 times a year. The station was also crewed by wholetime firefighters, not retained. 

He was also wrong about the three retained (on call) stations they closed, Bosham, Findon and Keymer. Before they closed them the three stations had enough retained firefighters to ‘go out’ on average 500 times a year. That cannot be claimed to be "very rarely went out.” 

Considering Mr Barling's frequent claims to know the fire service well, his reference to ‘firemen’ further confirms how out of touch he really is. 

West Sussex has been employing firefighters, not ‘firemen’, for over 20 years.

Failing to meet the worst response targets in the southeast

Mr Barling claimed that they were coming "within a hair's breadth of the target", but failed to mention that the West Sussex response time targets mean West Sussex residents are expected to wait longer for help to arrive than residents in neighbouring counties. He also seems content that they fail to meet the generous targets for over 20% of incidents where people need help.

He also falsely claimed that other fire & rescue service’s times didn’t start until the fire engine left the station, whilst West Sussex response times are measured from when the call was received.

Government figures clearly show that not only do all the response times start from when the call is received, they even break them down in to call handing time, time for the appliance to respond, and travel time.

To be fair to David Barling, one of his statements was correct, “we take the longest time". Perhaps that Freudian slip shows that he does know the truth, but just doesn't want to admit it. 

Council Leader shoots herself in the foot

Council Leader Louise Goldsmith, apparently desperate to find something positive, referred to figures in the Chief Fire Officer’s briefing note that showed West Sussex had less fires than many other fire & rescue services. With weather, chance, social deprivation and many other factors influencing the number of fires, how many fires a fire & rescue service receives in any one year is hardly an indicator of performance.

What Louise Goldsmith effectively told the Council was that many other fire & rescue services have to cope with more fires, but are rated adequate, whilst West Sussex, which has to deal with less fires, is not considered adequate.

Hypocrisy & Political Opportunism

The day's prize for hypocrisy must got to Councillor David Edwards. After complaining about a "tirade from a political opportunist", he launched in to his own political tirade. Why he thought an attack on Jeremy Corbyn had any relevance to the debate, or would help fix the Council's failure to run the fire and rescue service properly, escapes me. Unless of course it was intended to divert attention from those failings. 

I have no problem with him criticising Jeremy Corbyn, but it has nothing to do with the Council's failings. I am though concerned, when there are issues around bullying, about the example set by his vitriolic rant, which verged on hate speech. Sadly, if all David Edwards and his colleagues can do is sound off and politicise the fire & rescue service, I see little hope that they will be able to fix the service.

His comment about ensuring "that we continue to provide the best possible service for the residents of West Sussex and the best possible conditions for our firefighters" was little more than deluded grandstanding. Mr Edwards, you have not been providing the best possible service, you are providing an inadequate one. You are not providing the best possible conditions for our firefighters, you have made the job of firefighters much more difficult, more dangerous and morale is now at an all time low.

Independent, Labour and Liberal Democrat Councillors once again did their best for firefighters and the public but sadly the Conservatives on the Council put their Party first and defeated the motion. 

Despite all their claims, it seems they aren't really concerned 

with firefighter conditions or public safety.

If the County Council is going to fix the fire & rescue service, Councillors need to stop bullying their critics, making excuses, and using hopelessly inaccurate information.