Misinformation and secrecy continue at Fire & Rescue Service Scrutiny Committee

The recent scrutiny committee meeting was again marred by false claims and refusals to answer legitimate questions from County Councillors.

False claims

Cabinet Member Duncan Crow claims that targeted prevention and protection activity is responsible for reductions in accidental dwelling fires, fire injuries and no fire fatalities in the first quarter of 2021-22. Yet there are no figures for the number of accidental dwelling fires shown in the report, and no figures are provided for injuries and fatalities in previous quarters for comparison. 

Perhaps they are lower this quarter, but it is dishonest to claim that it is because of prevention and protection activity. I hope they have a beneficial effect, but there is no evidence to support that claim. Fires are random events, so chance and the effectiveness of the service's response play a much larger part in reducing fire injuries and deaths. Sadly, that response has become much less effective as a result of Council cuts.

Councillor Crow has been Cabinet Member since 2019, so does he accept responsibility for last year's increase in fire deaths, or will he just claim credit for no fire deaths in the first quarter of this year and during 2019-20?

Source: Home Office fire statistics

Attendance times not the success claimed

The Cabinet Member also claimed that attendance times for the first fire engine to arrive at critical fires were a success. Yet he failed to mention that target times in West Sussex are up to 40% longer than in Surrey and 75% longer than in Hampshire. With such a low bar set, they ought to have been met nearly all the time, not just 91.5% of the time. That means some people are waiting over 14 minutes for help to arrive at fires that pose a serious threat to life. 

Councillors spotted discrepancies in the figures shown in the report for 2020-21, but did not get a satisfactory explanation from Deputy Chief Fire Officer Mark Andrews. In one table the figures for 2020-21 are mistakenly shown as being for 2021-22, which Mark Andrews described as a gremlin. 

However, he dodged the important question about how the attendance rate claimed for the year 2020-21 was 93.3%, yet in the quarterly breakdown for the same year, no quarter achieved that result. The highest achieved was 92.4% and the lowest was 89%, so the correct total for the year appears to be 90.3%, the same as three years ago. It begs the question, how accurate are the other figures in these reports?

Inaccurate figures in Performance Report for 2020-21

Councillor Crow glossed over the failure to attend critical special services, such as road traffic collisions with people trapped, in the required time. This had a failure rate of over 20%. The response target for the often vital second fire engine at critical fires was also missed by over 20%. 

Not surprising when the County Council has removed a quarter of front line fire engines and crews.

It is also worrying that the boost to attendance times from the pandemic last year is coming to an end. Now that furlough has ended and more people are returning to their workplaces, instead of working from home, the availability of On Call Firefighters will reduce. The first signs are shown in this report. Availability in the first quarter of 2020-21, compared with the first quarter of 2021-22, shows a drop of over 16% from 78.5% to 62.1%.

Councillor John Turley pointed to the omission of the target times from the response targets in the report, which made it difficult to put the figures in context. The Chief Fire Officer, Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, said, "something we can look at adding in". No idea why she said that, as target times have been shown in previous reports. What she should be investigating is the reason they were left out of this latest report.

Joint Fire Control cover up continues

Councillors John Turley and John Milne raised concerns about recent system failures in the Surrey based Joint Fire Control. Sadly, once again, they did not get satisfactory answers. Councillors have still not been given the detailed report they requested after the first serious failures in December 2019.

The Chief Fire Officer said that she would not discuss it in public and would speak to Councillor Milne outside the meeting. Even more worrying was that she then said she would not share that information with other Councillors on the scrutiny committee. 

Chief Fire Officer, Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, 

won't tell Councillors about failures that could put lives at risk

The only justification for not being open and honest about these failures would be if it revealed vulnerabilities that could be exploited by people with malicious intent. Yet Councillors were told that the problems had been fixed and would not reoccur, so if that it true, there are no vulnerabilities to exploit.

Even if there was a security justification to keep information from the public, which seems unlikely, that is no justification for withholding it from County Councillors. They are ultimately responsible for the service and reports can always be marked 'confidential' and, if lawfully justified, meetings can go into closed session where the press and public are excluded.

It really is hypocritical for the Council to claim it is open and transparent when it allows heads of service to cover up problems by refusing to be open and transparent. 

Bad enough that the public are kept in the dark but wholly unacceptable to keep their representative County Councillors in the dark.

East Sussex told about West Sussex problems,

 but West Sussex County Councillors are not

Whilst West Sussex County Councillors have not been given details of these failures, which directly affect emergency response in West Sussex, it has emerged that East Sussex's Chief Fire Officer has been kept fully informed. Minutes of an East Sussex Fire Authority meeting provide more detail about the December 2019 failures than has ever been provided to the scrutiny committee. They include confirmation that:

• Crewing at the joint control room was inadequate on some occasions.
• West Sussex had received a series of hazard reports from firefighters about mobilising failures.
• Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill crews were mistakenly sent to a road traffic collision in Eastbourne
• Worthing crews were mistakenly sent to a fire alarm call in Brighton.

The Council's constitution says that the purpose of scrutiny committees is to hold the Executive to account. The Cabinet Member and Chief Fire Officer are part of the Executive and must be accountable. Ignoring the constitution and refusing to provide information to Councillors on the Fire & Rescue Service Scrutiny Committee is unacceptable.

I have written to Committee Chairman, Councillor Kevin Boram, to voice my concern that the committee will be unable to do their job effectively if they are denied information and given inaccurate answers. I await his reply with interest.

Chief Fire Officer confused about responsibilities

When Councillor Turley suggested that Councillors should be told when the system is down, the Chief Fire Officer claimed that she had "a statutory responsibility to ensure that we are able to respond to emergencies", which includes "being able to take emergency calls." She also said she would not inform Councillors of directly operational matters.

The statutory responsibility she referred to is not placed on the Chief Fire Officer, it is placed on the fire & rescue authority, which is West Sussex County Council. The Chief Fire Officer's responsibility is to the County Council, her employer, and refusing to provide information to County Councillors is failing in her duty. 

Extract from the Fire and Rescue Services Act

There is no moral or lawful justification for the Chief Fire Officer to withhold any information from the scrutiny committee. If they require information, be it operational or not, then it must be provided.

Critical National Infrastructure failure

It was sadly ironic that the Chief Fire Officer referred to the mobilising system as a 'key piece of critical national infrastructure'. She mentioned it when she was trying to justify not answering legitimate questions, yet both Surrey and West Sussex failed to follow the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure’s (CPNI) guidance to ensure that call taking and mobilising was reliable and resilient. 

Following Freedom of Information requests, West Sussex were unable to produce any documentation to show that they had required partners or suppliers to comply with the CPNI guidance. Surrey said that they held no information related to the CPNI guidance. It is quite irresponsible that essential Government guidance has been ignored in this way.

Merseyside fire control cannot 'take over' if Joint Fire Control fails

Councillor Boram asked if Merseyside fire control can take over if there is a catastrophic incident in Joint Fire Control. Unfortunately, Deputy Chief Mark Andrews misled him by saying, 'yes that's exactly right'. 

Merseyside cannot take over, they can answer '999' callers but cannot send any help. No help will be sent unless they can make contact with the joint fire control that has been hit by the 'catastrophic incident', or is overwhelmed by emergency calls. There is simply no guarantee that help can be sent to people in distress when '999' calls are diverted.

Councillor Boram also asked if Merseyside could cope with the increased call volume when the Joint Control becomes responsible for three fire & rescue services (East Sussex, Surrey and West Sussex). This was a very pertinent question, but Councillor Boram did not receive an answer. 

So let me help Councillor Boram, Merseyside deal with an average of 15,700 incidents a year. Joint Fire Control will deal with an average of 30,500 incidents a year. So he is right to be concerned, Merseyside could well be overwhelmed by a sudden tripling of their workload. If severe weather was affecting the UK, that increased demand could be even greater.

Incidents attended (note - the number of emergency calls received is greater than incidents attended)

I don't think Mark Andrews deliberately misled the Chairman, I just think that like many other senior officers he lacks depth of knowledge of control room operations and of resilient telecommunications. An issue that has been evident throughout the control room fiasco and the reason the Council has not provided emergency call taking and mobilising arrangements that are properly robust and resilient.

Councillors keep being told that there are contingency plans to deal with failures, yet reports suggest cobbled together measures have had to be used when systems fail. These include control room staff having to remember to contact personnel on fire stations via someone's mobile phone, something that has, on occasion, been forgotten. Another is On Call Firefighters having to be contacted via public messaging applications. None of these are reliable or resilient and cannot be considered adequate contingency arrangements.

Despite assurances at the meeting, I have yet to hear confirmation from West Sussex firefighters that all these problems have been fixed. It does not matter if the failures are a result of human error or technical failures in the fire control, or communication failures between control and stations, or equipment failures at fire stations or on fire engines, such failures are unacceptable. 

These failures put lives at risk and the Fire & Rescue Service 

Scrutiny Committee must not accept being fobbed off. 

They must demand transparency and rapid improvement.

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