Deception, neglect of duty and more cuts from West Sussex County Councillors

Council Leader Louise Goldsmith

No apology from Louise Goldsmith for misleading Councillors

At the recent County Council meeting, Louise Goldsmith was rightly challenged on her false claim, at a select committee meeting, that “there are 35 fire engines ready to go out today”.

Councillor Michael Jones pointed out that a fire engine is only ready to go out when there are firefighters available to crew it. He said that the Integrated Risk Management Plan showed that, at the time she made the statement, it is likely there would have been less than 15 fire engines ready to go out.

Integrated Risk Management Plan 2018-22 (page 43)

He added that the document also showed there can be as few as 10 fire engines ready to respond, because of a lack of firefighters. In her bumbling response, during which she talked about ‘firemen’, not firefighters, she failed to apologise for misleading the committee. She then proceeded to blame the public for not coming forward to be on call (retained) firefighters, or “temporary firefighters” as she called them.

Now I have yet to find the section in the Fire & Rescue Service Act that says a fire authority can opt out of their statutory responsibilities, if the public are not attracted by the Council’s offer - You provide us with an average of 4,500 hours on call and we will pay you 52 pence an hour for your trouble! The County Council has a legal duty to provide an efficient fire & rescue service, but they are clearly failing to do so.

Louise Goldsmith’s appalling excuse - “if the retained people are not coming forward, they are not coming forward”, is simply an unacceptable neglect of duty.

County Councillor David Barling

More false claims from David Barling

It was even more astonishing when former Cabinet Member David Barling attempted to help his Leader by claiming there had been “no deletions of firefighter front line posts”. Not only did he vote to cut front line firefighter posts, including the deletion of all the on call firefighter posts at Crawley, he was the Cabinet Member that implemented the cuts. Louise Goldsmith then supported his misleading statement. It matters not if this was the result of deliberate deceit or simply incompetence, it is unacceptable.

These are the true figures:

	Wholetime	On-call (Retained)
2004	401	398
2018	319	213

(Source - Home Office and WSF&RS documents)

Louise Goldsmith and David Barling owe Councillors and the public an apology for continuing to mislead and make excuses. They also need to take urgent action to ensure proper protection for West Sussex residents all day, every day and they need to do it before lives and property are needlessly lost.

More cuts on the way

With Government reducing further the money they give the County Council, it seems that more fire & rescue service cuts are on the way. How much the service will have to cut and where the axe will fall has not been publicised. All we know for sure is that cuts cannot be made without further damaging the already fragile protection offered to residents.

It really is time that Louise Goldsmith and her Cabinet Member colleagues told Government that enough is enough. If they were truly concerned about protecting West Sussex residents that is what they would do, but as both the Council and Government are in Conservative hands, they prefer to put party preferences before public safety.

Surrey take over

There have been suggestions that a solution would be to merge West Sussex and Surrey’s fire & rescue services. Unfortunately, I think any savings from economies of scale may well be short lived, as the underlying problem is the inadequate and reducing funding from Government.

Surrey has a bigger population than West Sussex and relies more heavily on wholetime fire cover. There are 40% more wholetime firefighters in Surrey than in West Sussex and 56% less on call firefighters. Wholetime firefighter costs are the biggest cost, so cuts impact them the most, which is why wholetime crewed appliances are regularly taken off the run in Surrey.

I can see why a merger would benefit Surrey, but cannot see any benefit for West Sussex. Surrey County Council seem even less concerned with public safety than West Sussex, so allowing Surrey County Councillors to have a say on fire cover in West Sussex is not a wise move. My fear is that council tax payers in West Sussex would end up paying more to improve fire cover in Surrey, whilst cover in West Sussex deteriorates.

It is bad enough that the second wholetime crewed pumps at Crawley and Worthing are often moved to different parts of West Sussex to fill gaps in fire cover. A merger could see them spending nearly all their time providing cover in Surrey. West Sussex firefighters could also find themselves travelling long distances to help crew fire engines at Surrey stations on the fringes of London.

It would also significantly reduce the say that West Sussex residents would have on the running of the fire & rescue service, especially if representation on a combined authority reflected the respective populations. That would not be a merger, but a Surrey take over.

Such a merger won’t avoid cuts and could make things significantly worse.

More false figures from West Sussex Cabinet Member David Barling

Chichester Observer

NOT TRUE!

This headline appeared online today, and was based on Cabinet Member David Barling’s statement at the recent County Council meeting. He claims to take a particular interest in fire & rescue and said that, based on his own knowledge, Hampshire fire crews only come in to West Sussex “about 50 times a year”.

Cabinet Member David Barling misleading Councillors

Well, either ignorantly or deliberately, he was very wrong. Official figures, used to calculate payments to Hampshire, show they come in to West Sussex many more times than he claimed:

The last published figures show:

2011/12 – 168 incidents

2012/13 – 138 incidents

2013/14 – 134 incidents

Later figures have not been published, but West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service confirmed that the Emsworth crew alone responded to 55 incidents in West Sussex during 2014-15. Emsworth firefighters also say that, in addition, they were called on to standby at West Sussex fire stations nearly 20 times.

Add in the responses from other Hampshire stations, plus standby calls, and the figures for 2014-15 must be in the region of three times a week. Given the cuts in West Sussex, this figure may well be greater as time goes on.

It was also quite shocking that David Barling tried to pretend that Hampshire responses were not worth worrying about, as they were “mostly things like dustbin fires”. Hampshire crews have attended as first response to a number of serious road crashes and fires, and also as support at larger incidents in Bognor Regis, Chichester, Oving, Selsey and West Wittering. 

It does not matter if Councillor Barling misled his fellow Councillors, the press and the public deliberately or ineptly, he owes them all an apology. It is also high time that he agreed to allow a cross party group of Councillors to review the many concerns about the fire & rescue service he claims to know so much about.

Sussex Police & Crime Commissioner's false Fire & Rescue Service claims

It appears that Katy Bourne, the Conservative Police & Crime Commissioner who is keen to take over the Fire & Rescue Services in Sussex, is in her own fantasy World. In a newsletter last month, she said:

"In Sussex, the two fire services already have a joint centre in Haywards Heath that handles 999 calls. This has saved £4m over 5 years and led to better attendance times and improved coordination of resources across the county."

Well that is pretty amazing for a ‘joint centre’ that has been operational for less than two years! As for her ‘better attendance times’, the last published figures showed that response times for house fires increased in West Sussex by 13%  and in East Sussex by 14%. For fires in other buildings the increase in East Sussex was 16%, and for outdoor fires in West Sussex it was 17%.

Of course there is also no evidence of 'improved coordination of resources', something the previous separate controls did exceptionally well. I wrote and asked her to correct her false statements, but despite her claim to reply within 14 working days, I have heard nothing. 

Fortunately, both the Labour (Michael Jones) and Liberal Democrat (James Walsh) candidates are on record as not supporting Fire & Rescue Services being taken over by Police & Crime Commissioners.

Katy Bourne should focus on the many challenges facing the Police, instead of trying to expand her empire. The two services have different functions, procedures, training and responsibilities, and their independence is vital. Both the Police and the Fire & Rescue Service will suffer if they are forced in to an arranged marriage, and it is the public who will pay the ultimate price.