Having just viewed the recording of the latest West
Sussex County Council meeting, I am again dismayed by Cabinet Member David
Barling’s performance. I am left wondering, does he not listen to what he is
told or asked, does he not understand, does he lack the time to do the job
properly, or is he just badly briefed? You may wonder why his performance is so
important.
Well the County Council claim that the fire & rescue
service is “safer in our hands”, but unfortunately, it is not in their hands.
It is in Councillor Barling’s hands. In West Sussex, Cabinet Members make all
the decisions and rarely take notice of concerns or views expressed by other
Councillors. There is no effective scrutiny and accountability, so when Cabinet
Members dodge, bypass or mock serious questions from fellow Councillors, it
seriously undermines their already weak case to retain control of the fire
& rescue service.
Councillor Gordon McAra (Midhurst) voiced concerns about
ambulance and police cuts in his area and asked about providing space for those
services at Midhurst fire station. Councillor Barling happily claimed to have
already “done it”, but then proceeded to say, “we are already in discussions
with the police about co-responding”. So, either he has completely failed to
understand what co-responding is, or Midhurst firefighters should be worried
that they are now going to be dealing with break-ins, shoplifting and assaults!
Someone needs to tell Councillor Barling what co-responding
is, because if he doesn’t understand, then he has no hope of making any correct
decisions. Co-responding is when the fire & rescue service voluntarily
attends medical emergencies for the ambulance service, to satisfy ambulance
service response times and to carry out the ambulance service’s legal
responsibility until they arrive. It has nothing to do with the police! He
should also be aware that it is being pushed by the Government to cover up
their under-funding of the emergency services.
Councillor Michael Jones (Southgate and Crawley Central)
told the meeting that there are reports from other co-responding schemes of
firefighters having to wait a long time for the ambulance service to arrive. He
said this is because ambulance services often divert the resource, initially
allocated to co-responder calls, to meet their response targets for a
subsequent call. He quite reasonably asked what guarantee the Cabinet Member
had that this would not happen in West Sussex.
Mr Barling said he could not give any guarantee and, if they
had to wait, they would wait. He then rambled on about AVLS enabling Control to
know where fire engines are, despite the fact that Control would obviously know
where they had sent the crew! Worryingly, he suggested that if a critical fire
& rescue call was received, then firefighters would abandon their patient.
Councillor Jones said that they surely could not abandon a patient. Mr
Barling’s lame response was, “we will have to wait and see”.
The Cabinet
Members' Reports mentioned that the Crewing Optimisation Group (COG)
was part of the co-responding trial and Councillor James Walsh (Littlehampton
East) referred to the Cabinet Member’s previous statements about COG making
more fire engines available. He made the perfectly logical point that they “can’t
be in two places at once”, and went on to say, “this must reduce the
availability for them to meet their target, which they are already failing to
do, this can only make it worse.” Councillor Walsh also voiced concern about
the co-responder training being carried out in secret and without consultation
with the public or with County Councillors. He added that this “lack of
transparency will play in to the hands of Katy Bourne” (the Police & Crime
Commissioner).
Councillor Barling dismissed these concerns by saying, “both
of those points are fundamentally wrong”. His failure to grasp these simple and
fundamental points should worry everyone. If a COG firefighter is sent to
ensure a fire engine is available, but is then sent on a co-responding call,
that fire engine will again be unavailable. Response times will therefore
increase for any fire or rescue call, as another fire engine must travel from
further away.
Improved accountability and transparency are core Government
objectives in their plans for Police & Crime Commissioners to take over
fire & rescue services. Councillor Walsh’s insight, that this further
example of the Cabinet Member’s inadequate accountability and transparency will
“play in to the hands of Katy Bourne”, is very significant. By contrast, Mr
Barling’s failure to grasp this key weakness in the Council’s case to retain
control of the fire & rescue service is deeply troubling.
Councillor Bernard Smith (Selsey) rightly voiced concerns
about the failure to meet response times for the Selsey Academy fire. He also
questioned the classification of the Academy as ‘low risk’. Mr Barling admitted
that the Selsey fire station was not on the run, but then falsely tried to say
it was because of recruiting problems. There were clearly enough firefighters
in Selsey at the time, as evidenced by their ability to respond after a few
phone calls. The real problem was inept management changes.
Previously, Retained (part-time) firefighters would notify Control when
they were not available. In addition, most of them would co-ordinate their time
off to ensure maximum availability of their fire engine. Now, unfortunately,
they are required to give notice, several weeks in advance, of when they will
definitely be available. It is that inflexible and bureaucratic procedure that
resulted in firefighters, who were physically available to respond that
morning, being shown as not available in the Sussex Control.
Mr Barling also implied that “Saturday night” was the reason
that sufficient firefighters at Selsey “hadn’t volunteered to be available” on
Sunday morning, which was quite uncalled for. He later talked about evidence
being important, well if he has evidence to support that slur he should produce
it. If he can’t, then he should apologise to Selsey’s firefighters.
In response to Councillor Smith’s concerns about risk
classification, Mr Barling embarked on nonsense about Selsey being a ‘low risk’
area. The actual risk to people’s lives, when their home catches fire or they
are in a road crash, or of a building being destroyed is no lower in Selsey
than it is in Worthing or Crawley. So, he was in fact saying that, because
they have fewer calls in the area, he considers it acceptable for fire crews to
take longer to attend emergencies in Selsey. It is clearly not about the
risk to people or buildings, but about the frequency of calls to the fire &
rescue service.
He also made the astonishing claim that “lots of other
engines all turned up within a few minutes of each other”. Reinforcements actually took much longer to arrive than they should have done, because of County
Council cuts and crewing shortages. The idea that several fire engines, from
different stations up to around 30 miles away, all arrived within a few minutes
of each other is pure fantasy. Conveniently, apart from the times of the first
three fire engines to arrive, the response times for the other crews that attended have not been published.
Councillor Smith also asked if the delayed response had
resulted in more damage to the Academy. Now common sense will tell most people
that the longer it takes to start firefighting, then the further the fire will
spread and the more damage will be caused. In this case firefighters could have been at the school within six minutes, but the first crew took nearly three times longer to arrive. Yet Mr Barling claimed that fire officers
had assured him that “this was pure conjecture”. Well if any fire officers did
tell him that, then he needs to find some better trained and more experienced
fire officers. There is a wealth of evidence, test results and professional
experience to confirm that delayed responses result in more damage and can sometimes result in loss of life.
I want the fire & rescue service to be controlled by elected Councillors, but with such a disappointing performance from the Cabinet
Member, I must agree with Councillor Walsh - David Barling is making it far too easy for Katy Bourne to make a solid case to take over West Sussex Fire &
Rescue Service.
