From Despair To Where

This blog represents something of a departure from my usual style, or lack of, owing to this being written originally as a web news item. Rather helpfully, therefore, it begins with the matter in hand, sticks to the point and ends very much on the same topic. And so a more conventional approach but I have at least managed to give it one of my typically unfathomable titles, on the subject of which, there is something that links all of my blog titles…anyone know what it is?

The speech given by the Fire Minister, Brandon Lewis, at the recent LGA Fire Conference was much awaited, not least because the government’s formal response to the ‘Facing The Future’ report authored last year by Sir Ken Knight is still to be published.

The Minister noted that the direction of travel of our Fire and Rescue Services will be determined by much more than the words featured in a government document and, consistent with the coalition’s policy of any changes in fire safety being sector-led, he was clear that much-needed transformation of the Fire and Rescue delivery model would be in the hands of the Fire and Rescue Services and Authorities and related stakeholders.

Emphasising the fall in fire calls and fire deaths and injuries over the last ten years, he implored the FRSs to maintain fire prevention at the forefront of their activities and for this to be immune from the savings that all Services must continue to pursue, noting that the over 65s account for more than half of fire deaths. Fire prevention is, of course, at the heart of what our fire risk assessment members strive to achieve while our fire detection and alarm, fire extinguishing and fire-fighting members are there to identify and help to act upon those fires which inevitably do occur.

Transformation is to be supported by a £75 m fund available for innovative bids and this will assist in financing local collaboration between the fire, ambulance and police services, a process which is already evident in, for example, Hampshire, Merseyside and Lincolnshire. This is, by the Minister’s own admission, patchy at present but he sees the co-location of stations and services, co-responding and joined up service functionality as the future of public service delivery.

The Minister also referred to a number of initiatives including collaborative procurement, product standardisation and a more co-ordinated approach to equipment evaluation, all of which our FIRESA Council have been lobbying for over the last year or so. The rightful placement of these issues high on the agenda we might regard as tangible successes arising from the work that this Council has put in on behalf of our fire-fighting suppliers.

Already, we have seen DCLG commissioning PA Consulting to gather data on FRS procurement and this has led to a joint project between DCLG and CFOA to aggregate demand from the FRSs. With the FIA having signed a memorandum of Understanding with CFOA, we expect to make substantive progress on this as well as on product specifications [leading, we hope, to a greater degree of standardisation] and on a collaborative approach to equipment evaluation.

Returning to the FRS procurement data and the report that has been issued on that work, we have concerns that of the £127 m annual spend identified, this government believes that savings of at least £18 m are achievable based on the cost variations that they have documented. In our view, their analysis fails to take into account the variety of procurement pathways and the volume of equipment within each purchased lot and that, rather than squeezing suppliers already operating on low margins, it is through the collaborative procurement process itself within the FRSs that genuine savings may be realised.

The Minister said that ’Fire and Rescue in ten year’s time will be totally different from ten years ago’ and in that, he is surely right. What has been a fragmentary picture across our FRSs now has the real potential to become significantly more concerted and with a new direction of travel starting to emerge. The FIA will continue to play its part in this evolution that will affect not only the Fire and Rescue Services but the ‘blue light’ services as a whole.

 

By David Smith, FIA FIRESA Secretary

The Year Of Purification

The term neoliberalism was coined back in the 1930s, fell from common currency in the 1960s and has made a dramatic return in more recent years. Its trajectory is not entirely different, therefore, to big band music provided that you count Jools Holland’s Rhythm & Blues Orchestra as a resurgence of the form. It describes the paradigm of governance in much of the developed world, including in the UK, and refers to the tendency towards privatisation, deregulation, free trade and a capitalist framework in which economies are driven by the market with minimal government interference. Despite miscellaneous free market crises, it has emerged unscathed as the political doctrine of choice and as unshakeable as a banker’s bonus.

Its effects are obvious whether it’s the recent sell-off of Royal Mail, the sale of the Fire Service College to Capita or the deregulation of the banks with the consequences we all know about. These are but a few of the ways in which successive government policy has impacted on the way that we live our lives, or what we might describe as the socio-economic consequences of the neoliberal monoculture. It would be true to say that it has had a profound effect on our Fire and Rescue Services and continues to do so and, in fact, 2014 has the potential to be at least the start of a radical realignment of the FRSs.

Cutters

This is thankfully not intended to be a history lesson and so we shall leave vivid descriptions of the sucking worm engine [yes it really did exist], Green Goddesses and even the Fire and Rescue Act 2004 to the pages of Wikipedia. We do start, however, in 2005 with the then Labour administration’s National Procurement Strategy for the FRSs which was largely ignored by Local Authorities and which ably demonstrates national government’s inability to impose national policy upon local government. The Coalition government allowed the Strategy to wither on the vine in a ‘Yes Minister’ sort of way, not rescinding the still active  policy but certainly not supporting it either before eventually consigning the body set up to run it to the bonfire of the quangos and appointing administration of the resulting Frameworks to a private company.

This financial autonomy of the individual FRSs was reinforced in an operational sense by the 2004 Act [whoops, I wasn’t going to mention that] which assigned responsibility to each FRS to deliver services appropriate to local need and hence the arrival of the Integrated Risk Management Plan.

When the current coalition government came to power in May 2010, we were bombarded with a number of sound-bites that included ‘the big society’, ‘we’re all in this together’ and ‘localism’, only the latter of which has proved to have any real basis in government policy but it is a very important one given its impact on Fire and Rescue Services. This devolvement in decision-making from central to local government is something of a master-stroke strategically because if you’re cutting dramatically financial support to local authorities, what better than to wield the axe at source, leaving the Councils to make the difficult decisions about which services to curtail and, of course, to take the blame for it all. A further cause for trebles all round at Number 10 is that you don’t even have to deliver the cuts proportionally but decide which local authorities are to be effectively ring-fenced and which are to be hammered into the ground. Treatment of the Fire and Rescue Authorities is a key example of this as in the first year of the cuts 2012/13, Hampshire, Cheshire and Dorset were actually awarded small increases while most Authorities saw reductions of between 2-12% with the worst affected including Shropshire, South Yorkshire, Cleveland, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Humberside.

Ask pretty well anyone in our industry and they will point to a hands-off approach by this government in respect of fire safety policy and legislation and we might argue that this non-interventionist stance is in itself a policy. Indeed it surely is and we can quite readily relate what we have said already and what will follow as part of a neoliberal agenda, and it is no coincidence that the Department of Communities and Local Government is the most trimmed-back government department because it has so much less to do than it used to.

The ‘Fire Futures’ report was prepared by the sector and published late in 2010, featuring a host of recommendations that were considered by the then Fire Minister, Bob Neill. DCLG’s  response in April the following year discounted a handful of the recommendations then categorised the others into those that the sector itself may carry forward, those where the sector would be supported by government and those where government would act to ‘free the sector’. It is indicative of the arms-length approach of DCLG that they identified 22 ways in which they may unleash the sector, just 7 actions in which they may participate [but not lead] and a hefty 113 points that were handed back to the sector to progress as they see fit. The four Working Groups that contributed to ‘Fire Futures’ effectively coalesced into one, took FOBFO along with it and became the Fire Sector Federation in the middle of 2012.

This ‘power to the people’ as John Lennon and Wolfie Smith would have it [or ‘power to all our friends’ if you prefer Cliff Richard’s more laid-back tones] appears to be a good thing but there are difficulties here from both a fire safety and a Fire and Rescue perspective. The Fire Sector Federation has carried out some outstanding work but it is not government nor is it a government body and, as a result, has no legislative or regulatory jurisdiction. The problem with the FRSs is less that they cannot implement change but that they are principalities that function largely independently from each other and are therefore perpetually divergent, thereby proving the second law of thermodynamics that entropy [i.e. disorder] increases in a spontaneous change. Other examples would include the expansion of the universe and the fact that it was much harder to get carbon dioxide into a fire extinguisher than it is to discharge it while taking part in the office chair on wheels rally [don’t try this at home or indeed the office for that matter]. This individuality of the FRSs is a real problem both to the premises owner who may not be sure how their local FRS will respond to an automatic fire alarm and will find it will differ for branches of their business in different parts of the country and to suppliers to the Fire and Rescue sector who, for example, will have to spray paint the fire engine a different shade of red depending on who is buying it.

Fire and Rescue suppliers continue to operate in market conditions that are subject to an increasingly divergent and complex narrative and it is easy to understand the magnitude of the purely technical issues alone when taking the above example and multiplying it across a wide range of products and their specifications. We may add to this positive entropy the ever-growing and sometimes competing Framework contracts where supposed mini-contracts or call-offs from the Frameworks, far from being the simple processes that they were intended to be, simply act as a starting point for a full re-visitation of the terms and conditions of the original Framework. Then we have the evaluation of fire-fighting equipment by a multitude of FRSs at significant cost to both the manufacturer and each of the Services involved and certainly in need of rationalisation. As Edward de Bono [no relation to the U2 singer] has said, ‘dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy’ and I often ponder this myself when attempting to set the TV recorder.

If hope springs eternal, even the most impervious pessimist might concede that in the field of Fire and Rescue, there are signs of a more concerted and rational approach to their collective operations, albeit that it appears to be driven by pecuniary considerations as opposed to some mass psychogenic epiphany. As a pessimist myself or, as I prefer to call it, an informed optimist, even I am looking to 2014 as a year of purification where real progress can be made on several fronts. Much depends on the implementation of some of the discussion points featured in Sir Ken Knight’s ‘Facing The Future’ report [Sir Ken himself distanced himself from referring to them as recommendations] and there were indeed calls for greater collaboration within the FRSs, including on procurement and product evaluations, and more widely between the ‘blue light’ services. At the time of writing, we await government’s own significantly delayed response which will fall somewhere on a scale that goes from a strictly hands-off stance to a regulatory iron fist and while no-one is going to be placing any bets on the latter, a degree of proactive encouragement is possible and, in my view, welcome.

Already, we have seen DCLG commissioning PA Consulting to gather data on FRS procurement and strong interest from CFOA in progressing FIRESA Council’s proposal to develop at least a regional product evaluation regime. The runes, tea leaves, extrapolation methodology [there are, of course, two types of people, those that can extrapolate and…] or other predictive techniques seem to point to some measure of regionalisation within the FRSs and moves to attain some form of collaboration between the FRSs, ambulance and the police.

What we have, therefore, is a fragmented picture which looks a bit like Picasso’s Guernica but which we hope will turn out more like a Mark Rothko canvas if hopefully somewhat easier to comprehend and a bit less boring. In an earlier blog, our CEO, Graham Ellicott, referred to green shoots in the fire sector in an economic sense and I think the same is true of change in the Fire and Rescue sector to the extent that this year really has the potential to define a new direction of travel among our FRSs. We can only trust that the green shoots that we see emerging may eventually blossom and do not turn out to be bindweed or similarly strangulating foliage that simply acts to smother some initial good ideas and good intentions.

By Dave Smith, FIA FIRESA Secretary

Why do we speak a different language in fire???

! Warning Acronyms Ahead

My ‘phone alerted me to a text the other day and up flashed the caller ID ‘Head Honcho’ – you need to be careful about who sees the these IDs – recently in a pub I sat next to a woman whose ‘phone persistently flashed A***HOLE; eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I asked who that was to be frostily told my ex-husband!

But back to the ‘Head Honcho’ – this was a text from the FIA’s Chairman which  said the following ‘Am in Q with CFOA, LABC, DCLG where RU? Will be L8 for BSA and BRE stuff – NFSN  won’t forgive us and neither will EFSN………..’

I replied ‘Behind U in Q with BAFE and FRS 🙂 PD of StaffFRS plus 😦 from BedsFRS – get the beer in’

Now of the above the text exchange only the four last words make any sense – well to me anyway particularly if Timothy Taylor’s Landlord is on offer!

The fire industry like many has its own language but the use of acronyms is now beginning to phase even me, when I first entered the trade association business that nice SK from BAFSA gave me two close typed pages of A4 full of acronyms – this has now surely tripled in size.

In all seriousness the excessive use of acronyms in any business is a turn off for any outsiders and in the fire business we are (me included!) are guilty of this and it’s no wonder why we often ask why nobody listens to us except our peers!

Hang on text coming in on my ‘phone from 😦 of BedsFRS – time to go AWOL……………………..

By Graham Ellicott, FIA CEO

 

Union City Blue

With my previous blog piece being entitled ‘Hanging on the Telephone’, I gave some thought to continuing the theme of Blondie song titles but found myself floundering somewhat. The more striking the title, the harder it would be to write anything that would remotely fit the heading so that was ‘The Attack of the Giant Ants’, ‘A Shark in Jet’s Clothing’ and ‘Boom Boom in the Zoom Zoom Room’ out while others appeared either too vague [‘I Know But I Don’t Know’] or overtly pessimistic [‘Seven Rooms of Gloom’].

And so as I write this, I have no idea what our Marketing Team are going to call this but if you have clicked on this blog, you will have seen it by now.

I joined the FIRESA Council Chairman Derek Gotts and Council Member Lesley Wardle for a meeting the other day with Peter Holland, ex-CFO of Lancashire FRS and now the English Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser. Peter has long been a staunch supporter of FIRESA and, in fact, played a pivotal role in its inception back in 2004 when the concept of a National Procurement Strategy for the FRSs was being proposed by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Back then, I was invited to join Peter who broke away from a CFOA meeting at Luton Rugby Club to suggest that a trade association be formed to represent fire and rescue suppliers and, as they say, the rest is history. And so as it happens is the National Procurement Strategy!

Our recent meeting was the first time we had met with Peter in a formal capacity since his succession to the CFRA post earlier this year, taking over of course from Sir Ken Knight whose final project was to produce the ‘Facing The Future’ report that is currently causing much cerebral activity among the Fire and Rescue community. With government considering their response to the discussion points raised in the report, Peter will naturally be strongly involved in that process.

He is presently embroiled in contingency planning for the possible Fire and Rescue Services strike which is being balloted by the FBU and with the result being known by the end of August. Should industrial action [that’s a strange phrase, surely it’s inaction!] go ahead, many expect a long and bitter battle and in London, 27 fire appliances have been removed from normal duty in preparation to be deployed in the event of strike action in September.

In the midst of government cuts that are having a devastating impact on our FRSs, it’s easy to forget that the FBU ballot is actually over changes to fire fighters’ pension rights as a result of the Public Services Pension Act. The union opposes the new scheme as they claim that it increases employees’ contributions and imposes a standard pension age of 60 which is unrealistic for the role and will lead to many fire fighters leaving the service without a pension.

Meanwhile, CFO of Devon and Somerset, Lee Howells, has been appointed also as part time CFRA for the Welsh government and the Chair of his Fire Authority has caused no little consternation by apparently saying that his additional commitment will involve ‘the odd phone call – it is not an onerous task’. With some Devon and Somerset councilors suggesting that they did not sanction a part-time position outside of their FRS and local fire fighters appealing the decision, this has created a controversy that has yet to play out fully.

As for FIRESA Council’s role in all of this, fortunately it doesn’t have one as we don’t involve ourselves in matters of employment conditions within the FRSs. The issue of government cuts is, however, of serious concern to us from both the perspective of service delivery and in representing suppliers to a market which has always been finite but which is now diminishing at some pace. Looking at it from the vantage point of the man or woman on the Clapham Omnibus, it is hard to see how services can be maintained when 1,500 frontline jobs were lost in the FRSs between 2011 and 2012 and further cuts are set to result in yet fewer fire fighters, fire station closures and fewer fire appliances. With response times already almost two minutes slower than a decade ago, the risk to life and property is set to increase and unravel the very positive trends that the entire fire safety community has worked so hard to achieve over recent years. Lest this sounds like some pro-FBU agitation, many of the loudest voices to be seen and heard on this issue are coming from the Chief Fire Officers themselves.

Finally for now, watchers of the BBC’s Springwatch may notice that in every series, presenter Chris Packham picks a particular band and slips in their song titles when speaking to camera. Worth checking out on YouTube and in the 2013 shows, he got 70 Clash songs in! He hasn’t attempted Blondie yet but all I will say is that following Sir Ken’s report, we might ask will anything happen? Surely one way or another, the Fire and Rescue Services will continue to evolve over time and the hardest part may be acceptance of the need for possibly radical change. Any questions, call me.

FIA Office Phone: 020 3166 5002

By Dave Smith, FIRESA Council Secretary

Larking About in the Knightime…

The title of the blog could come from an HE Bates novel or possibly some 1930s song but it doesn’t and to learn more you’ll need to read on!

 

Well it’s been a week of external meetings for me at the FIA and this week I’ve seen more Chief Fire Officers than you can shake a proverbial stick at mainly because the FIA was invited to speak at the CFOA Summer Conference. I’m sure in reality CFOA wanted the FIA’s cuddly Chairman (Martin Harvey) to come along but he was away on business so I picked up the baton and ran with it as CFOs could be a diminishing breed in future if the Scots route is followed and I thought I’d better to take the opportunity to see them while they’re still about in numbers.

To continue the running metaphor the starter’s instructions referenced the good work that is being carried out by CFOA and the FIA along with other fire stakeholders such as the Fire Protection Association and the Building Research Establishment and indeed the joint false alarms project is now beginning to nicely take shape.

Just after the ‘Under Starters Orders’ command was given but before the gun was fired, the starter introduced me as the person that keeps sending out the Freedom of Information requests to those Fire & Rescue Services that carry out trading on some form or another – well what can I say except fame at last! I’ve craved this recognition for years and now it’s finally come and I shall treasure the moment that ranks up there with. It’s difficult to think of anything that is on a par (sorry should have been a running not golfing metaphor) with it…

My talk at the conference was about the external influences on the Fire & Rescue Services in future and I believe that there are many to be considered against the background of the current funding cuts and these are:

• A mediocre economy, at best, with the construction sector particularly badly hit on large construction projects
• An impending election with the bookies offering decent odds that the only current major party leader to be left will be Ed Miliband
• The vacuum left at Westminster particularly in DCLG with regard to the cuts to the civil servants involved with fire
• Construction techniques including Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Modern Methods of Construction (MMC)
• Increasing complexities in the way that buildings are managed and maintained
• The growing need for companies and their staff to prove their competence, ideally via Third Party Certification
• Europe – particularly the Services Directive and the call for a European Directive on Hotel Fire Safety
• Emerging technologies such as Mass Notification
• The view from the Insurers which I believe is set to harden driven in the main by the disparate AFA Attendance Policies of the English Fire & Rescue Services
• Growth from the private sector which will not wait on indecision from fire stakeholders
• Tightening environmental legislation and codes of practice which could mean less fire safe products being used in buildings

Bearing in mind the FOI introduction I couldn’t resist at the end of the presentation bringing up the issue of trading and the interaction between the Fire & Rescue Services and other fire stakeholders – the reaction of the audience was ‘there he goes again banging on about this’ –  and after one more lap of the track I was done!

Earlier in the week I attended Sir Ken Knight’s leaving ‘do’ and this did truly celebrate the impact Ken has had on the fire sector as evidenced by the speeches from his peers. Much as they were enjoyable for me one of the key moments of the ‘do’ was when I learnt that the well-known West Ham fan Mike Larking had received the MBE for ‘Services to Fire Awareness and Prevention’. Mike for years has been heavily involved in the FireKills campaign which I believe has been immensely successful and this recognition of the efforts of Mike and the other guys involved is long overdue.

Mike, hearty congratulations on the MBE; the news really cheered up my week!

Now I’m on a roll with this I think perhaps I should develop some extra lyrics for that well known 1930s ditty ‘Larking about in the Knightime’ – if I don’t I guess there could be some Chief Fire Officers soon with some extra time on their hands to put together a few rhyming couplets…

Graham Ellicott

Facing The Future: a FRS Suppliers Perspective

Sir Ken Knight’s recently-published report, ‘Facing The Future’ is, as we speak, being digested by a range of organisations including central and local government; CFOA (Chief Fire officers Association); representative trade bodies and indeed, many individual companies with a vested interest in the Fire and Rescue sector. While the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has already described the review as ‘just a fig leaf for slashing our Fire and Rescue Services (FRS) to bits’, it is probable that such a high profile set of discussion points will, in time, have a huge effect on the future joint or individual delivery models of our Fire and Rescue Services.

FIRESA [now part of the FIA] was pleased to have acted as contributors to Sir Ken’s review and is delighted to find that our key recommendations have found their way into the final report. Among these is the observation that the 46 Fire and Rescue Authorities (FRAs) in England have different governance structures and delivery models; an example of government’s much-vaunted localism policy but one that acts as a fundamental barrier to achieving collective efficiencies and made worse by a paucity of sector leadership and sharing of best practice.

The report refers also to duplication in the design, commissioning and evaluation of firefighting products and notes that in order to achieve interoperability, there needs to be a more sensible approach to product customisation. The FIRESA Council has for some time been promoting the concept of a centralised national product evaluation scheme and sincerely hopes that this public recognition of the issue will give its much-needed resolution the necessary impetus. Of course, this also requires clear output-based specifications for products and the report references a possible collaboration between FIRESA and CFOA in order to deliver these.

On procurement, the report makes reference to potential finance and other resource savings while noting the benefit of several Framework contracts that remain active. Sir Ken sees the way forward as encouraging collective public body procurement for generic items while for specialist FRS equipment, the Authorities should never buy alone unless they have negotiated a substantive bargain, in which case this experience should be shared. The Cabinet Office’s procurement pipeline has potential but is not currently used by many FRAs.

There are many other areas where fire and rescue suppliers will be impacted according to the forward momentum or otherwise of other discussion points, many of which refer to changes already evident in relative isolation. These include FRS mergers and shared services; mutuals and privatization; co-responding with other blue light services; changes to the on-call/permanent fire fighter ratio; a shift from traditional fire appliances to smaller specialised vehicles; and the developing role of the Fire Service College. The future trajectories of many of these changes appear to be mutually exclusive and strongly dependent on local rather than national political will and so concerted progress is improbable. It’s also true to say that many would disagree vehemently with some of the proposals but for those ideas that have unequivocal merit, let us hope to see these implemented for the benefit of us all.

By David Smith, FIA FIRESA Council Secretary

FIRESA Reception: Mission Accomplished

By David Smith, FIRESA Council Secretary

If there’s one thing better than organising a worthwhile event, it’s having organised a worthwhile event. I tend to find them quite stressful and have a palpable sense of relief once it’s all over. The FIRESA Reception held on Thursday 2^nd May at our office in Hampton was such an event and I’m pleased it’s ‘mission accomplished’.

The Reception formally welcomed our newest group of members, made up of companies that were integrated into the FIA from FIRESA at the start of April.

For those that are not aware, The FIA has provided FIRESA’s secretariat services for the last eight years but it was an independent body until the full merger last month, which was agreed earlier this year.

We started the morning with a session led by the FIRESA Council’s trusty Chairman, Derek Gotts, looking at the FIRESA Council’s achievements over the past year and its future objectives. Few would doubt that the Fire and Rescue sector has been subject to significant transition over recent years and calmer waters are not yet on the horizon. As we move through 2013, the Fire and Rescue sector faces particular challenges both internally and under the influence of several external factors.

FIRESA was often described in its infancy as the official opposition to Firebuy, the organisation set up to administer the, then, ODPM’s National Procurement Strategy. I would argue that it was never as simple as that but with reports of Firebuy’s demise having been realised early in the Coalition government tenure in its ‘bonfire of the quangos’, the FIRESA Council’s work has evolved, and will continue to do so as a multi-dimensional body acting on all fronts on behalf of the fire fighting supply industry.

We also had two terrifically informative presentations from external speakers. First up was CFO Ian Hayton of Cleveland Fire and Rescue Service, perhaps currently one of the more controversial figures in the sector, given his plans to mutate the FRS into a public service mutual which would include their already-active commercial trading arm.

Ian explained that this is in response to government grant award cuts that have led him to implement radical changes in Cleveland’s service delivery model. The Fire Minister, Brandon Lewis, is trying to push through the necessary regulatory changes that would allow this and any future mutuals to operate as legal Fire and Rescue Services although it was emphasised that this does not imply that all Services should become mutuals. It appears, however, that the very same changes in law would open the door not only to employer-led mutuals but to provision of these services by commercial organisations acting under the jurisdiction of the local Fire and Rescue Authority.

Next up was CFO Paul Fuller of Bedfordshire and Luton FRS who spoke in his role as Vice-President of the Chief Fire Officers Association. Touching on the previous issue, he noted the CFOA view that it is opposed to FRS privatisation before going on to discuss a number of issues that are presently being addressed. Among them was what he sees as the success of the Integrated Risk Management Planning approach by the FRS’s and the increasing levels of sophistication being applied to determining and responding to fire risks at a local level. Certainly, Paul sees this widening to become a shared process involving the full spectrum of the fire safety community and with the goal of making real safety improvements to the built environment.

The second part of the day offered a timely chance for our FIRESA-derived members to gain an initial overview of important information about the Associations’ activities from those members of the FIA Team who drive the various functions which will now serve the new FIRESA Council.

I’m delighted to report some very appreciative feedback immediately after the event and indeed, this morning as I opened my e-mail box. I hope one of our guests, Susan Munro of Monro Kempton Associates, doesn’t mind me quoting her saying ‘The day was extremely informative and useful in the context of what is happening regarding potential privatisation and the development of mutuals and the implications this will have on EU Procurement, Localism and the future of contracting. The speakers were excellent and humorous. Additionally, I was impressed by the services offered by the FIA and the wider benefits in addition to the all-important networking you can offer’.

Thank you Susan and finally, thanks to everyone who was involved and attended yesterday.

Lion’s Mouth Curry, Goat’s Head Soup

Above: Graham Ellicott

Being a person of mature years I just about remember rationing and the rejoicing that occurred when rosehip syrup was easily available again – hell we were easily pleased in those days. Growing up in the 1950’s we ate all sorts of stuff that people these days either cringe at or assume it’s something off Heston Blumenthal’s menu at the Fat Duck.

Did you oldies out there eat stuffed hearts, tripe and onions, suet puddings or goats head soup? Just kid(ding) this was a 1973 Rolling Stones album that featured the track Angie and the great unsung Stones guitar player- Mick Taylor. Come to think of it, Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson Lake and Palmer also came out in 1973 so there’s another thing you could have eaten if you had a craving for vinyl – but I digress…

One of the things I never did eat though was Lion’s Mouth Curry and until recently I thought I never would; if only because lions are probably on the CITES protected species list along with old fat fire blokes like me. If we aren’t – we should be as we are easily distinguishable and thus easily hunted slow moving creatures.

Recently I had the chance to experience this Leo based culinary delicacy courtesy of the Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA), who were holding one of their ‘safaris’ at a game lodge close to Nottingham. The event had the snappy title of “Prevention, Protection and Road Safety (PPRS) Conference” and my invite came from Dave Curry (the PPRS ‘Lead’ for CFOA) and putting one’s head into the CFOA Lion’s Mouth looked like too tempting a mouth-watering delicacy to miss.

Dave suggested that I metaphorically poke the natives with a sharp stick loaded with ‘Who are the FIA’ and ‘What can we do to work together’. Blimey I thought, that’s going to be mind-blowingly fascinating. Having thought about this for a while I went back to Dave and said I’d take the risk of being eaten alive but that my fate could be made more palatable for all involved if I had a suitable warm-up act speak just ahead of me.

Dave said he’d do his best and on the day of the ‘safari’ he was as good as his word – I went on after Neil Gibbins -that old big game hunter from Devon and Somerset (not many lions now left on Dartmoor because of Neil!). Between Neil and myself we have close to 100 years’ experience in the business and as I’ve only been in it since 1981, you can see what a wily old big game hunter this Gibbins bloke is! Mind you, he nearly blew it with a joke that mentioned horse burgers and the withdrawal of oak flooring because it was contaminated with lam….in.…ate but the audience laughed albeit after an explanation was forthcoming.

Thirty five PowerPoint slides from me is normally enough to put any old animals to sleep but these CFOA types are tough and they politely stayed awake and asked several questions about the FIA and where we can all work together. I particularly liked the one that began ‘Graham, now I know that you disagree with……but’ – it’s nice to have one’s views acknowledged; it shows that somebody reads the blog and the tweets!

But why have I written this blog? Well, during the course of the 35 slide sojourn I mentioned that the FIA relies heavily on Social Media to get its message across and that I could write a blog about being at the CFOA event to which one of the more awake in the audience said ‘Dare You’. At this point Neil Gibbins dropped his big game rifle and put his head in his hands as I guess that he could see what sort of drivel might be written!

In all seriousness, there was a time when CFOA would not have wanted a presentation at any of their conferences from the trade. Those days have gone and even though there are some items on which they and the FIA disagree, there are far more items on which we share the same common ground. Indeed it’s likely that my venture into the lion’s den will lead to some specific false alarms problems being solved by both parties along with other fire stakeholders – so a tangible outcome. I’d like to thank Dave Curry for the invite to speak.

Note: No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog although this old fat fire bloke did hurt his knees running for the buffet during the Safari’s lunchtime – too slow though as all of the ‘Goats Head Soup’ had gone by the time I got there and I had to achieve ‘ Satisfaction’ from what was left at the ‘Beggars Banquet’ – mainly ‘Brown Sugar’ sprinkled over a ’Little red Rooster’.

By Graham Ellicott, FIA CEO

A week is a long time in fire

By CEO FIA Graham Ellicott

What a week it’s been for fire!

BAFE launched its Fire Risk Assessor scheme SP205 and this joins the FRACS schemes that are available from Warrington Certification, so now Fire Risk Assessment organisations have a choice of Third Party Certification schemes to join and this can only be good for fire safety in the UK. The hard work from all involved in these schemes is to be applauded.

On the same day that BAFE had the SP205 launch the Worshipful Company of Fire Fighters in partnership with BRE held the 2012 Fire Lecture which consisted of a number of presentations and was well attended by all sectors of the fire world. In her presentation, Debbie Smith of BRE, lamented the lack of available data in some cases to inform all manner of decisions that the fire professional could be faced with on a day-to-day basis.

This, in my opinion, has always been the case and unfortunately as much of the data that has been generated has been as the result of Government funded research then the situation is not likely to improve because of the cuts in budgets.

At the same event Nick Starling of the ABI repeated much of what was in their 2009 document ‘Tackling Fire – A Call for Action’ and I think he missed an opportunity here. The document in question was issued while the last Government was in power and, if I remember correctly, the ABI suggested that there be quite a bit of Government work, admittedly with other stakeholders to drive down the cost of fire. The current Government, based upon its actions to date, shows little or no inclination to intervene in the fire sector and if they do it will be predominantly for life safety.

Lee Howell of CFOA was understandably late for the lecture as he had been involved with the Atherstone court case which was another large fire story during the week. Thus his presentation was given by his staff officer who delivered it in an entertaining fashion and I have to say, probably engaged the audience more than Lee would have because of the ‘sympathy factor’.

I don’t know who wrote Lee’s presentation but they couldn’t resist a ‘pop’ at the private fire trade as they inferred that Lee ran a successful commercial fire trading business for Devon and Somerset FRS. This diatribe went on to infer that the private sector was metaphorically quaking in its boots about this operation. Well if they were referring to Red One Ltd (the DSFRS arms-length company) then the latest accounts filed at Companies House show it as dormant, that is that it hasn’t traded. Is this the fire service’s new definition of success? Perhaps Lee could clarify this situation.

At the end of the presentations it was time for questions and this brought forward some interesting debate. I was particularly impressed by the comments of Rita Dexter and Ron Dobson of London Fire Brigade who reached to the heart of the problem of the complexities of why people lose their lives in fire. They did this without the dogma of the various fire stakeholders (some of whom spoke at the Lecture) and were a breath of fresh air – more of it please!

As I write this it has been reported that Southwark Council will not face manslaughter charges with regard to the six deaths in the Lakanal House fire that occurred in July 2009. In December 2009 the BBC reported that the Lakanal House inquests would not complete for two years and now 30 months on it has still not completed.  It is hoped that the decision not to press charges over manslaughter will now hasten the progress of the inquests. Indeed Southwark Council would like to see the situation progressed as their Cabinet Member for Housing commented: “We now ask that the coroner agrees a date as soon as possible for the six inquests to begin so that all the facts from that tragic evening of nearly three years ago can be brought before the public.”

Whatever the ‘rights or wrongs’ of the situation, this long delay in completing the inquests (it’s now nearly three years since the fire) has meant that the bereaved relatives are still waiting for answers as to why the deaths occurred. The fire world also awaits the conclusion of the inquests as it could have ramifications for the design of buildings.

In another big fire news story earlier this week, the Welsh Government announced that from 2013 all new homes would be fitted with sprinklers. In contrast, England has no intention to have sprinklers fitted. This is yet another example of the ‘postcode lottery’ approach to fire across the UK and one has to ask why, as a UK taxpayer, there are major differences occurring in the way that fire and rescue operates between England and Scotland; and now why the levels of fire protection in new buildings across the UK, for example, sprinklers in care homes in Scotland and in new homes in Wales, are becoming so disparate.

It will be interesting to see what, if any comments, the Coroner for the Lakanal House inquests makes with regard to fire protection and management of buildings such as Lakanal House; The FIA wonders whether any comments will be implemented differently across the UK. Time will tell!