Agenda item

6.1

The Committee received a report on the South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Draft Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP) which was currently out for consultation.  The plan sets out the steps proposed to be taken by the South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service with the resources at their disposal to improve public safety, reduce fires and save lives.  The Committee was requested to consider the implications of the plan, especially in light of the matters raised by a petition which had been presented to Full Council on 12^th June.

6.2

In attendance for this item were Jamie Courtney (Chief Fire Officer), Stuart Booth (Director of Support Services) and Andy Strelczenie (Head of Emergency Response).

6.3

Jamie Courtney thanked the Committee for giving him the opportunity to come and speak about the consultation document.  He said that South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue (SYFR) was now entering its ninth year of austerity and a pensions’ deficit which public sector organisations have been advised they will have to fund could cost up to £3m a year.  The Government have said they will cover 90% of this cost for this financial year, but after that the service will have to cover its own costs.  Additionally there was uncertainty about how public services would continue to be funded beyond 2020/21.  Mr. Courtney stated that the service had looked at ways of making new savings without a great deal of success and was running out of options.  He added that SYFR had a responsibility to operate a structure to meet the requirements of the National Framework which sets out the Government’s expectations and responsibilities for all fire and rescue authorities.  Mr. Courtney said that the options that had been considered were making some fire stations day crewing stations with firefighters providing on-call cover at night; some stations day crewing with a roving fire engine from another station at night; changing some stations to being available “on call”.  It was felt that these options carried risks by increasing the response time, especially at night, from several stations. The preferred option would be to reduce the number of firefighters riding a fire engine from five to four.  He said that a number of fire engines already ride with four firefighters on a number of occasions and this practice had been established as standard elsewhere in the country.  It was felt that this was the only option available which would reduce costs without impacting on the speed of emergency response times.

6.4

Members of the Committee asked a number of questions, and responses were given by the Fire Service representatives as follows:-

·                     Currently there are 17 fire stations across South Yorkshire that can respond to an emergency. To achieve the savings required, the service would have to reduce several fire engines from whole-time, immediately available 24/7, to day staffing/night time on call where response times would be longer during the night

·                     Throughout austerity, SYFR, through careful spending, had built around £25m in reserves and when faced with decisions to make cuts, it looked at ways of underspending each year.  This meant carrying out essential repairs only to fire stations, the result of which was that now four stations were in need of significant investment to bring them up to standard.  It was considered that it would be cheaper to rebuild the station at Barnsley rather than carry out repairs.

·                     £16m of the reserves were now committed to capital projects and it was felt that the reserves should not be used to “prop up” annual revenue spending which would postpone the inevitable.

·                     Fire engines riding with four crew members provide a speedy response and the crew would have to work slightly harder than if riding with five crew members.   All South Yorkshire firefighters are fully trained and very competent in the job they do and the right number of firefighters will be deployed to deal with any incidents they are faced with.

·                     There are to be no job losses.  The reduction of 85 members of staff would be through personnel retiring, mainly through completing 30 years’ service, and not being replaced.  Figures suggest that it would be 2024 before this reduction was achieved.  There is a central group of personnel who adopt a flexible role to cover sickness absence, holidays, etc.

·                     There are 17 other Fire Authorities around the country who have adopted the four man crew system. Fire Authority members had visited Tyne and Wear to ask about their experience of four man crews and was assured that it worked well.  The Control Staff knew how to deploy additional pumps as necessary.

·                     The IRMP has been advertised through the media and has reached circa 1,000,000 people.  There have been 100,000 contacts through social media and the Fire Service has consulted all partner agencies and had received 501 written responses thus far. 

·                     It was reiterated that no-one will lose their job.  Recruitment will take place again but the organisation as a whole will be smaller.

·                     The reduction of 85 employees would not affect any one area as the contract of employment for a firefighter states that they can be moved to any station. There is always a rebalancing act which is managed locally.

·                     There has been a 50% reduction in Senior Managers and the Executive Team.

·                     The Service has to plan for the future and consider all funding scenarios and the possibility of a change in Government and the effects of Brexit could affect the budget.  The options outlined in this document present the worst case scenario.

·                     These proposals will not have an impact on the community.  In the aftermath of the Grenfell disaster, SYFR risk assessed the high rise buildings throughout the county to determine whether any were at risk.  Sufficient resources are committed to training and the delivery of the community safety programme, which it was felt helped to save lives.  Fire crews visit homes to give advice and this will continue.

·                     The Fire Authority has had limited opportunity to increase the fire service precept levied on Council tax payers and the regeneration of the city centre should ultimately generate more business rates which could mean more investment into the fire service.

·                     The mobilising system records attendance data and it is not about the first or second response, but the optimum response to incidents that matters the most.

·                     SYFR consistently publishes the amount of reserves it holds, which have been verified by the Finance Officer.  There is a pay dispute at the moment and the pensions’ shortfall came out of the blue.  The Fire Authority does not want to become dependent on using reserves as the amount will continue to reduce as the capital programme is delivered.  The Home Office is aware of the amount of reserves the Authority currently holds but there is no reason to believe that this impacts upon the level of funding received from the Government.

·                     It might be necessary to staff some of the fire engines on a “full time day staffing/night time on-call” basis, which would mean that those engines would be permanently staffed during the day but would be available on a delayed on-call basis during the night time period.  These changes would be a realistic way to achieve the level of savings needed to meet the full cost of the pensions’ shortfall. If this proved to be necessary in the future, an amendment to the IRMP would be produced and the proposals set out in more detail.

·                     In response to the question to the Chief Fire Officer relating to the option open to him to retire next January, he said that given the importance of this, he did want to leave the funding problem for his successor to ‘sort out’, and wanted to hand over a fire service that was fit for purpose.

6.5

The Chair thanked Jamie Courtney, Stuart Booth and Andy Strelczenie for their contribution to the meeting and stated that the Committee’s recommendations would be made following its consideration of the next item of business – “Petition Opposing Fire Service Cuts”.