Pete Murphy
Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham Business School
International Centre for Public Services Management
Kirsten Greenhalgh
University of Nottingham
Nottingham University Business School
Response to Department of Communities and Local Government Consultation:
Operational Efficiencies Review led by Sir Ken Knight
2013
Introduction
On the 14th December 2012 Brandon Lewis announced that Sir Ken Knight, the outgoing Chief Fire and Rescue advisor, would lead a review into the operational efficiency of the services delivered by Fire and Rescue Authorities in England.
The review seeks to identify the ways in which fire and rescue authorities may deliver further efficiencies and operational improvements without reducing the quality of front-line services to the public. Including:
- firefighter training
- flexible staffing and crewing arrangements
- the use of retained firefighters
- procurement
- shared services
- collaboration with emergency services and other organisations on service delivery and estates
- sickness management
- sharing of senior staff
- locally led mergers and operational collaborations
- new fire-fighting technology
- preventative approaches
- working with local businesses
Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham University have established an independent research programme relating to the Fire and Rescue Servicefollowing the announcement of a Strategic Review of the 2008-2011 National Framework in June 2010. This programme has developed into three work streams as follows:
Work stream 1- The New National Framework- This project responds to the coalition governments’ review of the National Framework for Fire and Rescue Services and other central government national initiatives.
Work stream 2 - The implementation of the IRMPs’ in Practise - This project evaluates the introduction of the Integrated Risk Management Planning process and the resultant reconfigurations of Fire and Rescue Service in the new era of financial austerity at the Fire Authority or individual service level.
Work stream 3 - The Support and Intervention Regime. This stream consists of two complementary projects. The first is an appraisal of previous arrangements and the current proposals for the support and intervention and the second looks specificallyat the content of the Section 23 Intervention Protocol which is required by the 2004 Act.
Response to the Efficiencies Review
Introduction
The continuing era of austerity and the disinvestment or dismantling of many established parts of the national improvement and delivery of fire services; together with the launch of the new national framework has created significant challenges but also opportunities to review the service provision both in the short term and in the long term.
We are aware that the 46 Fire and Rescue Authorities in England will undoubtedly respond with detailed comments on current and planned operational efficiencies which will be drawn from the implementation of their IRMP processes. We are also confident that they will share their experiences and current best practice across the country. This response therefore will not address detailed operational matters. However, we acknowledge that this review is also an opportunity to generate some long term, innovative and creative thinking about what the service requires,collectively, todeliver its future, long term, responsibilities to the public. We are particularly concerned about some of the less high profile, but nevertheless important parts of the organisational landscape that the service finds itself confronting as it comes to terms with continuing austerity.
We areaware of CFOA’s initial response and early contributions from others who have commendably tried to broaden the debate, with the intention of inspiring some much needed, long term, innovative and creative thinking about the long term needs of the service.
We would encourage the review to reconsider some long term sector wide issues that have recently been remodelled by the government but which we believe urgently need to be re-addressed if the sector is to provide economic, efficient and effective services in the long term.
Restructuring
Almost inevitablythe issue of restructuring, mergers or reconfiguration of the services will be the focus of some responses to the review particularlyfrom politicians, both local and national.
Whilst we believe that there will be a case for some limited individual mergers among some of the smaller services, wholesale restructuring, service privatisation or new business models are not, in our opinion, what is required at this time.
The major rationale for the current review is the continuing austerity affecting the external environment in which the service has to operate in the UK. There have been no recent major technological innovations or improvements; no gross organisational or operational inefficiencies, nor anyrecent emergencies that have generated a requirement for significant change in the national service. Any local reconfigurations of organisations, or the strategic approach to individual services will no doubt emerge, or have already been identified, within the continuing IRMP requirement.
National and Service Network Infrastructure for Service Improvement
The review provides an opportunity to think again about some of the recent changes to the less visible, but nevertheless essential, parts of the services organisational infrastructure in this country. Some of this infrastructure has been disassembled or subject to recent under-investment as a result of the continuing austerity in public finances. While short term cuts may have been necessary and inevitable, the complete loss of some roles and even institutions, and the associated loss of institutional and intellectual memory and resources will, in our view, inevitably to lead to long term inefficiencies and sub-optimal deployment of resources.
For example the quality assurance and the resultant efficient and effective dissemination of innovation and good practice appears to us to be inappropriately located at too local a level for optimal efficiency and therefore runs the risk that it will deprioritise national or network issues that need to be addressed for the benefit of the service as a whole. Sooner or later, we believe that these will have to be remedied if the service is to aspire to the world class service we would all want it to be.In a relatively homogeneous or standard public service like Fire and Rescue some of this infrastructure is always likely to be more effectively provided collectively, rather than expecting all services to provide it individually.
Operational Research and the evidence base
Since the 1880s, the Fire Service has been a service which recognises the value of professional knowledge and operational research. It has consistently and conscientiously accumulated evidence of how it can improve the service as well as the protection of the public. Robust, quality assured, collective evidence has always been essential to the development of the services.Research and intelligence has been valued, acknowledged and embraced by the service.
The service needs a national collective archive of its data and intelligence that has to reside at a national base, acknowledged for its robust independence and transparency. With the demise of the Audit Commission’s programme of national studies and its capacity for operational research; the reduction in the DCLGs research programme and the reductions in Research Council’s Grants there is a relative paucity of both theoretical and empirical research into the service particularly at the holistic level.
The relatively small research and development community both within the service itself and within the universities is therefore likely to contract still further and international co-operation, collaborations and networks are likely to face reductions in investment and consequentlythe UK’s historical ability to lead and contribute to international safety issues and debates will be eroded.
Overview and Scrutiny
The government has expressed the aspiration of having an informed public able to compare the performance of services and call individual services to account. In order for this to happen the public needs there to be the publically available and quality assured up-to-date evidence to facilitate robust overview and scrutiny and open and accountable governance.
The questions for the future are… who will compile and maintain a comprehensive database of evidence, who will develop the tools and techniques to interrogate and report on this evidence, who will disseminate good practice?
In view of the DCLGs recent consultation on the interventions protocol, how will we know which services are performing poorly and where will the resources be found to intervene in these services?
In our response to the draft interventions protocol we noted that self-reported and peer review interventions unaccompanied by robust external standards and benchmarks and independent regulators are invariably less efficient or effective than the alternative.
An Independent and Dedicated Inspectorate
The latest national framework for fire and rescue services imposed considerable obligations on Fire Services and Authorities but was notably lacking in its commitment to providing support from central government. Some of the most important previous supporthas in fact been withdrawn due to the austerity measures and an apparent lack of appreciation of its contribution to the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the service - in contrast to CFOAs experience that was provided in evidence to the DCLG Select Committee.
Although there are many examples of the loss of infrastructure, the key example we would point to is the loss of a dedicated independent and robust inspectorate. The current unit within DCLG cannot provide the institutional equivalent necessary to command the confidence of the public nor can such a unit command the respect of the service as a whole, or its peer international institutions. Notwithstanding the outstanding calibre of both the current and the previous heads of the unit, it is not independent of government, neither is its advice to government ministers open and transparent(since it is governed by the civil service’s rules), there is no publically available evidence base and the unit’s current capacity is severely limited.
The Fire College
In the past we have argued that the Fire Service College at least provided the opportunity to build infrastructural capacity within the sector. However, the Fire Service College has recently been outsourced to a private company, Capita, hardly well known for sharing its intellectual property rights, facilitating real time remote access to its databases, or promoting open source publishing without significant reimbursement.
Future Proofing
Changes and improvements to technology; changes to the climate, and increasing uncertainty over future patterns of development, (resulting from changes to the planning and development system), mean that forecasting and anticipating risks to our communities becomes more, rather than less, complex in the future. Whilst short term financial imperatives may have made reductions in services and institutions inevitable in the short term, the complete loss of some of these vital parts of the sector’s infrastructure, and the associated loss of social and intellectual capital, cannot be good for the service in the long term.
The review provides an opportunity to look again at some of the sectors infrastructure and improvement needs and take a long term perspective as well as responding to the short term imperatives.
Some of these roles, responsibilities, principles and duties need to be reinstatedin order for the serviceto build on them for the future benefit of the public. We acknowledge that this will not be a popular message with politicians who will inevitably portray some of our proposals as retrograde steps rather than recognising that the imperative for major financial reductions coupled with the imposed pace of change did not allow for robust evaluation of the long term consequential impacts of some of the changes.
This response has been submitted on behalf of the Emergency Services Research Programme of Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham University.
The corresponding author for this response,to whom all requests for further information should be addressed to:
Peter Murphy
Director: Emergency Services Research Programme
Joint Practice Editor: International Journal of Emergency Services.
Direct Line 0115 848 8092
Mobile: 07775 877 949
Appendix A
Selected Publications and Presentations from the NTU Fire and Rescue Research Programme.
Project 1 – The New National Framework
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2010. The performance management regime for fire and rescue services in an era of austerity. In: Public Administration Committee (PAC) Annual Conference, Nottingham Conference Centre, Nottingham Trent University, 6-8 September 2010.
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2010. A new performance management regime for fire and rescue services. In: Fire Related Research and Developments (RE10) Annual Conference, National Fire Service College, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, 17 November 2010.
MURPHY, P., 2011. Strategic review offers a unique opportunity. Fire, (CFOA journal) 103 (1333) January 2011 .
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2011. Creating the new national framework for fire and rescue services. FIRE, 104 (1341) March 2011.
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2011. Creating the new national framework for fire and rescue services. In: The Public Administration Committee (PAC) Annual Conference, International Conference Centre, Birmingham, 5 September 2011.
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH 2012 The new National Framework for Fire and Rescue ServicesInternational Journal of Emergency Services Journal ConferenceThemes in Emergency Services – Nottingham Trent University 13th November 2012.
MURPHY,P. and GREENHALGH,K. (forthcoming) Performance Management in the Fire and Rescue Services Public Money and Management
MURPHY,P. and GREENHALGH,K., (submitted)The new national framework in Fire and Rescue Services Emergency Management Review (The Journal of the Emergency Planning Society).
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2013. Developing a non-prescriptive framework FIRE, 105 (1353) January 2013 pgs 13 -16.
Project 2 The implementation of the IRMPs’ in Practise
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2011. Interim report of the independent appraisal of data collection, systems and modelling for the Fire Cover Review. Nottingham: The Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority February 2011
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2011. Final report of the independent appraisal of data collection, systems and modelling for the Fire Cover Review. Nottingham: The Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority. June 2011
MURPHY, P., and GREENHALGH, K., 2011 Fire and rescue reconfiguration in an era of austerity Nottinghamshire Fire Cover Review [working paper 1], in Public Service – BAM Conference Smaller Government, International Conference Centre, Birmingham, 5-6 September 2011.
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2011. Fire and rescue service reconfiguration in an era of austerity, - a case study of the fire cover review in Nottinghamshire. In: The Public Administration Committee (PAC) Annual Conference, International Conference Centre, Birmingham, 6 Sept 2011.
MURPHY, P., GREENHALGH, K., and PARKIN, C. 2012 The Fire Cover Review in Nottinghamshire [working paper 2 - interim findings of stage 3], in Annual Conference on Fire-Related Research and Developments 2011 (RE11), National Fire Services College, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, 17 November 2011, Institute of Fire Engineers/Fire Services College.
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K. 2012 The Fire Cover Review in Nottinghamshire: a case study of building and enriching collaboration and knowledge exchange to create public value, in Contradictions in Public Management: Managing in Volatile Times, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy, 11-13 April 2012, IRSPM/University of Rome.
MURPHY, P and GREENHALGH, K., 2012 The Fire Cover Review in Nottinghamshire: A case study of building and enriching collaboration and knowledge exchange to create public value in the UK. Annual Conference of Journal of Finance and Management in Public Services. Liverpool 3rd July 2012
MURPHY, P., GREENHALGH, K. and PARKIN, C., 2012. Fire and rescue service reconfiguration: a case study in Nottinghamshire. International Journal of Emergency Services, 1 (1) pp 86-94. July 2012
MURPHY, P. and GREENHALGH, K., 2013. Integrated Risk Management Planning in Nottinghamshire. FIRE, 105 (1354) February 2013.
Project 3. The Support and Intervention Regime
MURPHY, P., GREENHALGH, K., and COLEMAN, P. 2012 The development of new support and intervention arrangements for fire and rescue services, in Alternative Futures Conference, Chaucer Building, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, 9 March 2012, Nottingham Trent University.
MURPHY, P., GREENHALGH, K., and COLEMAN, P., 2012 The NBS Fire and Rescue Services Research Programme Project 3 – Intervention, Support and Recovery. The Public Administration Committee (PAC) Annual Conference, University of Plymouth,18-19th July 2012.
MURPHY, P., and GREENHALGH, K.. 2012, An appraisal of the support and intervention arrangements within the new National Framework for Fire and Rescue Servicesin Annual Conference on Fire-Related Research and Developments 2011 (RE12), National Fire Services College, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, 15 November 2012, Institute of Fire Engineers/Fire Service College
Ends