Sir Ken Knight’s government-commissioned review into the future of England’s fire and rescue authorities (FRAs) has caused a stir among many members of the firefighting community.
The report, “Facing the Future,” says that FRAs need to be transformed to increase efficiency and effectiveness and reflect current risk and needs. It raises issues rather than making recommendations, and asks as many questions as it provides answers.
Key points:
Sir Ken’s observations
A deeper dive into the minutiae of the report reveals some interesting opinions. Referring to his suggestion that FRAs should merge, Sir Ken said: “The 46 fire and rescue authorities, each with different governance structures, senior leaders, and organisational and operational quirks, does not make for a sensible delivery model.”
When talking about latent capacity in the deployment of resources, he says: “On average, each firefighter attends 110 incidents a year. False alarms now outnumber fires — 46 of the 110 incidents are false alarms, just 43 are fires.”
Operational collaboration drew the following: “The challenge for fire and rescue authorities is to accept that to achieve interoperability they all need to forgo an element of customisation.”
He said that the potential benefits of mutualizing services would be increasing efficiency and use of assets, as well as bringing in new revenue and opportunities.
However, Sir Ken added that part of the issue in helping the public get a satisfactory fire service is getting beyond the public’s relatively superficial view of the service.
“The public sees two extreme images of the fire service — saving lives in heroic situations or being chastised for rescuing squirrels,” he said. “This detracts from any debate about whether resources should be focused on prevention or response, and whether a fire station needs to be kept crewed full-time if it only has 100 calls a year.”
Knight told the BBC that cutting firefighter numbers could be justified, saying that the number of fire deaths in the home that occurred when he was a firefighter was 700 or 800 a year, compared to 180 a year now.
“It’s a really good news story,” he said, “but the service itself must adapt and change, not only to maintain that fire safety and prevention front, but to adapt its service.”
He asked why the number of firefighters has remained broadly the same, even though there are now 40 percent fewer fires. “It’s a question that the local authorities and fire authorities will need to address and need to answer.”
The report says the massive reduction in fires in the last decade “suggests that there is room for reconfiguration and efficiencies to better match the service to the current risk and response context.”
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As they say “prevention is better than cure” It is true that fire prevention needs have fallen drastically, however, reducing the number of fire fighters is government policy and not because there is mininum fire prevention needs. Instead of reducing the number of fire fighters, these men and women could be re- train to provide fire and safety awareness training in our schools, organisation and in private and public companies.
That’s certainly one thing they do already and it’s a testament to the effectiveness of fire safety education that the number of fires has fallen the way it has. Perhaps that education could be stepped up but that would still leave a significant number of firefighters in place. Is sir ken right that the numbers should fall to reflect the fall in fires?
@ ROB
What is the way forward fo these men? Do they have to re-train in different skills or companies need to engage their experts services or otherwise. Also, I dont know whether the basis for Sir ken recommendations is the right one for the future.
It’s tough certainly. Whether you would go on to a career in fire safety, as a risk assessor for instance, or completely re-train in another area, the important thing would be to support people through any transition.
I agree Rob, support is very essential in any transitional period
Rob I think no body can predict future. I think considering that fire incidents have decreased thus minimize the fire fighters strength is not a good idea as far as I am concerned. I think safety is paramount we can use them in some other betther projects related to their profession but simply cutting their number is not well thought of.
I think Sir Ken is right to start the debate, even if he’s wrong on whether we should reduce fire fighter numbers.
@Robert Brown: True but I don’t agree on reducing the number of fire fighters since you need more human input when it comes to fight with fire related issues
The other issue this misses is that fire fighters now do a lot more rescuing than perhaps they used to, as well. Non-fire incidents. I don’t know the stats but I suspect that would have either gone up or at best stayed relatively level.