Transcript

Transcript

Now it is my pleasure to introduce our next speaker. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this meeting of the Resources and Fire and Rescue Overview and Scrutiny Committee. A couple of items that I would like to beg Councillors' indulgence on before we start. First and foremost, we are in the Chamber. Thank you very much for coming into the Chamber this afternoon. We thought with interest and the number of speakers, it would be more convenient to be in here. The second item, and I'd just like to run this past, Councillors, to make sure everyone agrees, we know standing orders allow us to take a speaker or two if substantively different. We have five registered speakers this afternoon. I would like to check with Councillors that's acceptable, but it was felt by us that as each of them had different points to make, it was important each were heard. Are Councillors all happy that we take the speakers? Thank you very much indeed. I was sure you would be, but I wanted to check with you up front. So, let's move across. Andrew, do we have any apologies this afternoon? Yes, Chair, apologies have been received from Councillor Martin Watson and from Sarah Duxbury. Thank you very much, Andrew. Do members have any disclosable interests in the agenda this afternoon? No? Okay. Thank you very much. I have covered Chair's announcements at the beginning with asking for your dispensation on speakers, so thank you very much on that. The minutes of the previous meeting have been circulated, and there was a revised copy that went out to you. Is it your wish that they are signed as a true record of that meeting? Okay, that's proposed and seconded. No amendments on that? Thank you very much indeed. Right, so we move forward to public question time. As I say, we have five registered speakers, and can I thank each and every one of you for coming this afternoon, giving your time and joining us on what is a rather warm afternoon in the Chamber. So, I'm going to take them in the order as they're printed on my list here, and I believe the first speaker is Jill. Jill McArdle? Jill? Okay. I'll move over to you. You will have three minutes. I will ask Andrew to tell you when there's 30 seconds left, and if you could sum up within that time. So, to you, Jill. Thank you. Thank you very much. Living in Bidford-on-Avon, we appreciate the recognition from CFO Brook and Councillor Crump in acknowledging in Model A the need to keep Bidford-on-Avon available overnight as a contracted on-core. The model does not go into detail as to how this will be manned. Can the CFO or Councillor Crump share this information now? As funding has been requested, this information should be readily available. The original proposal 2A required no extra funding. Can the CFO or Councillor Crump explain to the public and cabinet what the extra funding in Model A is earmarked for? The ballpark figures of savings from information shared with us by WFRS on the 5th of May, 2024, the mothballing of stations now referred to as resilience and the removal of on-cores Stratford and Coleshill, removal of on-core day cover in Polsworth and Bidford should put around £2 million back into the service. Can the CFO or Councillor Crump tell us why there is now extra funding of $550,000 required annually for three years and a one-off payment of $600,000? Are the RSOs and station managers roles being reviewed? Are both of these posts necessary should Model A be implemented? That would add more savings. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed for that, Jill. Our next public speaker is Penny Barry. Penny, you have three minutes. Again, Andrew will tell you when there is 30 seconds left if you could sum up, please. Thank you. Within this radically changed proposal, Model A, you have four stations, Shipston, Fenny Compton, Gaydon and Atherston, now reclassified as resilience surge in 2A yet you still haven't provided sufficient information how these will be managed and staffed. Resilience stations are not classified in the Gray Book, a reason given for changing other shift patterns. Has the resilience model been used elsewhere? The three resilience stations in the south of the county, Shipston, Fenny Compton and Gaydon leave the areas dangerously short in an emergency. Reducing available appliances from eight to three increases the risk to residents, employees and people travelling through the area. We welcome contracted on call at night in Bidford. We believe the proactive recruitment for contracted on call in the day is feasible in Bidford and Polsworth and will utilise resources already in place. Despite concerns raised about attendance times in the consultation, this is now going to be 20 minutes plus in the south and south east of the county and that's assuming the closest pump is not deployed elsewhere. Thank you Penny, thank you for that. Our third speaker this afternoon is from Shotterswell Parish Council, that's Val Ingram. Val again, you have three minutes and when you're within 30 seconds Andy will let you know so you can sum up. Firstly my thanks to the chair for allowing me to express the significant concerns we have over these proposals. I appreciate that since the consultation exercise some tweaks have been made which is encouraging. However sadly these do not appear to extend or address the significance imbalance at the very south of the county. The revised map is probably the easiest to follow to illustrate the imbalance. Everyone else appears to get resilience but we do not. I appreciate the surge stations are now given another name but they are nonetheless no longer providing an emergency response. I have it on reasonable authority that there wasn't any uptake to staff these surge stations and just a name change renders them to be effectively garages. Gayden I appreciate there is additional costs involved in renting the site. It therefore makes perfect sense to keep and fortify Fenny Compton given its strategic location being close to the M40 junction and the army base which only has one appliance now and no night time cover, the biggest ammunition depot in the country. The on-call at Fenny have actually in some cases done themselves a disservice. If there hasn't been enough crew no one has signed on. COVID changed many things not least the peripatetic cruise system. This fancy name just means there was a pool that could be called upon to make up the numbers to ensure an appliance was on the run. This was suspended in COVID times for fear of spreading infection but has never been reinstated. This could have seen a very different set of statistics had it have been. Most retained stations do not appear to struggle for crew at night time or weekend so why extend this to some areas and not all. There's also been an embargo on recruitment with the hundreds of new houses there's more than a fair chance some new recruits could come forward for any of the retained stations were this to be lifted. Other counties are successful. Kent which is held as an exemplar by the inspector have a great proportion of retained. If executed properly it is cost effective and gives resilience. I was involved the last round of cuts in 2010 where a local fire station was again under threat of closure. At that time all the paths around this restructuring led back to the tragedy of Atherstone and as a result I got significantly involved to the extent of traveling to Stafford Court with the accused firefighters. I tell you this only so that you may appreciate that I do have a degree of knowledge of the fire and rescue service. I wish to recall that the firefighters have my utmost respect and highest regard. I'm struggling to understand given the biggest criticism in the report was over the IT systems why such changes are being made particularly when this will have such an impact on our communities in your care. I'm restricted due to time but fundamentally this proposal in the current form does not provide resilience to the southern end of the county. A fire in our village last year which was significant took an appliance 25 minutes to reach us from Wellsbourne. This proposal exposes people to disproportionate risk giving a significant variance between response times in the north and south. Notwithstanding the risk of fires if you're in a car accident 25 minutes wait to be released from a vehicle is dangerous. We're afraid that's time. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is from Bidford and Avon parish council and it's Penny Taylor. Penny you have three minutes and again Andrew will tell you in this 30 seconds remaining. Thank you very much. Hopefully I'll be quite short. First of all I'd like to say that Bidford parish council is very pleased to see the changes that have been made to the proposal to create new model A. It fits in very much with our report back and with our reports from other people and we know that we've been listened to in the consultation which is absolutely brilliant. This will mean the southwest of Warwickshire will have better cover than the initial proposal 2A which would have left the rural south of Warwickshire extremely vulnerable especially at night. Crucially we're very relieved indeed that model A shows Bidford keeping an on-call capacity overnight when our firefighters have a very good record of turning out and they can have the most impact. The fact that Ulster and Bidford both stay operational means good

• two active stations providing good 24-hour cover for the safety of our residents and for those in the rural areas around us. My question is can Chief Fire Officer Ben Brook and Councillor Andy Crump assure us that the need for an increase in the budget to achieve model A will not leave essential parts of this plan vulnerable to being dropped. In particular that Bidford's overnight contracted on-call will be kept as an essential service which will support not only Bidford but other vulnerable areas in the southwest of the county. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed Penny. Our final speaker is from Stratford-on-Avon district council and that is Susan Junitz. Susan three minutes and again Andrew will tell you when there's 30 seconds remaining. Thank you I'm speaking both as leader of the Stratford-on-Avon district council and also district councillor for Ulster East. I'm concerned about the proposals and as we've heard from others various questions have been raised so on behalf of the of the district I would like to put forward a request that there should be a further public consultation on the proposals for the services across the whole district so everybody can be kept up to date and could ask the questions that they need before a final decision is made. But in Ulster specifically I would like to just make sure that you are aware of the great concern that now in Ulster you may know from history that there is a particular sensitivity because it was in Ulster that we lost two firefighters in the Atherstone on Stour fire some years ago as and that was a night time operation. But there are other areas of concern in the town one is flooding and that is one that I want to raise now. We had had major flood problems in the past with circa 121 properties affected in 2007 and we also had similar numbers in 1998 when the town was cut off completely cut off. But this last winter the flood defences came close to being breached again six times within the space of the winter and should that happen again the chances of getting relief into the town to help people would be affected. We have also seen in recent years the increase in traffic flows on the A46 and A435 particularly from heavy goods vehicles using the roads to cut from one motorway to the next and these are traffic incidents that usually happen at night and we have had quite a lot of accidents including some fatal accidents in recent years and it is those kind of things that we need our fire service for and particularly if those happen at night we need to have assurance that we can get the help that we need. So I wanted to make sure that those concerns were raised to this committee so that as part of your deliberations you could consider all those aspects but also particularly I feel that a lot of people as yet do not know about the current proposals. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed and thank you to all five speakers I'm sure the chief fire officer and the portfolio holder have been busy taking notes and will respond to that when we get to debate. So thank you very much indeed. Right so we now move on to item three questions to portfolio holders relevant to this scrutiny committee it says up to 30 minutes I would remind you we have got a heavy agenda this afternoon. Are there any questions to portfolio holders this afternoon? No? Okay thank you very much indeed. So we move to item four on the agenda which is the Warwickshire Foreign Rescue Service resourcing to risk proposal. It is the job of this committee this afternoon to consider the model that is put before us and to decide whether resourcing to risk takes place with this. I think it's important to make the statement to start with that we will be in debate this afternoon we're not a decision-making body we are here to comment and to consider this report but above all and above everything else I think we should all note our real pride and the service and the work of Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service and I would like to think that while we debate this afternoon we keep that at the forefront of our mind. We've already heard of tragedies in the past these are incredibly brave hard-working individuals and we are incredibly proud of them so we'll keep that in mind as we have our debate this afternoon. My intention is to hand to the chief fire officer and make let him make his presentation some councillors have put questions in advance those councillors will be called first then we will move into a general debate this afternoon and hopefully the chief fire officer can ring out all the items that have been raised and bring some answers to us all so I'm going to pass across to Ben Brooks our chief fire officer and I'm thanking you in advance Ben for your hard work on this. Good afternoon everyone thank you so much for all those who have come in today and taking the time and effort to do so really appreciate it. So what I'm going to do is give a brief overview of where we've got to in relation to Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Services resourcing to risk it's a presentation that will be on the screen then I'll cover some of the key areas raised by our public speakers and I'll hand over to the portfolio holder for to cover any of the other elements he would like to from those public speakers so we go to the next slide please. Just give an overview around why we are resourcing to risk and why this project was initially initiated. Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service is currently experiencing four challenges these challenges are very real and we have to do something about it. Firstly Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service currently has more fire engines, fire appliances available at night than we do in the day even though activity is significantly higher in the day we need to make sure we're effective. Could I just say the public speakers if they wish to move to the public gallery so they can get a better view of what's being presented please please feel free oh you've got it on the screen wonderful as long as you can see thank you sorry no problem thanks chair. So it's really important that we make sure our people are as productive as they possibly can be our firefighters are brilliant we need to make sure they're in the right place at the right time to meet risk. Secondly our on call availability in its current form is declining raising challenges around the sustainability of this model. Really want to emphasise and draw your attention to the His Majesty's spectra of of constabberies and foreign rescue services and they have recently released a state of fire report looking at the foreign rescue service on a national basis that has presented that eighty percent of foreign rescue services across the country are experiencing this same challenge reducing on call availability over the last twelve months to five years. They also state that the current model on call model in its current form is not sustainable into the future. We are experiencing that here in Warwickshire. Thirdly response times that we've committed to our communities is not being met there's no national standard around response times but we've committed that we will get to incidents involving life and property within ten minutes on seventy five percent of occasions we've not met those response times for for several years. Finally the challenge we're facing is around our shift systems so the day crew plus shift system is not nationally accepted and has been subject to legal challenge in other foreign rescue services. It has been removed from a number of foreign rescue services and that places not just a risk on the fire authority and the senior leadership team in Warwickshire foreign rescue service it places a risk on individuals working that shift system. Others of our shift systems are not sustainable into the future so these are four challenges we need to address. Next slide please. So it was decided that we would go out and consult Warwickshire County Council cabinet made the decision in November that we would go and out and consult on option 2A. That public consultation ran for a period of thirteen weeks we proposed a twelve week consultation the reason it's thirteen weeks is we excluded the Christmas week from that consultation to make sure we had the full twelve weeks of consultation. I'd like to thank our communities for actively engaging in that consultation. We received just under one thousand three hundred survey consultation responses just to put that into some type of context. When we've consulted previously in our strategy we've had about three hundred responses to that so this shows a significant increase in that consultation. I'd also like to emphasize though it's not point six percent of the population of Warwickshire. So we are keen to engage our communities even more. We received two hundred and nine emails, questions and queries, we had public events with good attendance, we went to parish and town council meetings, we held twenty eight workshops with our people to make sure we were gathering the ideas and thoughts of our people as well and we had two sessions which we've entitled drag and den sessions on there. They were where our people were able to present their ideas and thoughts to us to make sure we'd considered all the alternative ways in which we could solve the four consultation challenges that I presented earlier. Next slide please. So what we've done is we've analyzed all of the consultation responses. We analyzed all of the responses from the public meetings and the concerns people raised. We have analyzed all of the proposals, suggestions, alternatives put forward by our people and that pulled out some themes and we focused on using these themes, making sure that we addressed these as best we could through any modifications and amendments to option 2A. They include increase in response times, distances, coverage, capacity to attend incidents, there's concerns around danger and threat to life, disparity between day and night cover, impact on increased housing and population. Further reflections around urban and rural differences, differences between the north and the south which I think we've heard through some of our public speakers. Some concerns around the feasibility of some of our shifts patterns and some suggestions that we should consider keeping our on-call model particularly at night. So those were the key themes that came out of the consultation. Next slide please. So what did we do then? What we did was we got some experts from outside of Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service, experts in Fire and Rescue Service operations, in community risk management planning and data, human resources, legal, communications. We developed a set of assessment criteria and we also developed a set of assessment criteria that were based on ensuring that the four key challenges that I presented were addressed as well. So what we then did is we reviewed every single idea that was put forward through this assessment criteria and that gave us a proposed option for the future. Next slide please. So that option for the future is Model A and that is what is being proposed to cabinet. What that model does is guarantees and that's an important word at the moment. People talk about our availability of appliances if they're available. Our on-call appliances on average currently are available 43% of the time and not guaranteed, especially in some parts of the county. So this guarantees 14 fire appliances in the day, 13 fire appliances at night. It provides an extra four resilience fire appliances that will be available within two hours at any time in the day. It modernizes the on-call. We've listened and it uses it at nighttime only, which is when our availability is best. That is being used at specific locations based upon risk where we achieve the best possible response times. This improves first and second appliance response times on average across the county to life and property instance. It improves first appliance attendance times by 58 seconds, so almost a minute across the county on average. Really, really importantly, Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service doesn't have a large number of emergency response activities. We're one of the lowest actually across the country in relation to the need from our communities for us to respond. A significant amount of our important work is prevention and protection, stopping it happening in the first place and making sure people are safe. This increases our ability through having daytime resources to deliver prevention and protection by 27%. That will make a huge difference to our communities and in areas where there may be slightly longer response times, we will deliver prevention and protection through that extra capacity. The proposed model removes unlawful shift systems. It does require though a revenue investment of £556,000 per annum for three years and a capital investment of 600,000 and it results in an additional 30 whole-time firefighter positions, full-time positions in Warwickshire. Just to give you an indication geographically on what that looks and feels like, I won't go through every location but I will talk through what each colour on the map represents. So the red circle is a whole-time, 24/7 engine. So that's permanent firefighters, it's their main occupation and that fire engine is available 24/7. A green circle is where you have our whole-time firefighters available between seven in the morning and seven at night and then you have the on-call availability from seven at night to seven in the morning. They can respond from their workplace or from home within five minutes so you get a delayed five minute turn-in but that appliance is available all the time 24/7. The orange circle is a whole-time daytime resource only, so that's permanent firefighters who are there seven in the morning until seven at night. The purple circles are night-time on-call fire appliances, so they're just at night, seven o'clock at night until seven in the morning, available from home or work with a five minute turn-in to station. And then finally, I think it looks a bit bluish there, I think it's grey in the paper but it looks blue there, the resilience fire plants. They are a fire plant that has a dedicated crew to that location with a fire engine with all their fire kit there and they are turned in. Rather than their on-call that are turned in within five minutes, there will be a turn-in within two hours and they provide resilience either reactively, when we have a large instant occurring, a major instant or our resources are stretched, or proactively in the event of a flood type event that's been raised already over there, we can predict the weather, we can see when weather is changing and we can call those resources in a more proactive way to address risk. I think that's the last slide. So what I'll do now, if it's okay Chair, is just take and address some of the areas raised by members of the public, is that okay? So Jill, thank you ever so much, it's nice to see you again. You've raised a few areas around on-call at night and could we do that in the day. The data very much shows us that the feasibility and achievability of having on-call in the day is not possible, that's not realistic for us. We've analysed our communities, we've looked at how realistic that is and it's not, but we have absolutely heard that it's realistic at night. So what we've done is we've introduced more whole time fire engines in the day and then introduced less of those at night but on-call, so we have the 14 appliances in the day and 13 at night. In relation to the additional funding, why do we need the additional funding? They are salary. All of the investment here is all around operational funding for salaries. So there are some savings in some areas, as you've suggested, we've reduced some areas and then we increase others. When you look at the total required budget then for the salaries of our frontline operational firefighters across Warwickshire with Model A, it requires an investment of $556,000. That does include the removal of RSOs from Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service, as you've said, because of the changes in how management can work. The $600,000 that is focused in on one-off spends, so that is around capital, so any station modifications we may need to do in modernization to make them fit for purpose for Model A, and also elements there around some human resource elements should they be required as we move forward as well. Penny, nice to see you as well, thank you for coming out today. So in relation to your questions around resilience and how resilience is going to work, we have to be incredibly careful in this space because we know the principles, so they will be firefighters who have a resilient station as their home location, they'll be allocated to that station, there will be a fire engine there, they'll be all kitted, there will be all the equipment there. Now in relation to how exactly it works, that will be through consultation and negotiation with the representative bodies. We can't bypass collective bargaining, so anything in relation to an employee's terms and conditions, contract for employment, hours of work, we have to go through that process. So depending on the decision of cabinet, they will be determined, every single firefighter in Warwickshire who is impacted by these changes will have a one-to-one discussion detailing to them how this is going to work into the future, what their options are, and it will be very, very clear to them. In relation to resilience and grey book, so there are two ways it can be a grey book compliance shift system. There's nothing in the grey book around on-call being a five-minute turn-in, so we could make it an on-call contract with a two-hour turn-in, there's nothing that prevents that, and there is also something under the grey book called recall to duty, which is utilised in other farm rescue services. We want to use the best option under the grey book terms and conditions for our people, and we discussed that briefly yesterday, so I won't go into that now. In relation to covering the south, you've talked about eight to three, I want to be really clear in this space, our on-call fire appliances in the south are not available a significant amount of the time. If you look at those on-call fire appliances, ships are on sale 1% in the day, Fenney Compton 2% in the day, so we can't make that comparison. What this model does is it guarantees more fire appliances guaranteed across the county of Warwickshire, and we know what resources we've got. Val, thank you for coming along as well. So I've briefly mentioned fire cover in the south there. What we have done through this is currently our on-call fire fighters, they're brilliant, they're dedicated, but they have other employment in the day particularly, and at night some of those fire stations down in the south, they're only available 20% of the time, so at 80% of the time there is no fire cover there. What we're doing is guaranteeing fire cover at Wellsbourne, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bidford at night, Ulster in the day, Henley and Arden in the day and night. That provides a good resource configuration for that area of the county. I also want to make clear that what we don't do is have a static model, so what we present to you on the screen there is the starting position for our resources. We move our resources around all of the time based on risk and how risk and demographics change. We're actually investing in a new digital system called the Dynamic Cover Tool, which looks at where risk is by minute of the day and we will move our resources around the county as is needed. So we're only looking at the starting position and what this provides is significantly more guaranteed resources in the south of the county. Recruitment from on-call, again I'll just draw your attention to the national picture here. We have done significant things in Warwickshire, but the HMIC have indicated 80% of farm rescue services have seen a decline in on-call availability over the last 12 months. We're not on our own here. I've spoken to many other chief fire officers who are considering very similar things to what we're doing at the moment. Penny, nice to see you and thank you for your comments around listening. I genuinely hope people do feel that we have. In relation to budgets, I'll leave that for Andy to respond to if that's okay around the budgets and what that looks like for the future. Susan, nice to see you. Thank you for coming this afternoon. We've had clear advice that we've gone through meaningful consultation and there's no requirement to go back out to consultation, so that is the legal advice that we have. I echo your thoughts around our firefighters. They're brilliant and clearly we remember the fallen firefighters at Atherston on Stour. We are trying to find the best possible guaranteed model for the communities of Warwickshire. In relation to flooding, we've got the resilience teams. This guarantees more fire appliances per day than I can currently. In the day at the moment, I average one on-call fire appliance. I don't have anywhere near 14 fire appliances available most days in Warwickshire. This guarantees 14 fire appliances. That is really important in relation to flooding and we will respond as best we can across the county of Warwickshire. We move resources, our specialist water responses at Rugby, so we move our resources around on an ongoing basis based on risk and we call back resilient crews as well. Thank you all and I'll hand over to the chair or Andy. Thank you. I'm sorry, we're in a public debate. Mr. Condicore, you are out of order. Mr. Condicore, you are out of order. If you do not stop, Mr. Condicore, I will adjourn this meeting. You are out of order. Thank you. Mr. Condicore, I won't tell you again. Thank you. Ben, can I personally thank you for the time you've put into this and the engagement that you have had with other bodies and again, we would like to send our thanks to each and every man and woman that works as a firefighter in this county. You do a wonderful job. Thank you very much. So we'll keep that in mind as we move forward. Can I move on to the portfolio holder, please? Councillor Crump? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's several points I'd just like to come in and again, reiterate and echo your views that Warkshire Fire and Rescue, all the firefighters and the operation all support staff in Warkshire do a great job keeping our residents, visitors and people who work here as safe as they can. Firstly, it's not a cut. There's going to be an extra commitment of 2.268 million, 600,000 pounds of latest capital over the next three years. And I know Penny was and the Bidford crew, as they were known, went to most of the consultation meetings. And at that consultation meetings, one of the questions was, was model A set in stone? Sorry, I'm getting my models mixed up here. Was model 2A set in stone? And we said at the time, it would form part of the CRMP, which would last three years, and at the end of those three years, we would review it. So we were saying it's not a set in stone. But if you've got a CRMP and a model, it makes sense that you fund that model over the three years. And this is what we're going to be doing with the 556,000 over the three years. So that would be the guarantee for three years. So hopefully, you're happy with that. I've put myself off there with the models. I don't know why. It's a sort of apologize. So that's one of the big investments. Secondly, we have listened to the consultation. As Ben said, we were all parts of the county, and I certainly went to places that hadn't been followed for a long while. And it was a good job myself. I've worked because some of the places I got lost coming back. But we went to all parts of the county. We did listen to the messages. We did listen to the fact there was concern about cover at night. And you will see that the guaranteed cover at night will be going from 8 to 13. And we've also listened that where on-call availability was strong, places like Polswith, South, Bidford, we've listened and we've kept that resource. So there is this extra cover. In the changes from option 2A to the Model A which has been proposed, response times in four out of the five districts and boroughs will improve. And it's an improvement overall of 41 seconds service-wide. 58, I've just been told, from the original one. But the difference between Model A and option 2A, it's a 41-second overall improvement. So we are listening. We have 1,300 responses to the public consultation. And we've also listened to the views of staff, planners and rep bodies. So as you can see, this proposal is what you could say radically altered, radically different. And it comes with those responsibilities. We've needed to invest additional monies, both revenue and capital. We're also building on resilience. We've talked about climate change. Councillor Gee had mentioned flooding. So we have built more resilience. The Chief Fire Officer, who we give the resources to, but Andre's operational independence, it's up to him how he deploys them, has wanted this configuration. And with the resilience team, they could be possibly called back within two hours in terms of dealing with things like flooding. Because in most cases, flooding doesn't suddenly go from one centimetre to 50 centimetres in five minutes. Well, if it does, we would be in trouble in lots of parts of Warwickshire. So that way, we can call people in back with the Resilience Model to respond to things like climate change. And the other thing was the key thing, again, we've listened to residents and our firefighters, that the shift, the part-time shift between 6 o'clock and 10 p.m., there was quite a few concerns about that, how that was going to be covered, would it work, would there be enough training time, et cetera. So we have listened to that. And that's why that money that was going to be put in for the part-time shift has been reallocated and redistributed so we can have additional 30 firefighters in whole-time firefighters throughout Warwickshire. So thank you.
• Councillor Crump, thank you for your contribution. Councillor, some of you were kind enough to submit some questions in advance. So I'm correct, I think Councillor Bode, I think you did, Councillor Sinclair. Councillor Major, did you send some in advance? Right. Okay. I'm going to offer the three of you the option to ask your questions first if you wish to. So Councillor Bode, I'm going to come to you first if you would like to ask your questions to the Chief Fire Officer. - Okay, thank you. I have quite a lot of questions. Would you like me to ask them one at a time? - Whatever the Chief Fire Officer would be most comfortable with, do you want to take them all in one?
• They do cover a whole range of things, so probably if I ask them one at a time and Ben gives an answer. - You happy with that, Ben, we deal with that?
• I have one more supplementary at the end. - Okay, Sarah, thank you. So regarding the financial information, which I have to say there isn't an awful lot, the spending of over £2 million here with actually very little detail, so my question was please can you provide a breakdown of how the £556,000 will be spent each year and also a breakdown of how the capital of £600,000 will be spent? - Yes, thanks, Sarah. So what we have done in preparing this model is, so when we went out to look at option 2A we had the model financed by an independent financial expert. We then got a section 151's team to scrutinise and assure us that that was correct. We have done exactly the same with this model. So we have asked the section 15 officer and their teams to determine and assess the financials behind the model. They're all linked to the salaries, so the salaries of the operational model. We have robust and highly effective financial arrangements and teams within Warwickshire County Councils. So I may default to Rob if he wants to go around how much more we want to talk about the finances, but they have been fully costed, fully assessed through the right mechanisms through the County Council and will be subject to the right auditing processes. - Thank you, Ben. Sarah, do you want to ask your next question? - I would hope when the cabinet report is written, assuming it is, that there is more detail included because £2 million and very little detail written down. So I would like to see that. Second question, can you provide details of how many new whole-time firefighters will be required and give details of how long it will take to recruit and train them and how many on-call firefighters will lose their posts? - Yeah, thanks again, Councillor. So I didn't answer your question around the 600,000, so I'll come to that first. So that has been an assessment done of any capital changes that need to be, modifications that need to be done to any of the stations that now require resting facilities. So that has been done by the County Council Estates Team by making an assessment and also any HR costs. We'll clearly keep those capital costs down to an absolute minimum, so that is a worst-case scenario that we have put within that. In relation to posts, this will require an additional 30 whole-time firefighter posts. That is a very straightforward calculation. In relation to on-call, that is a lot more difficult to calculate and I'll explain why. So our current on-call firefighters, some will do 40 hours, some will do 60 hours, some will do 80 hours, some will do 120 hour contracts. So it depends on the, when we go out to recruitment, what hours the people we recruit will want to do. So with resilience and with the five on-call stations at night and the 30 additional whole-time posts, then we believe that there will be opportunities for the majority of our people. We need to go through a consultation process, negotiation with the rep bodies to determine those terms and conditions. Thank you. Redundancy costs, can you tell me what the estimated redundancy costs are and is that part of the 556,000? Yeah, thanks Sarah. In relation to the redundancy process, we'll be working with the representative bodies should a decision be made in that area. What we've done is we've done some calculations on redundancy, which I'm not going to go into because it will be revealing some, the personal impacts on individuals. But what we've done is we've got a calculator that assesses if 25% of current on-call firefighters, 50% and we've worked out and 100% in relation to redundancies, what those costs look and feel like. They are not built into the 556, they're built into the 600K because it's a one-off payment. I do believe the council has a redundancy reserve that redundancies usually come from and I just wondered if Mr Powell would be able to confirm that we've still got the reserve and that's where any redundancies are likely to be paid from. I know that's putting you on the spot. Rob, are you able to comment on that? Thank you, Rob. Sarah, any more questions? Oh, yes. Can you explain how the average response times for each area are worked out? Thanks, Sarah. I'm going to try not to go too technical now. So we work with... I think technical is really good. There's no harm in technical. We're all able to understand and I think it's good for people to understand how it is worked out. So we worked with an internationally recognised renowned modelling company called ORH. What they have done is they've used five years' worth of incident data. What they've done with that incident data is they've put that into a simulation. They've then tested that simulation against current performance to ensure that the simulation itself is accurate and works effectively. They've then projected that simulation into the future for the next five years based on likely incidents we're going to attend and that has given us the average response times. Just to be clear, we have significantly more incidents in certain parts of the county. We use the mean average. So by using the mean average, you'll see that areas where we have larger amounts of response times to life and property incidents that has the most impact on the mean average. Okay. What are the second pump attendance times? I noticed they were included in the original consultation but they're not included anywhere here. Yeah, thanks, Councillor. The reason they're not included is you've got your performance report coming next. So this committee only actually reports on first appliance attendance times. That is our agreed performance criteria and has been for a number of years. So hence why we're reporting what we normally report in relation to our key performance measures into this committee. We can provide second appliance attendance times if that's required. Just again, so the committee is aware, 75% of all incidents we attend only require one fire engine. It is one fire engine, the first that attends, that makes a lot of the life-changing differences at an incident. We focus very much, therefore, on first appliance response times and they improve by 58 seconds across the county. Second appliance attendance times also improve in this model on average across the whole county. But three of the areas, they are slower than they currently are. Okay. Can you explain what contracted on-call means and how does it differ from the current system? Thanks again, Councillor. Our current on-call model, our on-call firefighters clearly have contracts for a certain number of hours and what they can do is they can book on and off duty at any time based on their availability and they are required to provide cover during the day and the night. That leads to massive fluctuations in our availability for on-call fire appliances. So we are looking to amend those contracts to be focused on availability during the night and through negotiation and consultation, those contracts will be drawn up that finds the balance between guaranteed fire engine availability, so probably not being able to book off quite as frequently and flexibly, whilst also having as much flexibility as we possibly can for our on-call firefighters. But those contracts will be submitted in negotiation and consultation with the rep bodies. Okay and then just two points that are not in my questions and I will then reserve the right to come back later on if that's okay. There are no heat maps here. I think they were very useful in the part of the consultation, so I would hope that you will put those into the Cabinet report assuming this goes to Cabinet. And my final question is around Uneaton. Can you explain why you have moved from a two-pump model in Uneaton and have moved one from Uneaton to Bedworth? Yeah, thanks for that again Sarah. So in relation to the heat maps, we will certainly look into that and I can't confirm that, we will confirm whether we can put those in or not. In relation to the second appliance at Uneaton, both Uneaton and Bedworth are areas where we have high levels of activity. By splitting those resources across Uneaton and Bedworth, having them guaranteed, which the current on-call appliance at Bedworth isn't, provides a significant improvement in first appliance response times in that area across Uneaton and Bedworth. It also enables us to access areas like the M6 more effectively. Thank you very much. I will come back a little later on when everybody else has a comment other than a question. Certainly. As I say, I am sure that as debate evolves, questions will come up. So thank you. And Councillor Crump, I believe you want to comment. Yes, comment in response to one of the questions. The Chief Financial Officer, there are too many CFOs here today, the Chief Fire Officer even has asked for a certain level of resources and we're providing him with those resources. It is up to him how he deploys them. It is not for Councillors to impinge on his operational independence. And if we are perceived that we are doing this, I'm sure HMIC, FRS and the Home Office would have something serious to say about this. You know, Ben is the expert. He is well known in the NFCCC, the NFCC even. And he has brought these proposals forward after taking expert advice, looking at the data. And he and his team have decided that those are the best locations for the pumps throughout Warwickshire. So therefore, they are the experts. So that's not impinge on his operational independence. And let's make sure we do get the best result for Warwickshire for our residents, for our visitors and our business people. Thank you, Councillor Crump. We're going to move on now to Councillor Sinclair who's also submitted some questions in advance. So same as with Councillor Bode, Tim, if you would ask your questions one at a time to the Chief Fire Officer and he will respond. Thank you. Thanks, Chair. Yeah, and I have a number. I'm just picking up on portfolio holders' comments there. If I might suggest to him that we as a committee are here to probe and to put the Chief Fire Officer and himself, in fact, to the test. So if there are any holes in the information respecting the specialism and the expertise that he and the Chief Fire Officer have, our job is to weedle them out and fill any gaps. I'm sure he wouldn't disagree with that point. As long as they're evidence-based and rather an anecdotal, that would be really good from a scrutiny point of view. And evidence-based, I entirely agree. As he knows me well, I'm going to be asking about some numbers. So I have a number of areas I wanted to probe. The first one, and Sarah has actually covered most of the broad areas and some of the specific questions, but there are others that I want to cover. So the first broad area is around the structure, the appliance numbers. And if I'm understanding, and thank you, by the way, for the papers that you've produced and also for the presentation, because as a member, there obviously is a vast amount of information and I think you are trying to distill it down into as clear and concise and evidence-led way as possible. So thank you for doing that. What I took from what you've presented is that we moved from a fluctuating system where availability can be quite up and down on any part of the day or any day of the week to a system where there is more of a guarantee. And you've talked about 14 in the day and 13 in the evening. What I would welcome understanding, please, is in reality, what do we get in the day, albeit this is on average, and what do we get in the evening versus our guaranteed 14 and 13? That's my first question. Yeah, thanks, Councillor. So average on-call availability in the day is one fire appliance. Average on-call availability at night is six fire appliances. So you can see from the model we've got that it's very realistic because we're proposing zero on-call in the day and five at night. In relation to fluctuation, it fluctuates by hour of the day, month of the year. We have worse availability during some of the summer periods. So you're exactly right. So in relation to guaranteed fire appliance availability, I'm guaranteeing currently eight at night, 11 in the day. This gives us 14 in the day, 13 at night. I cannot guarantee on-call availability at the moment because it fluctuates by time of day and day of the week and month of the year. Thank you. I was just picking up on those numbers. So I think basically what you said is the amount of the baseline that we get in reality now, bearing in mind we've got whole-time appliances and then on-call and you give me averages, there is an increase day and night from what we have currently in reality to guaranteed what we will have both day and night across the county as an average. Is that right? Okay. Thank you. Could you please delve into the five districts and boroughs? Because within the paper you give us a split on response times for the five districts and boroughs, but you don't give us a split for appliance numbers on the districts and boroughs. Are you able to give any information again of how each district and borough performs? Recognizing I take the point that you're going to say it fluctuates at the moment versus it's guaranteed going forward. Thanks for those questions, Tim. I can give you a breakdown of guaranteed fire appliances per district around what the difference looks like from current to Model A. So the change for North Warwickshire is it stays the same as it currently is. In Nuneaton and Bedworth you have one further appliance that is guaranteed. In Rugby you have the same. In Warwickshire and Leamington you have an additional two fire appliances in the day and one at night. And in Stratford you have an additional one appliance in the day and two at night under the new model, guaranteed. Sorry, where are the two in Warwick and Leamington? Kenilworth is one. Where's the second one? Could we go through Councillor Sinclair's question? Okay, if Councillor Sinclair, perhaps you could ask him where the two are in Warwick district, because there's only Kenilworth, unless you think Southland's in Warwick district, which it isn't. Sarah, we went through your questions and please let Councillor Sinclair and then we did say we would come back afterwards. So let's have the same rules for each Councillor. Thank you. Thanks, Chair. And not wishing to not help my colleague, may I plough through my questions, you take notes and then come back. Is that all right? And I'll do the same. So yeah, if I may. I just wanted to just to be clear on what you said, so I've made sure I've understood. For each of the districts, five districts and boroughs, you described one of them as having the same. So what we have at the moment versus guaranteed in the future, no change. And then for the other four, for what we have in the moment versus what we will be guaranteed, an increase of appliances. Have I on both day and night or day and night? Have I understood that correctly? Two are the same, three increase. North Warwick stays the same, Rugby stays the same. Fine. Thank you. That's helpful. I wanted to move on to staffing. Sarah's asked some of the questions that I would already ask, but picking up on some of that. You've talked, I think, about the additional money, the 556K a year being spent on additional staff, additional whole time staff, I think. The new model has effectively five strands to it. I don't know how you describe those five colors, but five areas to it. You've got whole time, you've got resilience, you've got contracted on call. So perhaps that's four. My question is, do you have any concerns about how you will recruit into those new four or five new structures? Can you give us any sense of your understanding of how hard or easy it will be to recruit into those, please? Yeah, thanks again for those questions. So first in relation to whole time firefighters, whether that be 24/7 or day shifts to the whole time firefighter role, we know in Warwickshire historically on our recruitment campaigns that we'll have just under 1,000 applicants when we go out for a recruitment of about 20 posts. So we know, and this is a national thing, recruiting whole time firefighters isn't challenging, that we have a lot of people that want to become whole time. In fact, lots of our on call join us to become whole time. In relation to the on call, hopefully I've demonstrated that currently we average six fire plants on call at night. So getting five in those locations, there is good availability. We believe it is absolutely achievable. In relation to the resilience fire appliances, you'll see within Model A, we've reduced that compared with Model Option 2A. There were eight resilience, they were called surge at that point, fire engines. Now there are four. Through the process of working with our people through this, we did a survey. We've talked to people. We believe it is absolutely realistic to be able to recruit four resilience fire appliances in Warwickshire from existing people. Okay, thank you. I think response times was another area I wanted to probe, and I think we have covered some of this. Perhaps I can again just, if I may, just clarify my understanding of what you've already said, and we do have a breakdown in here for each of the five districts and boroughs. I think what you've said, if you look at where we are currently, there's an average provided, and then where we will go to in Model A and calculate it through the model process that you explained, you've said this is what is guaranteed. I think my understanding is that your current is an average of lots of ups and downs. So it's an average of spikes of ups and downs. So some days you might get that, but other times of the day you might not. The new model is a flat line, if you like, a guaranteed flat line. Am I right in my understanding there? Yes and no. So yes, in relation to appliance availability, we'll be able to guarantee fire appliance availability, so therefore response times will be much more guaranteed and not fluctuate. The only reason I caveat it with a no is our response times are also dictated by where an incident is, so you can sometimes have three weeks where you have incidents which are further away and require a longer response time, so that will still occur. But the fluctuation of resource availability which impacts on response times will, like you say, become consistent. That throws up the question then of your model has suggested these guaranteed response times or these response times. You're saying they're not absolutely guaranteed, but can you just explain to me why you have confidence in your model that the model figures are accurate then because you've just said other factors might come into play? I would assume the model took those other factors into play. Yeah, the average will be achieved through the model, that will, but like I say, what I don't want you to think, Councillor, is that if you looked on a monthly basis it would be absolutely a flat line. It won't be because you get variation in travel times. If you average that out over a 12-month period, absolutely it will be guaranteed in that way. Thank you. Again, I just want to clarify this point, so I think it's really important. In my head, I'm seeing current is a very large wave with high extremes between the two peaks, and what you've just described is a shallow wave where it won't be a flat line, but the extremes of under and over are significantly less. That's what you described to me. Is that fair? Yeah, that's correct. Also, we are resourcing to risk, so we're putting resources where they're most likely to be needed for life and property incidents, so you'll see an improvement in that way. Thank you, Chair. I'm going to keep going if that's all right. Finance, I think we've covered finance, and I would echo Councillor Boad's comment that more detail within papers is valuable, because we have needed to probe on this, so I think that's just as an observation. I wanted to comment about protection. One of the things you said in the presentation, and actually came out more clearly than came out in the paper, was how valuable our protection activity is in stopping major incidences in the first place, because to be frank, we don't want major incidences, do we? We want to diminish them to zero if we possibly can, and only then respond to them. You talked about the new model, Model A, building on the success we've had historically, I think, and giving us an additional 27% prevention activity. Could you talk more about that? Because that seems to me to be incredibly important. Yeah, thanks again, Councillor. I totally agree with that. If you look at Warwickshire Farm Rescue Service, we have one of the lowest amounts of operational emergency response activity out of any farm rescue service in the country. If you look at the 20-year profile, we've gone from about 15,000 incidents per annum down to 3.5, 3,600 incidents per year. That is through a range of factors, like changes to furnishing regs, road traffic provisions, and safer roads. However, our prevention activity has a huge difference on that. There are certain areas of the county that don't rely as heavily on an emergency response, but we can absolutely do prevention and protection and make a huge difference in that space. I'd also like to say that there's a lot of evidence that if a person hasn't got a closed door between them and the fire and a working smoke alarm, then response is unlikely to make the difference required. So prevention is a critical part of what we do. Protection is a critical part of what we do. Thank you. Perhaps others in the Chamber, maybe you've been here longer than I have, are not surprised by those numbers. They surprise me. You just said we've gone from 15,000 serious incidences, call-outs, to 3,500 in the space of 20 years, a reasonable period. That's fantastic. If I might suggest, that should be more widely known. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's great, and we need to keep going. We need to get to 3.5 down to as low a number as is physically possible. Just to come in on that. I agree, and we need to celebrate some of that success. It's hard to measure prevention and protection in the short term, but over the long term, you can really see the difference we've made. Also, just want to emphasize the fact that the incidents we are attending are different now as well. It's not as predominantly fires. We already have reference to things like flooding and heat waves. The resilience teams are really important for that part as well. We are trying to develop a model that is sustainable for our Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service into the future. Thank you. Review is my last area of questioning at this stage. Assuming the new model, if it were adopted, what's the first opportunity we as a committee, or actually more broadly perhaps the council beyond this committee, will have to understand if it's achieving the desired result? Thanks again, Councillor. Dependent on the decision of cabinet, should that be a decision to adopt model A, then we will begin a process of rep body and staff engagement, consultation, negotiation on their terms and conditions. We want to do everything we can to support our people through this process. I think some of their concern at the moment is actually the unknown. Once a decision is made that will be very, very helpful for them. What we then plan to do is to start implementation as of January 2025. That will be a 12-month implementation through to December 2025. Then we will be in a position where the model is in place at the start of 2026. From then we can clearly start evaluating and reviewing in more detail. However, there will be an ongoing review. As an example, we might adopt -- we've got an implementation plan which looks at phases. It may be as an example that one of the phases is the introduction of the resilience for appliances. We won't wait to start reviewing that. We will start that review and evaluation. I think it's built in from the start, Councillor, not waiting until the end. For the full model it will be probably the beginning or middle of 2026. Thanks again. If I can just clarify what I think you said there. Between January 25 and January 26, there may be some interim evaluation that we may get to see. But from January 26, the whole model would be in place and a period of time after that, three, six, 12 months, you would give a full evaluation. Is that fair? Yes, that's absolutely fair. Just to emphasise, we have to produce a community risk management plan every three years and review it. That has to be reviewed on an ongoing basis. Yes, 100 per cent what you said. It's built into our process that we do that ongoing review. Thank you. I think that's really, really important that this body, this committee and more broadly, Councillors and frankly more broadly the general public get a chance to see if there's change. What's the impact of change? My final question relates really to the resilience model. Is there going to be, you kind of touched on it a little bit earlier, but is there going to be a specific evaluation relating to how well, if there is a resilience model, that resilience model is being recruited to, is working, is operating, et cetera, et cetera, because that appears to me to be the area where most people seem to have most concern, or at least there are concerns around it. Yes, thanks again, Councillor. Just to emphasise the fact that Kent Fire and Rescue Service operate a very similar resilience type model and so the Mersey side. So it's not totally untested at the moment, but you are right. We will not wait. We will evaluate as we go. We'll evaluate each phase of it. We'll test mobilisation and deployment of those resources and make sure they're guaranteed and ready to be available as and when needed and provide that evidence. And again, if I might just say a final point, those reviews, when done, where appropriate, can they come back to scrutiny body and/or other, but particularly scrutiny body so that we can see in as close to real time as possible how things are performing. Do we have a commitment to that? Yes, we can bring to over in scrutiny competency the areas of review as appropriate because I think it's important that we are transparent in that space, yes. Thank you very much and thank you very much for answering my questions. Thank you. It's been suggested we could do a briefing note on that, Councillor, if that's helpful. Okay, the portfolio holder has indicated he'd like to just make a few comments on the points raised. Yes, it was just one point to Councillor Sinclair to do with funding and the CRMP. I did mention it earlier that as part of the consultation, we were saying that one of the questions, one of the constant questions was the initial model that we consulted on set in stone. And we were saying no, it was going to be linked to the CRMP and that's why we've tried to put the funding for the three years during the life of the CRMP. So when the CRMP comes to an end, obviously there will be ongoing review of that anyway, but at the end of the CRMP, we'll have to come up with a new one and then we can decide whether resources are sufficient, whether the pump's in the right place, have we got the right funding and that doesn't stop us, rule out any future investment or funding in workshop fire and rescue if that's perceived to be needed. So that's why the three year funding was given. Thank you, I'll come back to Ben on that. Yeah, just Councillor Sinclair, thanks for your questions. If I got any of the numbers in the different districts wrong, then I'll provide a table of that after this. Just to really be clear, currently we have guaranteed 11 appliances in the day and eight at night. Under the new model A, we can guarantee 14 in the day and 13 at night. So that's the overarching, but we can do the breakdown of districts after this meeting if that's helpful. Thank you very much, Ben. Councillor Major Singh, Major, you put questions in as well, would you like to ask yours now? I think most of mine have been answered, but I've got just one. In North Warwickshire, Atherston being downgraded from a 24 hour appliance to a 12 hour appliance, where will the cover for Atherston come if there's an incident during the night? Because we only have an on call at Polsworth and under the new proposal, just a one 24 hour appliance in Nuneaton. Thank you, Councillor and thank you for the conversation yesterday as well. So just want to pick up on the language around the downgrading. So under option 2A, there was a proposal that that became a 24/7 station. It's not a 24/7 station now, so there is no ground downgrade from where it currently is. It's currently day crewed with on call at night is what you have at Atherston. I understand though there's no night cover proposed, which there is currently through on call, which isn't guaranteed. It's available just over 80% of the time at night, so it's not guaranteed in that area. What we've done in the North of Warwickshire is you've got Atherston providing cover in the day, Polsworth providing cover at night, giving you an appliance 24/7 in that area. You then look at that whole of that area, you now have guaranteed response from Bedworth, Nuneaton, Cozill as well. So the resource configuration in that area is fit for purpose against the risk and the incidents we have in that area, recognising the increase in prevention and protection as well. Thank you very much. That covers the questions that were submitted in advance. So Councillors that haven't asked questions yet, do you have any points? Okay. Councillor Spencer. Thank you, Ben. It's really quite refreshing to see that we've had a consultation which has resulted in I would say a significant change to the original proposal. Being selfish, Kenilworth is very dear to my heart and I see a big win for my town on here. Slightly worried about the night-time cover because my current on-call firefighters do provide about 50% of night-time cover for the town. Where would my night-time cover come from? Is that going to now come from Leamington or is it going to be coming over from further afield? That's one question. And then with my firefighters, which I have, who are all on call and I have a good passionate group of guys there, how are they going to be absorbed within the new model? Because I have a feeling that with their lifestyles we may be losing a lot of talent. That's really where my concerns are. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. So I'm glad you feel that we've listened and for the communities of Kenilworth having that dedicated full-time resource in the day that I hope will be really effective. You're right. I don't want to just raise Kenilworth here. We have committed dedicated on-call people throughout our county. This has never been about the on-call firefighters. This is about the model and the system itself. That's really, really important to say. We will have one-to-ones with all of our people. We hope that if they're flexible and we're flexible we can find a pathway there. So we've talked about it and this will need to be subject to negotiation and consultation. But could people at Kenilworth do days at the weekend as an example? Could they do resilience? There's 30 whole-time positions available to them. We want to find the widest and broadest flexibilities to enable really good people to stay with us. In relation to who will respond to Kenilworth at night, I know our communities look at it as Kenilworth Fire Station, Leamington Fire Station. We don't look at it like that. We have, as I've said, the resources, which will be 14 guaranteed in the day and 13 at night. We move them around the county as and when needed. So right now you'll find Kenilworth could be moved somewhere else and Leamington could be or vice versa. So we're actually investing in technology. We've gone live with automatic vehicle location systems. What that does is every fire engine across the county is now tracked. We know exactly where it is and we mobilise the nearest resource to an incident at all times, whoever that is. So what you'll find for Kenilworth is clearly if everyone's at home station, you're likely to get Leamington. That's not the normal picture. So you'll get the closest resource to respond to life and property incidents across the county. We're also investing in a tool called the Dynamic Cover Tool, which maps risk on a minute-by-minute basis, which again enables us to put our resources in the right place at the right time. So there's nothing stopping us mobilising or putting a resource into Kenilworth as and when it needed during the night time, moving it from somewhere else. We do that on an ongoing basis. I think there is a perception we have a static model and this is what it looks like. We've purposely taken the names of fire plants off the side of fire plants because it isn't how it works. We move resources around all of the time. Thank you. And just to reiterate, I think that where the model started, what the consultation started out with to where we are today is significant and I don't think it's just shows that consultation does work. Thank you, Councillor Spencer. Councillor Feeney, Sarah. Sorry, Ben, you're going to have to turn around and look away. You don't have to. You're fine, it's fine. You don't have to turn and look at me, I promise. You've seen me enough. I suppose one of my questions, Councillor Boeh touched on it, but Neneaton, I think residents are really concerned in Neneaton about two to one. I understand absolutely the issues around Bedworth and the M6 and it being critical, some of the calls that we get onto the M6, we have to be really timely in getting there because of the ongoing dangers. So I absolutely get that. But I think one of the real concerns, certainly for the resident who rang me this morning from Neneaton, is that a lot of the building that's going on, we talk about looking at where our risk factors are and the risk profile. A lot of the building is actually on the opposite side of Neneaton to Bedworth. We're almost building up towards out to Hinkley and up towards Atherston, really. And I think the other one that came from them, and I think these are the questions that keep coming is that we're getting taller buildings built in Neneaton now. We'd like to see more buildings with multiple occupants in and that obviously potentially increase risk. I think people have always got a kind of Grenfell in their minds, haven't they? So I think for me, I think if we could just understand what we're thinking about, the additional building in Neneaton and the additional risks and how you feel that kind of the one appliance will mitigate that. I've got some more afterwards, but I thought we did it one at a time, sorry. Thanks, Councillor Feeney. So firstly, I understand people's concerns, but really want to emphasise, I'm sorry I've got my back to you, but I have to for the microphone, is that what we've looked at for that area is what's the best possible resource configuration we can do for Neneaton, Bedworth, Coasea, Latherston. That works out as the best possible configuration for everyone to provide the best possible first response times. In relation to new builds, there isn't significant evidence that new builds become far risk quickly because they tend to comply with building regs protection activity, which we've said is going to increase by 27 per cent is a key part of that process in protecting people. We want to prevent and protect people in that way. So that is really, really important. And then I will emphasise again that if there is a risk, if there is an incident that occurs in Neneaton or Bedworth, we'd be deploying resources from around the county to support that as well. So it wouldn't be those resources. We also have to review our community risk management plan regularly. So if the risk does change and there's evidence to show that additional resources are required in that area due to emergency incidents that are occurring, we will take steps to change our resource configuration. I really want to emphasise the fact that community risk management planning needs to be flexible enough that we change our resource configurations regularly. This sort of process is really challenging. We need to get into a mindset where risk and vulnerability changes. We can move and flex our fire and rescue service resources to meet that risk on an ongoing basis. Thank you. I hadn't written this down, but I suppose one of my questions is COSL kind of being full time 24/7, also managing the risk of the motorway kind of further up the kind of motorway system. And you've got a huge amount of motorway around COSL as well, and again, I suppose polls would tip out onto the M40. No, M42, isn't it? I get confused with big numbers. No, not really. But one of the questions I've got, and it might kind of come into the Adderston question really as well, is you've talked about in respect to resilience, one of the models we used might be recalled to duty. And from memory, because of working time directive and those types of regulations, I suppose my question is would it have an impact on kind of shifts for the following day? Would that mean changing firefighters' hours around? I know you've got incredibly flexible firefighters, and I was in rugby the other week after they'd been at the hospital all night, and we'd had seven appliances, some of which came from Kenilworth, and I think some came even from Coventry. I mean, far fun places, you know. But would that impact on the shifts and kind of the daytime resilience then? Yeah, thanks again, Councillor. So this was actually picked up in his magazine Spectra of Conservation of Fire and Rescue Service Report of Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service, and our need to manage working time better. So at the moment, I think we're in a much more dangerous position where on-call can book on and off as and when they choose. They are, if you look at our on-call configuration, just over 80 of our on-call firefighters out of 120 are purely on-call, but they go straight from their place of work, potentially, to an incident. And then in relation to our whole-time firefighters, we have limited governance over our whole-time firefighters, and then when they book on and off from an on-call perspective. So this resourcing to risk and Model A provides a real opportunity for us to better manage fatigue, wellbeing, and welfare of our people, and we are very much looking at that. Thank you. You know, that would be close to my heart as doing the job I do. I think the other question I've got is many members on the committee, I should imagine all of us, have received several different alternate models and, you know, even into kind of this week, you know, another one was sent to us that had been proposed to you. And I suppose just for the transparency of the consultation, have they all been considered and, you know, were there key things? I mean, one of them I didn't actually quite understand. It talks about nucleus call, which I thought was a mix of whole-time and on-call. I think that was what it was suggesting, and why not that model, I guess, or why not some of the other models? Yeah, thanks, Councillor. So I can, yeah, make a guarantee. We've looked at every single proposal suggestion alternative that was put forward to us. They were run through the assessment criteria. We even went further than that, and we recognised there were some good parts of lots of the proposals and alternatives that people put forward, so we actually blended some of them, and that's what resulted in us getting to Model A. In relation to nucleus crew, and we've looked at that, we've looked at other farm rescue services who operated that model, it doesn't lead to significant increases on-call availability, and one of the challenges is you put a whole-time driver and officer in charge potentially into a situation supported by on-call. What that often results in is a very expensive resource that's still off the run, or you have a situation where you have a resource that actually isn't immediately available to be deployed. You've got to wait for the five minutes for the on-call firefighters to come in, so it's a compromised situation that may aid availability to a degree, but it doesn't focus in at efficiency or service to the community. I'm very conscious, Ben, that you have been being questioned now for a good hour, and do you want a break? Are you sure? Okay. But please indicate if you do, because, you know, you are under, you know, rightly scrutiny this afternoon, but it needs to be fair, and if you need a break, please indicate. Okay. And that applies to councillors. It's a warm afternoon, so we need to be sensible. Councillor Roberts, you've indicated you wish to speak, Will. Yes, thank you, Chair. Firstly, can I just say thank you, Ben, and to all the officers who have put a lot of hard work into coming to this point. I can imagine it's not been an easy task. Thankfully, you'll be glad to hear that most of my questions have been answered, but I just wanted to go back to the finances. Now, you've highlighted that the extra half a million is going to go into salaries, and looking under Point 9, it says that this money is going to actually come out of reserves. Now, this is an ongoing cost, but to keep coming out of reserves is not a sustainable model. You've linked it to the Community Risk Management Plan that covers the three years. So my question and concern is, is there a genuine concern that in three years' time, the service will be facing cuts to staff if more funding can't be found? Again, I think we've touched on it earlier, that we are funding to the CRMP, and that's why the three-year process, so we don't -- like I say, it doesn't preclude any future investment or commitment to Warwickshire Fire and Rescue. The three-year is to fund the guarantee, the CRMP to C-flat model is still appropriate in three years' time. This model might not be appropriate in three years' time, so therefore, we will then need to look at the resources that are required to run Warwickshire Fire and Rescue. So it's a moving feast, but it's got to be dynamic because if we just say we're going to keep this model for three years, five years, seven years, some of the appliances might be in the wrong place, we might be using the wrong type of shifts, so therefore, we've got to have a -- Ben mentioned the dynamic cover tool. We're going to need a dynamic cover tool in terms of our finance as well. So yeah, it will be reviewed after three years. So yeah, thanks. Supplementary, although you're happy? Okay. Councillor Redford, Wallace? Thank you, Chairman. Ben, there's a question on the resilience teams. It seems to me that they're going to be infrequently used. How are you going to carry out training to the appropriate level? Because maintaining enthusiasm and interest for a team that is not going to be there or used all the time would be quite an issue for you. Yeah, thanks, Councillor. So in relation to the resilience teams, we need to go through the negotiation consultation, but as an example, we feel that the majority of the resilience teams will be whole-time firefighters or on-call firefighters elsewhere, as in within Warwickshire, so their skills and their competencies will be maintained in that way. We may have a transition arrangement because we want to keep as many people as possible where they can attend an on-call training night, as an example, to be on the resilience team. So we want to be as flexible as we can, but the longer-term picture is that the resilience teams will be made up of our current whole-time or on-call firefighters who are competent already. That leads to a really important point around cost of living and those type of elements. So we absolutely recognise the impact on lots of people. There are some shift systems that are being changed through this process. DCP, as an example, that removes a fairly significant allowance to some of our firefighters that might make it very difficult. We focus a lot on on-call. There are other firefighters who are impacted in these changes that I really care for and I want to get it right for everyone. This provides an opportunity for some of our firefighters to earn a little bit more money to help them look after their families and their loved ones. Councillor Troemans. Thank you, Chair. I've got some observations and then a question. First of all, I'm pleased that we're putting a lot more money into the fire service in Warwickshire. I think residents will be reassured that we're hiring a bunch more full-time firefighters as well. That's really good news. I'm also, from an Eton and Bedworth point of view, very pleased that we're one of the districts that is going to see an uplift in our coverage there. Indeed, when you look at the original consultation, that was an improvement in first engine response times, attendance times, but now it's an even bigger improvement. It's over a minute, better than 12 per cent improvement. That's going to save lives. There's no two ways about that. When we look at it, we say, Well, how reliable are these models? Well, it's based on the real-world data that we heard, and ORHUR, as it says on page 29, a very credible and experienced emergency service modelling company. In section 8.19, those response times, particularly from an Eton and Bedworth, are, I think, very reassuring and something that I really do hope that we deliver on for people. When we think and when we heard about the other training that we've had in this committee in respect of the fire service, and it was touched on again earlier on, about the fact that traditional house fires and all the rest of it has declined to a tiny fraction of what it was, and a lot of the work now is very different, particularly we're talking about making sure people, when they're travelling, when they're on the roads, traffic, that's a big issue, and certainly something where response times are crucial. So if we look at an Eton and Bedworth now, if we're talking about my residence and an Eton residence, travelling out, going up the A44, going to the M6, going up the A5, there's that better coverage there from Alliston and Eton and Bedworth spread out, so that if there's a traffic congestion or black spot around one of those, it doesn't stop all the fire engines, they're not all in one place, they're spread out. And that, given the need that we now have and the risk that we all face travelling around in that part of the county, that seems to be a much more sensible way forward. So not only is the Eton and Bedworth getting an uplift and much better response times, it seems that it's covering the real risk that's emerging and that has emerged over the last few years, and I think that's the whole purpose of this resourcing to risk paper and the whole reason behind this plan. So the only question I had was, turning to 11.2 in the papers, talking about the implementation. My question was going to be, and I think we've had some reassurance already, but I just want to be sure that there is going to be scope for operationally Ben and the team to react to anything that emerges on the way through. As you're implementing this, if it does turn out that the new builds in certain parts of the Eton are actually more of a risk than they typically would be, there is that option to react and that changes will be made. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Councillor. So we've been very careful clearly not to preempt any decision of cabinets for cabinets when it's implemented, but we are making sure we've got really robust, clear implementation plans in a phased way that manage finance people and all the relevant areas around implementation. I totally agree we need to be flexible. We need to make sure we haven't got a fixed mindset, because if things come up and change and risk and vulnerability changes, just to reassure you in that way, we already do things like temporary special risks. So if a risk arises that requires something different, we'll have our teams visit it, we'll put plans in place around that, we'll alter the attendance to that so we might increase it or decrease it, depending on what that risk is. So we regularly, in fact, today we're talking about Kingsbury Oil Terminal around some changes there. So our commitment is that we flex and change our way of operating regularly, hence why I talk about the fact that what you see on the screen there is a static model. That's not how a foreign rescue service works. We're talking about the base locations there. The reality is we move our resources around all the time based on risk, whether that be a particular site or an incident occurring. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Chair. Thank you. Now, I think every Councillor that wished to speak once has indicated now. So Councillor Singh Birdie. Thank you, Chair. All my questions have been answered, so I just want to make a couple of comments, please. I think a fantastic consultation, and I'd like to thank the public for actually engaging. I think we never had such an engagement before, as far as I know, and more importantly, the portfolio holder and the Chief Fire Officer, their teams, three months of commitment going out to meetings is actually beyond the call of duty, but they did it. I had a concern that with all that data coming in, did they have the resource to actually manage it, and well, they proved me wrong again, and they have done it. Thank you for doing that as well. The additional money to deliver the Model A is also welcome in Egypt, so also implementing that. I think, you know, other than the thank yous, I have just one quick question that the prevention work is critical to it all, and I think maybe we haven't made enough of it. We are one of the success stories in prevention, and more you prevent, the less you have to do otherwise, so I hope that that will still be forefront of your planning, and we do as much prevention work as possible, especially with these electric cars and other things coming along. Things will change. You know, we will need to evolve, so I hope that is the case. Thank you, Parmina, and I think, Andy, you want to come in at this point? Yeah, just a couple of things. Thank you, Parmina. Ben and I have still got the scars of going around the country. You know, I did have dark hair before I started the consultation. Still got a bit left, but it has gone a rather different colour. We have tried to listen. We think we have listened. Some people will disagree, and some people will never be able to satisfy, and I am sorry, I am sorry we can't satisfy those people who we will never be able to satisfy. We are trying to do the best for Warwickshire, but we bear in mind that Warwickshire Fire and Rescue is part of Warwickshire County Council. The County Council has lots of responsibilities. We all know, as Councillor Buckland would say, that we spend, I think, 70 per cent of our budget, 72 per cent of our budget, on 7 per cent of our residents, or something like that. So funding is difficult, so we need to make best use of our resources and put them in the right places. Councillor Birdie is saying, quite rightly, prevention is better and cure. I totally agree. And just to go back to Councillor Troeman's point about not putting all our eggs in one basket, having more of a distributed model makes sense. We all know that there has been lots of roadworks and buildings and new houses and development in Nuneaton. So if there was a problem on the road and it was log jammed, we have already got two pumps in the same place, and those two pumps would find it difficult to attend a collision, an incident, et cetera. So by having them using the dynamic cover tool and the automatic vehicle location system that we're bringing in as well, which is another investment in fire and rescue, we are trying to respond as best as we can and make Warwickshire as safe as its residents as well. And just one thing I just want to reiterate. We, as the Fire Authority, are champions, guardians of Warwickshire. It's Warwickshire Fire and Rescue. It's not Nuneaton Bedwith Fire and Rescue. It's not Stratford District Fire and Rescue, Rugby, North Warwickshire and Warwick District. I think I've covered the five now. It's Warwickshire Fire and Rescue. And we have to, as in Ben, using his operational independence, use the resources provided by the Fire Authority, the resources to risk. So Ben and the team have done lots of great work listening to the consultation. I've been hanging on their coattails and trying to cheer them up with my wonderful puns and trying to, because this has been a really stressful situation. Would I choose to have done this if it wasn't necessary? But when you see some of our response time, when you're getting information from HMIC/FRS that we need to review our duties, our structures and the way we operate Warwickshire Fire and Rescue, you can't ignore that. So gone through lots of interesting conversations and comments from members of the public. I think it's been worth it because we have come up with a model. We've got additional resources over the next three years of 2.268 million into Warwickshire Fire and Rescue. And in four out of the five districts and boroughs, we are improving response times on the previous model that we'd proposed. Most of those had had better response times as well. So thank you for that.
• Thank you, Andy. That was very helpful. All I would say is you telling wonderful puns I don't think would stand up to scrutiny at this panel.
• We've been round all Councillors now. And as I say, we've been questioning Ben for about an hour and 20 minutes. So I'm gonna go back now and ask some supplementary questions. And if we could keep them to the point. And what I'm hoping is if we could have a break about four when we've been running for two hours, because I think that would be reasonable. So I think it is warm in here. So any follow-up questions? Councillor Boad, Sarah.
• Thank you. I'll be more of a public comment than questions. I would just like to get clarification on the extra appliances in Warwick district. Warwick district has two whole time appliances in Leamington and it's going to have a daytime in Kenilworth. Where's the other one? Because you said extra two. - Apologies, Councillor, if I didn't get the right district. So yeah, the guaranteed appliances you can see on there, you've got two at Leamington, one at Kenilworth. And they're now guaranteed Kenilworth in the day and two in Leamington. So apologies, Councillor, if that was incorrect. - It's fine. Just checking. Just a few comments then and I want to make a proposal. I understand we're not making a decision. All we can do today is to suggest things to the cabinet and I'm going to suggest a couple of things to the cabinet. I've been at this much longer than any of you in this room, perhaps with the exception of Councillor Redfoot who was the chief fire officer when I got elected nearly 30 years ago. I've been through many, many closures of fire stations. I was in Tyso a few weekends ago and there is the former fire station. That was my first consultation. Where actually the members went against the recommendation of the chief fire officer and closed Kyneton and kept funny Compton open. So these things are not necessarily at the behest of just the chief fire officer. That's why we have consultation. I've always said I welcome the consultation. I think there's no harm in having a look and making sure that we are operating in the best way. I do wonder if we'd have the extra money at the beginning of this rather than it coming at the end. If the consultation had been designed to start with around the extra five, five, six per year, we probably would have started off at a different place rather than with 2A. But where we are, I will always welcome extra money and of course looking at the green there, Henley, Wellsbourne and Southam, seeing those becoming 24 hour a day is clearly a benefit and will give much increased cover in the south. But there is still that corner down in the southeast, Shipston, Fenney, Gaydon. That's a big area. It's a long way from, I mean, it's 35 minutes from Leamington to Tyso. I know you've got a lot more stations in between, but even so if it's needed, it is a very long way down to that bottom, sort of across the hinterland beyond Kyneton. So I am concerned at the lack of cover except for resilience. I mean, it's better than it was in the original model, but I am still concerned about that. I live in Leamington. We've got more tower blocks in Leamington than anywhere else in the district. And I've got three in my division. Every time there's a call out there, that is five appliances that need to go. Now, clearly with 13 at night, sorry, 11 at night rather than, 13 at night, yes, sorry. That is better. But we've seen call outs there in the middle of the night and needing five. We saw a very survive at the Crowne Plaza in Stratford that I think had six, and that was at 11 o'clock at night, so after 10 o'clock. And it does concern me enormously. It's good to have the cover there during the day in Kenilworth, but it does concern me greatly to see that loss of cover at night. As Rick said, we've got a very dedicated and very well-trained group and increasingly getting trained group in Kenilworth on call. And I would like to ask that you look again at the on-call at night, because Kenilworth isn't even resilient at night. It is just gone completely. So I would like you to look again at the situation in Kenilworth. Keeping the on-call at night, looking at resilience, something, because Leamington needs Kenilworth. We lost Warwick. We used to have Warwick and Kenilworth. We've lost Warwick. Southern isn't that far geographically, and it's a wonderful place, but actually it's quite a long way in terms of attendance times. So I would be grateful if you could have a look at particularly at Kenilworth and also look at the resilience stations in the south-east. I've already spoken around the finance. I am very concerned about the financing. Councillor Crump is giving strong reassurances that that money has been identified out of reserves over the next year. He said that money is there, pretty much in those words. So that's very reassuring. But what happens after three years? It will have to go into the base budget somewhere. Now we have no idea. This time next, at eight, nine days time, we will know what the situation is in the general election. Three years down the line, we have no idea, whoever gets elected, where local government finances will be. So I'd like some reassurance, and I think the cabinet paper should have a lot more information about where the money is going to come from. I'm very concerned about the loss of experienced, on-call firefighters whose working arrangements will not allow them to consider being full-time. I'm really concerned about that. These people have given for very little reward, except their own personal reward. And that's a huge loss of experience there. And I would like to see, looking at ways that we can try and keep that, because it seems a terrible waste to just say, well, thank you very much, and actually we don't need you, except every now and again in resilience. So I've made a few general points that I hope will go forward in the minutes of this meeting. My proposal, and I preach I cannot make a proposal per se, but I believe, Councillor Crump said, and I wrote it down and I put a big block around it and I've now got to find it, is radically different. This proposal is radically different to what we consulted on. And I believe it's radically different. When I saw this on the screen ten days ago, I gasped, because it is so, so different to what we went out on consultation. And it's very different to what we have now. And I believe that we should go out and consult again, because this is so radically different. I appreciate legal views and all the rest of it, but that is my thought, that we should actually go out to consultation again, because this is a radically, radically different proposal, and I've got that in Councillor Crump's own word. So I would like us to ask cabinet to consider further public consultation on this proposal. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Boad. Well, I'm going to ask both the portfolio holder and the chief fire officer to comment on that. Yeah, I can say a couple of things on this. I don't want us to confuse the word closure. Councillor Boad mentioned Tyso. I think she mentioned Kaitlyn. These are not closures. It's never been closure. So just making clear, I don't think Councillor Boad's deliberately intended to conflate the two, but this isn't a closure. There will be still, at the recipient stations, a pump, equipment, kit, et cetera, for people to use when required, under the recommendation from the chief fire officer. Which is a wonderful thing. If we all know that 556,000 had been available, yes, we could have done something differently. But it wasn't in any of the budgets from Conservative, Lib Dems, Labour, Independent, Green. It wasn't in the budget for an extra 556,000. So the administration has responded to the need request from the chief fire officer and the money has been found for the three years to coincide with the CRMP. We operate on a long-term funding basis across the council, not just in Warwickshire Fire and Rescue, in all of our services that we provide with our budget of 500 million. And if we weren't operating on a sustainable and resilient basis, the section 151 officer would be telling us that. So therefore, we are providing resources that are available. We are doing it on a sustainable basis. We're doing it in a way that is fair to the residents of Warwickshire and it's fair to the other services that our council provides. And I'm going to say council button says that we present 72% of our budget on 7% of our residents. Because that's where the need is. And we're doing something similar here. This is the resourcing to risk. We are putting the resources where they are needed the most. And we go back to consultation. But how much do we consult again? Because it's already been mentioned about our staff, how unsettling it is to them. We've had members of the public come to many meetings asking the questions and they've got relatives and friends who work on call. And they want some clarity. They want some certainty when these things are going to happen. And if it's consulted on again, it will create more uncertainty. And I think council boat almost paid me a compliment saying it was listening in the first place, which is good. And secondly, it was radically different. And it is radically different because we've listened. We've listened to what the residents have told us, particularly around the cover in the south, particularly at night, particularly around not throwing the baby out with the bath water, looking at where on-call availability is really positive and strong, particularly at night. So we've tried to incorporate that. We've incorporated the fact that the proposals regarding part-time staff, the six to 10, are not feasible, not workable. We've listened to the staff. We've listened to the rep bodies. And those positions, the part-time ones are not there. So therefore we've been able to use the money to provide guaranteed on-call. That's some guarantee that currently the on-call staff have not got. So they've got some more certainty, more guarantee, as it says on the tin. So therefore I think that is positive to the on-call firefighters. And some of the people I've spoken to do think that's positive. We can't go into too much details because we haven't got them and it's subject to negotiation with the rep bodies. But I think there are lots of certainties. So if you go out again to consult, well, we've listened to what you've told us. You've really responded. You've increased the cover. You've increased revenue funding for three years. And you're improving the firefighter, fire stations, the estate to make them more fit for purpose and make them available if necessary on a 24/7 basis. So I don't think there's much more we can consult on. And I think this is a really positive move. And like you say, it is certainly radical. And when you see an improved response time in non-eaten for over a minute and overall through a whole of Warwickshire, 58 seconds, and as Councillor Truman said, you know, the improvement over a minute will probably save lives. And this is what Warwickshire Fire and Rescue needs to do. But we're also invest... I will shut up a minute. We've been going on, I do apologise, Mr. Chairman. We've also invested in whole-time firefighters who we believe that will be easy to recruit. As Mr. Brooks said, in some firefighter processes could be up to a thousand applications. And we're also improving the amount of prevention and protection work we do. And as Councillor Birdie said, you know, prevention is better and cure. And we're doing a distributed model where we're not having all our eggs in one basket that can be adversely affected by a major incident, by major road works, particularly around non-eaten, but not exclusively. So therefore I would finish now before I go too far.
• Thank you, Councillor Crum. Do you want anything to add to that, Ben?
• No, I've got nothing to add, Chair.
• Okay. Do you want to give an opinion on that from a legal point of view, Nick?
• I think I can just clarify for the committee that the view that we've taken is that the authority has run a comprehensive public consultation exercise in relation to a model that was designed, as you can see from the paper, to respond to four key challenges. That initial proposal has then been reconsidered in light of the consultation feedback, which is the purpose of going out to consult, and has been amended to address those key themes, looked at through the lens of the evaluation mechanism that Ben mentioned earlier, and has been amended to address those key themes that have been raised through the consultation while still responding to the same key challenges. So the proposal is not to re-consult on those changes as they still respond to the same key challenges that were originally taken out to the public.
• Thank you, Nick.
• Can I just come back on that? It doesn't stop me making a proposal, does it? I hear what you're saying, but I can make my proposal that we ask Cabinet that, and I put that proposal again on the table.
• It is open to a member of this committee to put forward proposals that they would like Cabinet to consider, because Cabinet is the ultimate decision-maker in this matter, and I said to put forward that proposal, you would need a seconder if you're moving it as a motion. If you're expressing your opinion as part of the committee, then that will be minuted and form part of the documents that Cabinet will have to consider in any event.
• Is that helpful, Sarah?
• Somebody might second it.
• So your comments will go forward in that case.
• Okay, but I'm disappointed.
• That will go forward as your comments with that.
• Councillor Crump is obviously more persuasive than me.
• Thank you very much, and Ben, thank you in particular. You have been very open and very helpful to this committee this afternoon.
• Chairman, can we record our thanks to the Chief Fire Officer and his team for the work that's been done in preparing the original documents and the answers to the confrontation?
• From a man who knows what it's like to be Chief Fire Officer, there's a proposal which I will second, and I'm sure that will find a unanimous support around here as a vote of thanks to Ben. And can I make that the men and women of our fire service? Thank you.
• So could we record that, please? Okay. The question before us is that we comment and consider resource to risk. We have picked up some comments this afternoon, and Councillor Bode, your comment will be recorded. I think the items that have been raised have been important. This will now move forward to Cabinet for them to make a decision. But are we happy that our comments this afternoon are taken forward and that the Cabinet considers matters raised today? Are all members satisfied? Okay. Thank you very much indeed for your time. Thank you to the members of the public for their time. Thank you to the officers for their time. And what I'm going to propose now is, before we move into the last items on the agenda, that we take a short comfort break and get a drink, as it has now been two hours in. Quite adverse conditions in here. Thank you very much.
• Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, Councillors, to the second part of this meeting. Can I thank you for your good conduct and sensible questioning thus far, and I'm sure it will continue into this part of the meeting. I'm hoping we will have some brevity as we move forward on this. So we're going to move on to item number five, which is the year-end integrated performance report. Craig is going to take questions on this. I take it you have all read it. I take it you have all considered it. Craig, do you want to make any comments? I'll open it up for Councillors' questions. - Thank you, Chair. No, I think that would be my introduction to a tea and just remind you that if I can't answer questions, there's directors on hand who can help. Otherwise, I can take them with and get them back formally to you. But with that, back to you, Chair. - Okay. You've considered it. Any questions? Councillor Feeney. - I know, and I was the one telling you I'm on a time limit here, aren't I? It was just about there were two bits that are subject to re-planning in terms of the energy strategy. And I just wondered, I suppose the question is, is some of that waiting now for the outcome of a general election and to see where perhaps any government, and I'm not going to say what strike, but any government might put in for new energy initiatives? Because it was just a bit concerning that it feels like perhaps they're not on track and really not even, we may not now deliver. When I see the word subject to re-planning, I was worried that that's a subtext to we may not now deliver.
• We're finding the details. I think this falls into more with Rob's area than mine. So hopefully, Rob can help. If not, we will bring back to this question.
• Would you be happy, Councillor Feeney, if a written answer is circulated?
• I was just about to say I'm happy to take a written answer. It's page 77. I'm happy to take a written answer to the committee. Thank you.
• And Councillor Boad.
• Sorry. I was looking at page 512 and the ones of the stats around fire-related deaths, fire-related injuries. It says there's no NA under target. I appreciate it. It's really difficult, is it, to have a target, particularly around death. Is there anything but zero? For someone to die is not good, even if you're looking at a reduction. So, excuse me, I can see obviously the districts and stuff, but presumably, we just don't have a target and the same road traffic collisions. Again, there's nothing there about NA for target. So, I may have answered this before and apologies if I have forgotten.
• Ben, you've had a quiet afternoon. Would you like to answer this?
• Thanks, Chair. Thanks, Councillor. Yeah. So, we don't set any targets around those elements because, as you say, what we don't want to do is set a target for injuries and deaths as if we want them to happen. Our target is always zero, but that seems not realistic either. So, we don't set a target in those areas, but we do absolutely do monitor it and review. So, we do a significant fire incident review after every single fire-related death or injury and review all of our road traffic accidents as well.
• You happy with that, Sarah? Yeah. And thank you, Ben. You have been busy today. We are very grateful for your time. Tim.
• Yeah, thanks, Chair. On that point, by the way, I think we've discussed in this committee several times before that perhaps one shouldn't put a RAG status or a green and red status against those sorts of measures because they're inevitably going to be red. And maybe they should be gray and sort of neutral, so to speak, rather than not. But that's for someone else to consider. My broader question isn't specifically around fire and rescue, but was that there are three particular points within this evaluation I wanted to comment on. I'll pick them all three up at the same time, if that's all right with you, Chair, and then perhaps they can be answered as a group. So, the percentage delivery of projected output by Warwickshire Property and Development Group is at 50% versus 100. The percent of all capital schemes completed on budget is 32% versus 100. And the number of sickness absence days, which we've discussed in this committee previously, I think, is at virtually 10 versus 8. Could somebody give some commentary on those, please?
• I'm happy to pick up if that's okay, Chair. So, progress against WPDG is beset normally by timing issues, when we can get the business case through based on the economics and the financial of those. We continue with that plan, albeit moving to the right. We can see those returns coming either in the forecast month or later, either returns aren't diminishing, the timing is going back. We're able to support and smooth over that through the commercial risk reserve. So, overall, whereas they are moving, right, because of the complexities of the land, the development, the engineering, the surveying, we're comfortable and confident that they are moving to the right without impacting on overall on the County Council.
• So, I think that related to WPDG, did that cover the percentage of capital schemes on budget and also sickness?
• It didn't. I was just waiting to see if there's a comeback of WPDG. Sorry, I should have clarified that. Capital schemes are almost the same as WPDG. We move them to the right. That's based on when the forecast and then when we meet the reality of what that scheme involves. It's a problem we've looked at for a number of years, as you'd be aware now, slippage of the scheme and where they are. We have track of them. I think that's covered in one of the appendices, the actions and where they are. So, yes, they are delayed, but they're not in effect terminal. It is just the delay in the planning.
• Just to clarify on both of those points then, you're describing they're a phasing or a timing issue rather than delivery issue. That's useful to understand because, again, the way that it's presented here says not on track. Arguably, you're saying not on track at the moment. We'll be on track. Okay. And then just going into the sickness days aspect and, again, with the conversations we've had here previously have all been around that represents an average across the authority. And in actual fact, there are some service areas where those sickness levels are very high. And it's been explained to us before why there are pressures on those certain individuals. My question really relates to how are those individuals getting on. Are those pressures increasing in those particularly concerning areas? What's the story there? - Thank you, Councillor. I'm fortunate that I've got Bal from HR who can help us with this. I'll cross to Bal.
• While we're waiting for that, a good point has been made there. And I know there's a lot going on in fire and rescue at the moment. But we have spoken about these two targets around injuries and fire deaths before. And I think them appearing as targets I've never been at all comfortable with. I'm just wondering if we can find a better way of reporting this moving forward. I know we've got to look at performance. I know we've got to consider how things are improving. But I would ask, could we just consider whether we need to get a working party together on this, which I think could be perhaps an idea. But I think we should look at it. Tim. - Just on that point, whoever it is that pulls-- obviously, this is just one part of the evaluation that we do. And there's a much broader set of metrics. But whoever's in charge-- it might be Rob, ultimately-- Monica, I suppose, above that, who looks after this. I wonder if we could ask them or their heads down to consider our concerns around this point and see whether they-- is that a reasonable request from this committee to take on board our feedback and reflect whether or not a change might be possible? And if so, how? - I've seen nothing but heads nodding around the room in consensus on that. And I think if we could-- and if we've got to put some work into it ourselves, I think it's worth doing. So I'm just not at all comfortable with the way it's presented. I know we're here to look at performance. I think there's a better way of presenting this. - OK. Thank you. We'll move back to the original question, Val. - OK. Thank you. So yes, we recognize that sickness has increased. There's greater visibility in the organization now because our dashboards are now available to all our managers so they can understand the data. They understand what's going on. As I reported at the previous meeting, we are being quite proactive in the areas that we know there's more of an increase. We're supporting managers. We're doing a lot more awareness sessions, particularly around mental health and well-being. We understand where the challenges are and which areas we need to operate in more effectively and support those areas. And we've got that in place. Our trend isn't any different to national trends at the moment. So we're not an outlier from that sense. But we are doing whatever we can to try and reduce our levels down. - Yeah. Thank you. I mean, chair, may I suggest this might be something that chairs and spokes consider as being an item to include in the future, in other words, a focus on this particular matter. I'm not sure that is necessary. But by the sound of it, there's quite a lot of work going into helping these people, helping these members of staff. There may be value in this committee having a bit more of a deep understanding on what's actually being done so that we look after them. But I'll leave that as a comment rather than a request. - I'm just having it suggested we might want to put it on the work program moving forward. So that might be a way of dealing with that.
• OK. Well, consider that for when we move two items on. I have no more indicated speakers. So we've commented and considered and made some valid points on there. So we will move on to Agenda Item 6. And this is the Treasury Management and Investment Outturn 2324. And we need to consider and endorse this item. So this is Craig again, I believe.
• I'm just trying to find my notes again. I've got a bit of a crush. Shall we just move to questions? - We'll play a little music while we're waiting for you, Craig. Rob, I think Rob's going to bow you out from behind here, Craig.
• Yeah. I think it's the annual report. Treasury management's been a big positive for the Council with the returns that have been delivered, which were instrumental in us coming in with intolerance on our budget last year. And I suggest the committee take the paper as read and pick up any questions with Penema or I. - I would absolutely agree with that. I think we've seen increased revenue in there from interest. Obviously, we may not be able to rely on that moving forward. Are we happy to take that and endorse it? Councillor Sinclair, Tim, I knew you would. - Sorry. It's our job. We get paid for this sort of thing. I'd echo the 1.7, the fact that we've got significant increased interest income above the budget of 4.7. I wanted to just probe on 1.8, where we've had a weighted average yield of 4.45, which is great. However, the benchmark is higher than that, 4.96 for internally managed funds. Now, that might relate to our risk management and our risk appetite. Could you just please talk around? We've achieved 4.45. The benchmark is 4.96.
• Thank you. - Yeah, much of that is fixed. And so there's a little bit of a lag. - That makes sense. Thank you very much.
• Thank you. So we're all happy that we vote on that? Yes? Okay. Thank you very much indeed. Right. We're moving on to the work programme. I've just taken a little bit of advice on what was said about sickness there, because obviously it is technically already within the work programme because it's within the performance figures. So we might perhaps ask for a briefing note on that to come forward alongside the performance so that we can have a little bit more detail. Would that be okay? Would that work for you, Balin? Would that work for the committee? - Yes, I can do that. Yes. So just to be clear, do you want where the problem areas are on the proactivity that's taking place to that extent? And do you want to understand some of our internal performance indicators as well around that? - To respond to that, if I might, yes. You narrated a little bit about what we -- you've identified that there's a problem with certain staff. We're a caring employer, and so we're doing what we can to support those staff. You narrated a little bit of that. A briefing paper that goes into that in a little more detail that just gives us some sense of that I think would be helpful. And within that context, understanding the direction of travel, historically running up to now, because I think we just need to watch out for those people that -- yes, hopefully the direction of travel is going to improve, let's say, if it's getting worse at the moment.
• Councillor Troemans has a question as well. - Yes, actually, to be content to point perfectly, we don't want it to just be weird looking. We want to see what the emerging trends are. Is this working? What's being put in place? What's the route to good? All the rest of it. And then I think a bit of horizon scanning as well in terms of actually what are the emerging risks in terms of sickness, absence, and employee resilience. I think that would all provide some really useful context. If you're going to go to the trouble of writing that briefing, you know, to give us the complete picture, I think would be really helpful.
• Thank you. Thank you, Chair. - Happy with that, Val, and that fine consensus. Thank you. Okay. So the final item this afternoon is any urgent matters, and none have been brought to me. So with that, honestly, folks, thank you very much indeed. It's been a long meeting. Well done, Ben. I think you've worked really hard this afternoon. Thanks for your support. Andy, officers, thank you so much for your support today. And I'll bring the the meeting to a close.
• Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]