Even more concerns after 'Safer Together' consultation live broadcast

If experienced fire service officers are confused, 

how can the public be expected to understand?

It really was depressing to listen to Sarah Allen and Joe Hassell provide inaccurate, misleading and evasive answers to questions during this broadcast. Sadly they are not the only ones, several people have reported the same problems when they asked D&SF&RS staff questions at the consultation events. 

Sarah Allen, Joe Hassell & Ellie Banner-Ball

Joe Hassell got off to a flying start by telling us that they needed to change because, “a lot of our station locations and the way our fire service was designed was essentially around the 1940s”. Not entirely accurate, but it was 1948 when most current fire station locations and fire engine allocations were first approved by the fire authorities and the Home Office.

However, his implied suggestion that things should have changed, but did not, is wrong. Since 1948, Chief Fire Officers and Fire Authorities regularly reviewed and refined arrangements, but found no justification for significant change. Inspections by Her Majesty's Fire Service Inspectorate, for nearly 60 years, and then peer reviews thereafter supported those views.

Joe Hassell was then completely inaccurate when he claimed that “the amount of fires and incidents have reduced drastically since then”, as they have significantly increased since 1948. This chart shows the national figures for dwelling fires (fires in the home) for 1951, the earliest available, and 2017/18, the latest available.

Source - Home Office records

Whilst it is true that the number of fires in the home has nearly halved in the UK since a peak in 1999, it is also true that the peak showed an increase from 1951 of over 250%! D&SF&RS claim the recent 49% reduction in dwelling fires justifies a cut in the number of fire stations and fire crews, so how big was the increase in fire stations and fire crews when there was a 250% increase? There was no increase! There are actually less fire crews now than there were in 1948. The reason is simple, there is not, and never has been, a connection between number of calls and the resources required.

"Fewer fires does not directly equal fewer firefighters. 

We provide a service dependent upon risk, not demand." 

Chief Fire Officers Association (now National Fire Chiefs Council)

Have you got direct evidence that prevention works?

Instead of answering this question from a member of the public accurately, by saying 'NO', Joe Hassell claimed, "We absolutely know that saves lives". Throughout the interview they kept telling us that their prevention work has cut the number of fires and fire deaths and that more prevention work will save more lives. That is not fact, it is wishful thinking. There is no direct evidence that prevention works.

Now I certainly hope that the prevention work I did during my service helped save lives and prevented fires, but I have no way of knowing if fires did not start, or lives were not lost, as a result of that work. What I do know, with absolute certainty, is that we did save lives at many of the fires and other emergencies we attended. 

It is clear that changes in clothing and furniture regulations, the change to safer forms of cooking, safer ways to heat our homes, and the big decrease in smoking, especially in buildings, have significantly cut the number of fires and fire deaths. They are the main reasons and they have little or nothing to do with prevention work carried out by fire & rescue services, as Sarah Allen claimed in the broadcast. 

She also said that they had been investing in community fire safety for over 20 years and proclaimed "we’ll save far more lives by doing prevention work". The statistics do not support that claim.

Tens of thousands of fire safety visits have had this effect on fire deaths in Devon & Somerset

Source - Home Office Fire and Rescue Service statistics

A lack of detailed information

We are frequently told that they are 'Reallocating resources' and 'will do more prevention', but we have not been told how much money will be reallocated for each option. We have not been given any details about how that money will be spent, which makes it impossible to judge the value of each option. It also means, if the cuts go ahead, that we won't know if the claimed prevention improvements were actually implemented.

Now according to Joe Hassell, 93% of homes now have smoke detectors. So D&SF&RS are going to close fire stations and remove fire engines, which will mean a slower response to every emergency in the areas affected, in the hope they can persuade the 7% to fit smoke detectors. That makes no sense.

A delay when your home is on fire, a delay when your business is on fire, a delay when your care home is on fire, a delay when you are trapped in a crashed car, a delay when you are trapped in machinery, a delay when you are trapped in floodwater, all in the hope that a few more people will have a smoke detector in their home.

It should be remembered that for every four fires in peoples homes in Devon & Somerset, there are two fires in other buildings, three vehicle fires, three secondary fires and twenty non-fire emergencies, such as road traffic collisions. The service rescues many more people from non-fire emergencies than they do from fires, and these all need a quick and effective response.

Inaccurate answer about statutory duty

I have to say I was astonished when Sarah Allen said, "we only have two statutory duties - to attend fires and to attend RTCs". For someone who says so much about prevention work, forgetting that prevention is a statutory duty is incredible. 

She seems to have forgotten that regulations made under the Fire & Rescue Services Act extended their duties to include a number of other non-fire emergencies. She also forgot their statutory duty in relation to all emergencies that threaten human welfare and the environment under the Civil Contingencies Act. 

Perhaps she should have read some Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Authority documents:

Source: Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Authority Corporate Plan

This extract featured in their Corporate Plan for several years and is still accurate today. Under the same heading, the Fire & Rescue Authority's responsibilities under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 were also explained. 

It was also disingenuous to suggest that they are not funded for other emergencies. Core funding from Government and Council Taxpayers is for providing a fire & rescue service and has nothing to do with specific types of emergency. They also receive additional specific funding from Government for specialist rescue work and from the ambulance service for responding to medical emergencies.

Excluding certain emergencies from the data used in the consultation, and for the modelling, appears to be a deliberate attempt by Devious & Secretive Fire & Rescue Service to mislead the public on the real effects of their proposals.

Modelling the effect of cuts

Another ludicrous claim from Joe Hassell was that if all 85 fire appliances (there are actually 121) had a wholetime crew it would barely save any extra lives. Anyone who knows anything about the FSEC modelling will know that you could only get such a result if you entered manipulated data and/or excluded some of the results. 

Modelling in another fire & rescue service, which was properly carried out and used the full results, showed that changing a fire station from day crewing to immediate response, the opposite of what D&SF&RS propose for Barnstaple, Exmouth and Paignton, would on average save an extra life every four years. That is not 'barely any' and is the effect for just one fire station.

In the same fire & rescue service, modelling the effects of removing a second fire engine from an on call fire station indicated an extra 11 deaths in 100 years. Yet for a similar station, in terms of number of calls and the area's population, D&SF&RS claim just 1 extra death in 1,000 years! That information is shown on the maps in the 'Analytical Comparison of Community Impacts from Service Delivery Operating Model' document, which is supposed to be the evidence base for these cuts.

Not only does this reinforce concerns that D&SF&RS has manipulated the input or output modelling data, or perhaps both, to make the cuts appear less harmful, but it confirms that they do have station level data. Yet in their response to a Freedom of Information request for full details of extra deaths and property damage in each station area affected, D&SF&RS claim they "don't have that information".  

The modelling tool provides results down to station level, so what they mean is they don't want to release that information. Without that detail it becomes impossible for the public, or the Fire & Rescue Authority, to properly compare the impact of the cuts in each affected station area with the claimed savings.

If they are willing to risk breaching the Freedom of Information Act again,
you have to wonder how bad those results are!

Some other inaccurate, misleading, evasive and
confusing answers during the interview

There were several inaccurate and misleading claims about risk - "risk is really low", "risk is at such a low level", "low risk area", "high risk area". This demonstrates a worrying failure to understand risk. D&SF&RS repeatedly misuse the term risk when they are actually talking about the frequency of calls. The risk for anyone trapped in a fire, or trapped in car crash is just as real as it always was and it is the same wherever they are. 

"If people comment on other stations we would have to do another consultation". Not true. "You can reach a final decision that was not one of the options put forward for consultation" (Consultation guidance from leading UK law firm Mills & Reeve).

We were told that modern cars and houses are safer, but that is misleading. People still get injured and trapped in modern cars and need to be rescued. When they are seriously injured, if they are not in hospital within the 'Golden Hour', their chances of survival quickly reduce. Modern houses still burn and sometimes much more quickly.

There were over 900 fires in people's homes in Devon & Somerset last year

and at 72 of them people had to be rescued.

Reserves are "not sat there waiting for a rainy day". Wrong, that is exactly what the primary purpose of reserves is. Every responsible public body has reserves for unexpected events that may require additional expenditure. D&SF&RS may have more than they need in reserves 'for a rainy day', but the answer was misleading.

"We are trying to get more day cover". Only crazy D&SF&RS logic could make this claim when their proposals will see up to 30 less fire engines available during the day.

"Some of the suggestions are to move appliances to different locations". Misleading, only one fire engine is to be moved to a different location. Sixteen others are being permanently removed.

They were asked "How much money will be reinvested in fire safety?" Their answer avoided saying how much. None of the consultation documents give that information either. Why is that information being kept secret?

We were told that removing wholetime cover at night at Barnstaple, Exmouth and Paignton would result in a "slightly longer response time at night". Misleading, adding five minutes to the response time to hundreds of emergencies is not 'slightly longer' when seconds count, especially if your life or property is at risk.

We were told that the "majority of fatalities are people who can’t escape by themselves" and "vulnerable people". Instead of doing more to ensure firefighters arrive quickly enough to save them, D&SF&RS is planning to arrive more slowly. Not only immoral, but making changes you know will impact more seriously on vulnerable groups is a breach of the Equality Act.  

"Will removing rural appliances mean longer response times". Another evasive answer about their response standard, which only covers the first fire engine's arrival time. He did not mention that building fires and road traffic collisions where people are trapped need at least two fire engines. The honest answer is, removing appliances will mean even longer response times for both first and second fire engines.

We were also told that "if it was just about money" they “could have made much bigger savings in a different way.” Confusing, and it raises two important points. 

1. If they had other ways to save money, why is the public being denied the opportunity to comment on those options?

2. The law firm Mills & Reeve advise that, if there is a need to make savings, the financial position must be clearly set out. Yet we have not been told exactly how much has to be saved and how much is being reallocated. Interestingly, they add that hiding financial reasons "behind other, more palatable, reasons to change a service risks your consultation being struck down as unlawful".

This consultation is riddled with inaccurate, contradicting and misleading information, false claims and a lack of detail. This broadcast confirms that asking D&SF&RS staff questions will only result in more of the same and they will end up even more confused. I think most people would expect much better from people earning over £75,000 a year. 

On the plus side, there was one important and accurate thing mentioned by Sarah Allen. Referring to incidents she said, "we don’t know when they are going to happen or what resources they are going to need in advance”. 

That is exactly why none of the fire stations should be closed

and none of the fire engines removed.

The consultation is not fit for purpose