Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Official Report 467KB pdf

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Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 (Implementation of Fire Provisions)

Agenda item 2 is an evidence session on the implementation of the fire provisions in the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012. I welcome to the meeting our first panel of witnesses: John Duffy, Scottish secretary of the Fire Brigades Union; Sarah Duncan, regional organiser, Unison; and Nick Croft, corporate policy and strategy manager, City of Edinburgh Council.

I seek questions from members.

Good morning. Does the panel think that the number of control rooms can be reduced?

If anyone wishes to answer that, they should indicate as much. I will call them and their microphone will come on automatically.

Good morning. The technical answer to that question is that there can be any number of control rooms. With current technology, a control room could be located anywhere in the world and could still function. However, the actual question is: how best can we get control to function?

At the moment, we are looking at workload and the imbalance in the number of calls going to various control rooms, and the FBU is contributing to the considerable amount of work that is being carried out on various technical aspects and the location of controls. For example, we might want to consider resilience and security issues and think about not locating them in residential areas, not attaching them to fire stations or locating them away from headquarters. There is huge scope in deciding how best to facilitate the service’s operations. It is also important to note that our control rooms are not call centres; they have a command and control function and form an integral part of the fire and rescue service and our capabilities.

The key issue for the FBU is to find a technical answer that balances our members’ needs and allows them to continue to deliver the current quality of service. I am encouraged by how the work is developing. For example, we are looking at our technical resources, our people, where they are located and where they live, our scope for moving things around the country and the location of the facilities.

That is probably a long-winded way of saying that you can have any number of control rooms you want, but the key thing for us is to have the right number and I am content that the work that is being done at the moment will produce such a result.

Any decision about how many control rooms are needed must be evidence based, and the skills and experience of the staff who already staff the control rooms are a key part of that evidence. It is easy to say that there is duplication, but it is difficult to duplicate experience, which is what there currently is in the staff group. Any decision to reduce the number of control rooms might adversely impact more than 100 people, and that must be taken into account because we cannot have the disruption to the service that there would be if we upset that many people, made them lose their jobs or demanded that many of them move.

I agree with John Duffy. Unison, too, is involved in the process of looking at the control rooms, and we are satisfied that the right elements are being looked at and that the right weight will be given to decisions about where the control rooms should be located in the future.

Good morning, panel. Have there been any issues connected with the move to a single police service for the Fire and Rescue Service? Have there been any issues to do with your collaborative work with the police service?

My function in the City of Edinburgh Council is to manage community planning arrangements. We have a lot of dealings with the police and the fire service locally. An unprecedented amount of change has been going on in the police and fire services, but I think that that has strengthened the community planning arrangements in the city, because it has given a very specific focus to Edinburgh. The police and fire plans were developed very much in partnership with the local authority and using our local community planning arrangements, and there was a lot of citizen involvement in that. More than 3,000 people were consulted on the police plan and hundreds were consulted on the fire plan.

There has been no discernible negative impact on the connectivity with the Edinburgh community plan. There are good references to accidental fire deaths and police priorities, national and local priorities are described in the plan, and the read-across to the local community plan is strong.

We are seriously looking at the co-location of command teams in the city and the local authority liaison functions. The fire commander, John Dickie, is particularly keen to look at that. We have regular consultation and engagement with our chief executive; Mark Williams, the divisional commander for Edinburgh police; and John Dickie. Therefore, we see no discernible negative impact on partnership relations as a result of police and fire reform.

Are you in consultation with the trade unions, the Fire Brigades Union and other staff associations on the proposed developments?

That is something that police and fire colleagues bring to the table; the council would not instigate that. Our modus operandi would certainly be to check that.

Colin Keir has a supplementary.

Good morning. Mr Croft said that the engagement was similar, I assume to what it was prior to the single service coming in. Has the same engagement as before been taken right the way down to local communities, through neighbourhood partnerships and community councils, for example? Has there been any discernible change in your contact with people at the local level?

I would say no; indeed, I think that it has been strengthened. The new one-year fire plan and the one-year police plan were certainly developed through neighbourhood partnerships. There were six events in the city, which the police, the fire service and the council ran jointly, and there was a lot of citizen engagement in them.

Our local community planning arrangements in Edinburgh are quite unique. We have local tactical and co-ordinating meetings in which we look at evidence to do with fire risks and crime and community safety risks. Pre-reform, the analytical information that we received was a bit of a hiccup in the process, but it has continued to progress in quite a strong way, and citizen and community involvement in shaping local service priorities has remained the key feature of the reform agenda. I think that there is still a very strong link with local communities and there is local engagement with local services.

Are there any particular demands on the Fire and Rescue Service in a capital city or in a major city such as Glasgow or Aberdeen, where major events take place?

Other colleagues might want to answer that. Our events planning officer group is a mechanism to organise demonstrations, events, royal events and Army events in the capital, and we have something going on in the city pretty much every day. The fire service is an integral part of the planning framework in respect of public safety and support, and there are close working relationships between the fire service and the police when joint agency command systems are set up for very big events and more contentious demonstrations. There is certainly an extra demand on services in Edinburgh.

Do you want to add anything to that, Mr Duffy?

No.

I just thought that the requirements for major events in other cities might be different and that the Fire and Rescue Service might not be necessary.

Good morning, panel. I was interested to hear about the work that is going on with community councils, the police and trade unions. The figures that we have received show that the number of fires is in deep decline. The SFRS is not just about putting out fires, but how should the Fire and Rescue Service be changing in response to the declining trend in fires, which affects everyone involved?

One of the key factors in the decline in the number of fires is the work that has been done by the Fire and Rescue Service on prevention. There has been almost a sea change in the past 10 or 15 years. The emphasis has moved very much to the prevention agenda and we are starting to see the results of a lot of the work that has been done. It should be borne in mind that most of that work is done by people who are in the front line—the people who sit on the operational fire engines. When they are not reacting to emergency situations, their primary role is prevention. Therefore, retaining those crews maintains the service’s ability not only to react to emergency incidents, but to promote the prevention agenda.

When we were faced with significant reductions in the budgets across the public sector, the fire service’s reaction was to move towards a single service in order to protect our ability to deliver at the front line. With the creation of the single service, the emphasis has moved very much towards protecting the fire engines and the crews and maintaining their ability to carry out prevention work. Over and above that, we are now looking at the rescue capability of the service. We moved from being a fire brigade to being a fire and rescue service after the introduction of the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, but the act did not really specify what “rescue” meant. An opportunity was missed in the restructuring and reform process to go deeper into tidying up the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Fire (Additional Function) (Scotland) Order 2005. We made that point during the consultation.

We now need to consider what we want the Fire and Rescue Service to deliver. The rescue capability has been enhanced dramatically over the past few years, and one of the objectives of reform is more equitable access to that. One of the key elements that we are working on is giving access to the service across the whole of Scotland. That is easy to say, but it is a difficult prospect because there are areas of high-density population and areas of extremely low-density population. How do we distribute our resources across the country? The next phase of reform will involve looking at how we can widen the service’s rescue capabilities to provide Scotland with a comprehensive fire and rescue service.

10:15

As part of the prevention initiative, a lot of work has been done to tackle antisocial behaviour and fire setting. Non-uniformed staff are involved in diversionary programmes throughout Scotland, and we would like that work to be expanded.

In working out what the fire service should do more of in future, we need investment in training for staff. We need to look carefully at how that training is provided and to ensure that it is not just for firefighters but for support staff too. In order to provide efficient front-line services, we need well-trained and skilled support staff.

Sandra White has hit on a vital point about fire service reform that we in Edinburgh are keen to look at. There are 15 dedicated staff across the hubs in Edinburgh who are working on prevention through initiatives such as the cooldown crew, which is a youth diversionary activity, and a lot of work in schools.

Discussion has taken place during the reforms and a new stage of preventative activity offers a far more targeted approach in which a chief social worker shares very sensitive information about vulnerable clients who may be susceptible to accidental fire deaths. Where those vulnerable clients live in houses that we own, we consider whether we could put in sprinklers, fire-retardant mattresses or other such measures. The new and more targeted discourse on prevention is very helpful and has been welcomed by the community planning partnerships.

That is a vital point. I know that everyone here goes out to the fire stations, and brings in people—including staff—as part of the training.

You obviously work closely together—that certainly comes across in your answers—and Ms Duncan talked about staff on the ground. Is there a lot of communication around outreach work and training? Obviously the firefighters—such as Mr Duffy—are the ones on the front line and they will go out and speak to schools and pensioners’ groups. Are other members of staff involved in that work too, along with the community planning partnerships?

Yes, they are. One intent of reform is for non-uniformed staff to be more involved in that work. The move to a single service means that people can spread their expertise throughout Scotland, and we would encourage our members to do that.

However, to be honest, at present our members are more concerned about whether or not they have a job. The impact of the £19 million budget cut that the fire service must absorb is being felt mostly by support staff. They are being matched into jobs at present, and some are having to go through a competitive matching process, which makes things very uncertain for them.

They are unsure of what their future pay grade will be, because that will have to be reviewed, and the properties out of which the SFRS operates will be rationalised. We are involved in that process, but it is very difficult. People are not sure at present what their job will be, how much they will be paid or where they will be working.

Although our members are doing an admirable job of ensuring that the service continues—no one will really have noticed the creation of a single service on 1 April, which is to every employee’s credit—we must recognise that the reform has taken place in a period of great uncertainty for support staff.

Thank you. I am sure that we will raise that point with the witnesses on the next panel.

I have two supplementaries to Sandra White’s questions. Ms Duncan, you have mentioned your members’ terms and conditions and contractual issues. Are there any further issues that the trade union representatives want to raise with the committee in relation to such matters?

My main concern is that the fire service just does not have the budget to deal with those issues properly. It is clear that there are potential equal pay issues in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and we know from the experience of other parts of the Scottish public sector that those issues are an awful lot more expensive to sort out than anybody ever thought they would be at the beginning.

It is regrettable that the fire service is trying to carry on providing a service when everybody is in flux. There was no shadow year, in which people could work out exactly what resources they would need and where they would need them, so the fire service is now having to redirect resources, to fill in gaps that it has realised are apparent, while it continues to provide the service.

As I said, the fire service is doing an excellent job and there are good partnership working arrangements between the strategic leadership team, the SFRS and the trade unions. We are able to air the issues that our members have. However, it is difficult for the fire service to tackle all the issues fast, because it has so much on its plate.

The reform did not finish on 1 April; everyone says that it will carry on for several more years. Our members are potentially looking at uncertainty and disruption until 2016 or 2017, while everything is worked out. I do not think that MSPs would like to be in such a position. Many of our members are finding that tough.

We have security of tenure for only about four years usually, although we start worrying well before that.

I am well aware of that.

Ms Duncan, you mentioned equal pay issues. Do you think that some of your members in the fire service have equal pay claims?

At the moment, we do not know that for sure. We would like to resolve the issue properly, by which I mean not through the courts but by doing a pay and grading exercise, choosing a job evaluation system and ensuring that everyone gets on to a single pay system. Plans are in train in that regard.

In any organisation, people must be mindful of the potential for equal pay claims. We have all, I think, learned the lessons from how the issue was handled in local government, for example. We would not want to go down such a route—provided that we have commitments to resolve the problem through negotiation and consultation in a reasonable timescale. Currently, we have those commitments.

I accept that the SFRS might be constrained by budgets, and I regret that. An unrealistic budget has been applied to the organisation if we are expecting a single organisation to be created so fast.

May I put the same question about terms and conditions and contractual issues to the FBU?

The biggest threat for our members and possibly for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service will come from the implementation in 2015 of the Public Service Pensions Act 2013. That is the one issue that we cannot deal with here, and it causes the greatest concern to our members.

On the standardisation of local terms and conditions, there was quite a bit of variation across the eight former services, but I am convinced that the work will be completed relatively quickly and I am encouraged by the collaborative approach that has been taken to addressing the issues. We are optimistic about the standardisation of local terms and conditions, but we are deeply concerned about the pensions aspect.

Thank you.

Sandra White asked about fire prevention. I have been lucky enough to accompany a fire team in Dundee on a fire prevention home visit, which I was very impressed by. I am slightly concerned about issues that were raised with me about the strategic planning of home fire safety visits, which are important in the context of preventing fire. Is there work to be done in that regard, for example in relation to logging visits and the local plans that the police are putting together, so that vulnerable families and areas of high deprivation are targeted? Mr Croft mentioned such work. Is the single service already taking a more strategic approach to visits, or are the current arrangements working okay?

I am convinced that you will get a different answer if you put that question to the next panel, because the chief officer and I have had many discussions about whether it is better to target or to have blanket coverage. We have not been able to assess which system works better—partly because of budgets, which have been mentioned—and given the constraints under which we are working, we will probably do a bit of both. The experience in Edinburgh shows that linking with other agencies must be a key element as the service moves forward.

We deal with a lot of the same people as health boards, housing associations, councils, social work and the police, so it is about sharing information. Previously, people kept their cards close to their chest and the attitude was, “That’s our information. We’re not going to share it,” but it is vital that such barriers are broken down. Community planning partnerships help in that regard, and they are working. We have to look across Scotland at where it works best and tease that out. One of the big benefits of having a single service is that there is now no barrier to moving things across the country, so we have the ability to take good practice from one part of the country and deploy it elsewhere. However, interagency working is absolutely vital.

I was grubbing around looking for a definition of “rescue”. I will just read this out:

“The SFRS has a statutory duty under Part 2 of the 2005 Act (as amended) to respond to fires and road traffic accidents, and a power to respond to other events and situations. Similarly the Fire (Additional Function) (Scotland) Order 2005 sets out other situations or events that the SFRS has a statutory duty to respond to, including: chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear ... incidents; serious transport incidents; serious flooding; and search and rescue.”

I just wanted to clarify that, although there is not a definition in the primary legislation, secondary legislation has other statutory definitions of fire and rescue. I do not know whether that is helpful, but it broadens it out.

The point that I was trying to make earlier was that the Fire (Additional Function) (Scotland) Order 2005 defines a statutory obligation to rescue people from flooding. We know from parliamentary debate that flooding is defined as water on what would normally be dry land, but the order does not give us a statutory function to rescue people from water that is not flood water. We need clarification on that, because we do not want to get into a situation in which a sheriff, as part of a fatal accident inquiry, defines what he determines to be rescue. We have lived through such an experience, and it was not helpful.

I know. What I quoted refers to “serious flooding”, but it does not say where. The matter will need to be tested at some point. I take your point. I was not challenging you; it was just that I was unaware that there was another location for definitions and I do not know whether the committee was aware of that. I pointed it out just to add to the information. You are mostly about rescue nowadays, as you have indicated, because of the change in culture and the fact that, for example, we do not have coal fires in our houses and so on, although I believe that they are making a comeback.

What has been helpful is the fire and rescue service framework.

Yes, that is what I quoted from.

The framework has helped to clarify matters. The point that I was making is that we were going through a revision of the 2005 act but we left some of the anomalies in. We think that it would have been useful to address the anomalies at the same time. An opportunity was missed in that regard.

What I quoted is on the record as a point of clarification, but I accept your points.

Convener, can I just check whether the other panellists have an answer to my question about prevention and targeting?

They did not indicate that they wished to come in, although Mr Croft is indicating now that he wants to come in.

I do.

You must let me know.

Sorry. Ms Marra has hit on a really central tension in public service delivery at the moment: whether to have universality or more targeted stuff. The approach in Edinburgh is to try to do both, but perhaps in a different way. Colleagues in the Fire and Rescue Service are looking to train social workers, teachers and early years providers on general fire prevention safety advice, but they also provide more specialist targeted stuff to vulnerable families or individuals, or families with more chaotic lifestyles who may be assessed to be a fire risk. So, the drift is that we continue to see a role for both universality and targeting, but who undertakes roles in that is slightly changing.

Is there more need for that under the single service?

Yes. As I said before, as a community planning manager in Edinburgh I do not see any discernable negative impacts as a result of reform. If anything, Edinburgh is more of a locus for activity and partnership relations in Edinburgh have been strengthened, because we do not have that sort of force dynamic. It is fair to say that there is a tension between national priorities and local priorities, but fire and police have managed that well.

10:30

My question is probably more relevant to the next panel, but I will put it first to the three of you. Have you given any consideration to the possibility that a local fire and rescue plan might not be approved by the local authority? That issue was raised during consideration of the bill, and I know from discussions with fire chiefs in my area that lots of consultation of local authorities is going on, so it is hard to imagine a scenario in which the local fire and rescue plan would not be approved. However, there could be a scenario in which fire stations are being closed and the council decides to take a political stand and refuses approval on the basis that it does not like the closure of those fire stations.

During the whole scrutiny and engagement process, the Fire Brigades Union was keen to encourage as many councillors as possible to engage in that process and—as a bit of a sales pitch—to use ourselves almost as a traditional counter to the management line. You mentioned station closures; one of the goals of the reform process is to protect front-line capability, so I like to think that closures will not be on the agenda.

In closure scenarios, however, what has happened traditionally is that the fire service has put forward its facts and figures and we have countered them. Two or three fairly high profile cases went through that process. Rather than let things get to the point of confrontation, we want to be involved throughout the process, so that a councillor can come to the FBU and ask for our professional view, as well as getting the service’s view, and can see whether those views are aligned.

What is proposed may not be as dramatic as a closure, but might involve movement of equipment or resources from one station to another. A good example of that took place in the former Grampian Fire and Rescue Service area, where appliances were moved from Dyce fire station to Altens fire station. The fact that the Fire Brigades Union and management both took the same line—that that was the best thing to do for the whole city—reinforces the fact that people had got it right.

We and the other representative bodies are involved in the process, which involves setting out what the service is trying to achieve and stating what we think, collectively, is the best way of achieving it. We wish to engage with local authorities to see that what we want to achieve fits in with what they are trying to achieve through their community planning partnerships. If all of that is working right—I know that it sounds great in theory—there should be none of the conflict that was built into the old system. The way in which we now work tries to take conflict out of the system.

Unison has a key role to play in collaboration and partnership working among the representative bodies, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the local authorities, because we have lots of members in local authorities who advise elected members. If facilities are closing—not necessarily fire stations, but perhaps workshops, control rooms or headquarters functions for some of the old eight services—it is much less likely that there will be opposition to closures if the decisions are evidence based and the whole process is explained thoroughly to the staff and to other stakeholders right from the beginning. That is what we expect to see and we will encourage the fire service to continue that approach as it goes through the really difficult process of rationalisation.

That is, if politicians do not get naughty and decide to make it do that despite everyone’s good will. That is another little aspect to consider.

As representative bodies, we have to be mindful that we have to be responsible in such situations. It would be very easy for a small group of our members who were adversely affected to participate in politically motivated campaigns to protect facilities. We are certainly mindful that we have an obligation to the whole service and to the best interests of the majority of our members.

My question is largely about staff—support staff or firefighters. Many of the aspects of my original questions were covered in earlier responses.

My goodness! That makes a change. You usually cover everyone else’s questions.

That is so unkind of you, convener. I have a supplementary, nevertheless.

Firefighters and staff have expressed concerns about the reform process. We have now gone through the initial stage and we have a single fire service. Other than the ones that the witnesses have already mentioned, have you identified any remaining specific current or potential future issues that will impact on staff and relationships?

In addition to the specific areas that I mentioned earlier, there is going to be a refocusing of some work and of specific corporate functions. The service has 19 payrolls at the moment and it wants to move to one payroll system and to remove it from local authorities. That could be a huge disruption and could affect a lot of staff.

The fire service needs better information and communications technology, to be frank, and more resources for it. It wants to put more emphasis on learning and development and training. I think that it is fair to say that training for support staff was largely ignored by the previous eight services, and the fire service appreciates that in order to create the culture of one service for the future, it needs to train and develop its support staff.

The fire service has a lot on its plate, and a lot of the issues need to be tackled right now, although we are mindful of the fact that not everything can be tackled at once. We have to keep pushing the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to deal with everything as quickly as it can, but to do it properly.

The main issue that is facing us is the new three-year plan. We have an interim plan for a year, so we are trying to capture all the issues that are being discussed today at committee in a coherent plan that has that element of universality but is also targeted at the most vulnerable citizens in Edinburgh. That is certainly the big task.

Discussions have already started about that and, helpfully, they were aligned to a similar discourse in the Police Service of Scotland about its three-year plan. Councils, the Police Service and—increasingly—the third sector are saying what they have to offer. The many charity organisations in Edinburgh employ approximately 11,000 staff, so that is a useful network in which fire and police services can engage in partnership activity. It is a stated intention to involve the sector more in development of the fire plan.

From our perspective, there are two or three points to make in response to the question. They are not about the details but about the broader aspects. If we are moving to a more rescue-oriented service, where do we locate it and how do we move to that from current structures?

There are difficult discussions to be had, but we are encouraged by how they are being undertaken. One of the key things for us is about protecting that. At the moment, the approach that is being taken is radically different to the previous approach. It is much more collaborative and collegiate and that needs to be protected. At this point, it is very much reliant on personalities and individuals. We need to embed that approach further and, rather than discuss the details of what is missing, to protect the overall approach.

At the previous SFRS board meeting, board members were talking about how they can influence the agenda and the direction of travel. The senior management team are clearly able to do that, but the single biggest key group were sitting in the public gallery; the biggest missed opportunity was in excluding the voice of the representative bodies and the trade unions from either the board or the board process. We need to look at that.

The various groups want, with the best of intentions, to drive the service forward in a positive direction, but at that meeting the representative bodies were sitting in the public gallery hearing the board say, “We’ll do this,” and “We’ll do that,” and feeling that they were being left behind. If we are taking the collegiate approach for the technical bit, we need also to take it for the overall strategy and the vision.

When last I gave evidence to the committee, I said that Unison’s preference on composition of the board was to follow the national health service model of including an employee director on the board. I agree absolutely with John Duffy: there was a missed opportunity in the bill to follow the good precedent in the Scottish public sector that was set by having employee representatives on NHS boards. That should be considered for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

I cannot remember why we did not do that. Can anybody remember?

I think that an amendment on that was lodged, but rejected.

I cannot remember. It seems like a sound proposal. We will see how things go. Graeme, do you have anything else to ask?

Yes, please. First, I thank you very much for those comments. The evidence thus far must have been a good consultancy opportunity for the next panel, who are sitting in the gallery. They were glowing for the first part, but that diminished slightly towards the end.

I turn to ICT. My question is probably mainly for Sarah Duncan, but perhaps Mr Duffy will want to contribute. We talked earlier about the joining up of a national system in the police context. You referred to the need to join up your 19 payroll systems, for instance, and I am sure that other systems need to be joined up, too. Is there an opportunity to join the police and fire systems together to gain even more savings through the efficiencies that can be delivered, or is the challenge of doing that just too much to bear?

We should learn the lessons from other big public sector ICT projects, where there have been great plans on paper that have been almost impossible to make work in practice. The NHS is a very good example of that.

I am always very grateful that I was given the SFRS to deal with, and not the Police Service. I am not sure that it would be very sensible for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to try to run too many joint projects with the police function, because the fire service is operating much more smoothly than the Police Service at the moment.

For the past 10 to 12 years, we have tried to run big cross-public sector ICT projects, but none of them has come off. There are good reasons for that but, to be honest, I do not think that we should waste any more money on them.

I sat through the presentation on the police ICT project, the name of which escapes me.

It is called i6. We know that, because we sat through that presentation, too.

The one question mark is over deliverability. The Police Service has designed a solution for the police, but I do not think that it is transferable to the fire service, although clearly the technology would be transferable. You would need to design a solution that suited the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. It comes down quite simply to cost. I would prefer that we did not spend the money on a project that might not see the light of day; we should spend it more practically.

10:45

I am grateful for that.

That is useful; we raised that subject at the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing.

I have again scored off half a dozen questions that Mr Pearson has brought up. I am on my last one, so I hope that he understands.

Perhaps we have not heard it yet.

I have taken on board what you said, Mr Duffy. We heard from Mr Croft that things are generally doing okay here in the capital. Are there challenges in other areas? Edinburgh is very different from Grampian or the islands, for example. Have you found any particular operational challenges more difficult to overcome since the changeover to the single service?

Generally, the answer is no; things are progressing as we anticipated. Before the decision was made to go to the single service, we heard that people who were predominantly from the central belt had anticipated that the money would be drawn out of the central belt and put out to the Highlands and Islands, the Borders and other outlying areas.

We are ahead of you. It is quite the opposite in the Borders; they thought that everything would go to the central belt. That’s folk for you.

When we speak to the outlying areas, folk think that everything will be drawn to the middle. However, we are aware that operationally neither of those options could happen. The service is not built around the geography of an area, but around the need to follow risk. It happens that most of the risk consists of people, so most of the resources are where most of the people are. That was never going to change.

One of the challenges that we need to look at is how we distribute, in particular, our specialist skills and the more technical rescue capabilities. In general terms we are content that the local fire station will still provide a service across the country, but we need to look at how that is delivered. In large parts of Scotland we are experiencing difficulties, especially difficulties that are caused by commuting. If you go back 20 years, many of the towns and villages that surround the cities were self-sustaining. We are seeing those places increasingly becoming part of the commuter belt as people are drawn to the cities for work. That reduces the number of people whom we have available during the day.

If we look at Dundee, for instance, people are being drawn in from Kirriemuir, Forfar and Brechin. The same thing is happening in Edinburgh and Glasgow. It causes difficulties in getting crew for appliances in outlying areas. We need to address that; it will be a big challenge for the service in the coming years.

The problem is nothing to do with the single service; that was happening anyway. Although our budget is now lower, we have more focus and more ability, because of the single service, to come up with a solution that can work across the whole of Scotland. Previously we might have reached a solution in one part of the country and still have had the problem somewhere else because we could not afford to deliver that solution. Now we have the potential to create a solution across Scotland, although it will take a lot of time, effort and hard work. It is a difficult challenge.

For support staff, the principle is decentralisation, so we are, in partnership, exploring flexible working options. For example, people who work in the finance department do not all necessarily need to be based in Hamilton; a person could work for the department and stay in their home in Inverness. The service is being good in encouraging that.

It is fair to say that my members throughout Scotland all feel equally uncertain about the future. They are not more uncertain in Glasgow, in Inverness or in Dundee. However, I believe that the management team intends to ensure that fire and rescue support staff have opportunities to be based throughout Scotland. We will hold management to that.

I have a supplementary question specifically for Mr Duffy, because he mentioned geography. There were particular deficiencies with training in the Highlands and Islands. Can you provide reassurances on that? The people there are your members.

The single best example of why the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service should have been created was the Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Its ability to train its staff was in dire straits. A lot of effort was put into giving that service access to resources from the rest of Scotland. Previously, there were borders involved and there were difficulties in crossing them, but those are gone and the Highlands and Islands now have access to all the resources from the whole of Scotland. If one thing highlights the advantage of having a single service, it is the training facilities and capabilities of former services in areas such as the Highlands and Islands.

On that happy note for the Highlands and Islands and what appears to be a relatively optimistic vision for the single Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, I thank the witnesses very much for their evidence.

I suspend the meeting for five minutes.

10:52 Meeting suspended.

10:59 On resuming—

I welcome our second panel of witnesses. I note that they sat through our previous evidence session. I think that they were glowing at one point, but then the glow dimmed. However, we will soon find out. That was Graeme Pearson’s comment.

With us from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service are Pat Watters, chair of the board; Alasdair Hay, chief officer; and Dave Boyle, assistant chief officer and director of service delivery west. Welcome, gentlemen. John Lamont will begin our questions.

Good morning, panel. You have heard my question already. It is about the need for local authorities to approve local fire and rescue plans. We were concerned about that during the passage of the bill through the Parliament, particularly given the possible eventuality that councils will refuse to give their approval. I fully appreciate that lots of work is going on to ensure that that does not happen, but there is at least a possibility that, in politically charged circumstances such as the recent circumstances surrounding court closures, a local authority will decide not to approve a plan. What will happen in that case?

I will start and I will then hand over to my professional colleagues. The legislation is clear that we have to get agreement to the local plan. There is no option but to get agreement. There is no appeal mechanism and no fallback position. The legislation therefore encourages us to sit down and discuss the matter to get to a resolution so that we can move forward.

I am probably one of the fortunate people in that my glass is always half full. I always believe that, if we discuss something, we can get to a resolution and move forward. The legislation does not tie the hands of either the service or the local authority, but it makes us sit down and work until we get to a conclusion—until we get agreement and we can move forward.

With the greatest respect, the legislation is not clear. It does not deal with the eventuality of agreement not being reached. It is important to put that on the record. I accept that the legislation encourages the parties to reach agreement, but it does not specify what happens if the local authority does not approve the plan.

That is absolutely right, and that is the point that I am making. It encourages both parties to ensure that we reach agreement.

This area has exercised everybody’s thinking since the concept was first floated while the legislation was being drafted. I was involved in some of those early discussions. People are always keen to jump straight to the endgame and ask what will happen if we do not agree. As the legislation was being drafted and the practicalities that would support the delivery of its intent were being discussed, what came out was a desire for a cultural shift within the service.

Rather than enabling people to jump straight to saying, “Well, you’ve failed,” without our having the discussion and working seriously in partnership to deliver the intention to improve outcomes for citizens wherever they are in Scotland, the legislation was designed to encourage us to work with an open partnership approach. That was the intent, that is the way in which we have set up the service, and that is what we have been trying to do. We all know that, wherever there are partnerships, there are difficult times. Things do not always go smoothly, and ultimately people can fall out over things, but we want them to return to having a normal relationship as quickly as possible.

That is the thrust of the way in which we have set up the planning to deliver appropriate local plans in individual local authority areas across the country. It is to avoid getting to a point at which we fall out. That said, if we ever got to that point, it would have to be resolved, because we cannot allow the vital public services that we deliver—emergency response, prevention and protection—not to be available because we have not agreed on something. We would need to continue to deliver those services while the discussion continued in whatever forum.

We have set up the service in such a way that we have local senior officers. They are statutory appointments, and it is their responsibility to work with the local authority to get agreement. The board has allocated four board members to each of the three service delivery areas across Scotland, and part of their role is to work with the local authorities and other local partners to ensure that the LSOs are effective and that partnership working develops as intended to improve outcomes for local communities.

We have deliberately not set up a formal dispute resolution process for the reasons that I articulated earlier, but I can imagine the service’s professional management and the board sitting down with the local authorities and really driving through the reasons why we failed to reach agreement. Nevertheless, because board members have already begun to develop relationships in local authority areas, the possibility of successfully resolving such matters and improving outcomes has been greatly enhanced.

I am responsible for 13 councils in the west and, although I have met every council leader and chief executive, not one has ever asked about the failure to agree a local plan. Everyone is sighted of the fact that the issues involved are local issues for their local communities and that we are working in partnership to deliver them.

In response to an earlier question that John Duffy and Sarah Duncan were asked about the closure of a fire station, I thought that Mr Duffy made an excellent point about partnership working. If the trade unions and representative bodies are involved at the start of the discussions, we will be able to take a collective view of the matter across the whole service.

This journey has been assisted by Pat Watters’s decision to divide the 12-member board into three groups of four members to cover each of the service delivery areas and, in the west, four board members are now assisting me in my work. One of the benefits of reform is the ability to have a greater connection with local authorities, and we are actively going in and meeting community planning partners, chief executives and officials and the staff in the area to hear their concerns and local thinking in an attempt to link those local issues to our national thinking. I think that we have covered every eventuality to ensure that that approach works.

I note that the framework also sets out ministerial priorities. We will use those priorities to draw down the strategic plan, from which we will then develop local plans and because local authorities will have a very clear line of sight to what the fire and rescue service is trying to achieve, nothing should come as a surprise. The culture that we are trying to create, the surrounding mechanisms and structures and the clear line of sight that I have just mentioned are all intended to prevent any possible conflict. I believe that if any such conflict emerges it can be resolved, but everyone must be focused on avoiding that and working together to improve outcomes. After all, that is our common aim.

I, too, have a glass-half-full perspective on life—

Breaking news for the committee!

However, I think that legislation should cover worst-case scenarios and set out what should happen in the event of disagreement. Mr Watters has already acknowledged that there is a gap in the legislation in that respect. I fully accept the intention that has been expressed and the direction of travel that has been set out, but my local fire chiefs have made it very clear to me that there is a gap and that they are not sure what would happen if the local authority disagreed or refused to approve the fire plan. Would they have to revert to the previously agreed fire plan or would they have discretion to put together their own short-term provisions pending agreement? The 2012 act does not make it clear what should happen.

I fully accept your comments and think that you are to be commended on your direction of travel, but the fact is that there is a gap. I hope that it will never have to be addressed, but it has been acknowledged that it might lead to issues in future.

I see that you are all nodding, so I take it that you agree that there is a gap with regard to last resort.

Colin Keir wishes to ask a supplementary.

I wonder whether Mr Watters, with his vast experience of Convention of Scottish Local Authorities matters, can tell us whether these issues have been discussed by that forum and whether it has any views on Mr Lamont’s question.

I would never be so presumptuous as to answer that question. There is nothing more ex than an ex, and I am the ex-president of COSLA. David O’Neil is the present president.

But you have vast experience of such matters.

The matter was not discussed during my term as president of COSLA, but we dealt with many tricky issues—on which not everyone agreed—when I was its president. At the end of the day, we always found a formula to take things forward that benefited local government. I am certain that there would be no less intent during this process to take forward something that benefits the communities that we all serve.

Good morning, panel. I seek your advice on the experience of the past six months with a view to considering how we take things forward for the future. The 2012 act created two separate services—the Police Service of Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service—and an authority on one side and a board on the other. I do not think that it is any secret that there have been governance and oversight difficulties on the police side. Many of those have been to do with information technology, finance and corporate services, which are the same issues that you have dealt with over the past six months and which you will deal with in the future. Will you offer any advice on how you have delivered things with apparently little upset and—from listening to the earlier panel—with a great deal of commitment and universal support? What is the secret of your having delivered thus far and delivering in the future? What advice can you give us?

I would love to take the credit for all that, but the foundations were set long before either the chief officer or I was appointed. A partnership was developed that involved people who looked at how to take forward the services into a single service. The foundations were set for us in that partnership working and in the respect for each other that existed. Things were taken on board, there were regular meetings and discussions, and what our staff and staff representatives said was listened to. The partnership between the services at the time, the Government and the staff formed the foundation for how we would take things forward, and we have carried on that work. I think that it was said earlier in evidence that that is probably a rare example of how people can work together successfully to deliver something that they jointly agree is necessary and ensure that the service is one of which we can all be proud into the future.

It is about protecting the service that we deliver. Currently, we are focused on changing how we manage the service, but we still provide a local service at the local level from local stations, and that will not change. That is what we intend to do, but the foundations were there right from the start. We picked up that work and continued, and that is an example of how to take things forward.

If we ever reach a stage at which the service feels that the board is doing something to it and not in conjunction with it, we will hit the problems that other areas have hit. I fully intend that we will not get to that position, but that we will work in partnership to deliver.

I would like to finish that point. The act enabled everything that you required of the service and fulfilled your needs as an authority or board. The essence of what you have told us is that it is about culture, relationships and communication.

They dinnae provide us with enough money, of course, but that is another thing.

That is your swansong, Pat.

The foundations were set, the legislation was there, and we have picked up on the work and continued it. I heard what was said in evidence, but we have the trade unions fully integrated as part of the board. They are full members of two of my sub-committees for delivering, including the service transformation committee, which deals with how we move the service forward.

Pat Watters referred to the foundation that the board came to. Back in 2010, when we first started to look at an element of reform across the wider public service, particularly the police and fire services, Alasdair Hay and I got involved in the first meeting with the Scottish Government to look at options. There was an early difference of opinion, I suppose, about governance. We thought about a local authority-controlled fire service, and we looked at a national service and options in between. A couple of public consultations later, everyone was signed up to a national service. The one thing that was clear and which united everyone was that we were all trying to deliver the same thing for our communities, regardless of the governance model that sat above it. I was embedded in the service team within Government to take that work forward.

11:15

As Pat Watters said, the gateway review back in May 2012 picked up the fact that partnership work between Government, service management and the trade unions was truly groundbreaking. The foundation that enabled us to put together the service was people sharing a common direction of travel, although there have been differences of opinion along the way. We looked at various models of governance and so on from around the world and we took advice. However, ultimately it was people and relationships that made the difference.

We worked endlessly with COSLA, to seek its views, and with local authorities. We had a heap of hugely successful network events—members have probably been to some of the events that were hosted down at Verity house. We are still doing learning network events and we are still trying to unpick what we did to ensure that we and others who may follow learn for the future.

Eyes are being cast across us from all parts of the world as a result of our success story. Relationships paved the way for that success, which was built on a sense of common purpose and direction and a sense that we were sharing the journey. If, when we walk down a path, we are going to have 95 per cent of the journey in common, let us have the fallout over the 5 per cent at the end; if it happens at the start, we do not get into the starting blocks. That approach built the foundations to which Pat Watters referred.

I hope that your words are echoing in some other places.

I add my voice in support of the view that has been expressed by my two colleagues: partnership working has been key from the outset. If it had not been for partnership working, the challenge would have been much more difficult.

Part of the question was about the separation between the support functions and the service delivery area. I cannot comment specifically on the police because I do not know the detail, but I can say from my experience—Sarah Duncan alluded to this in a number of her answers—that we have been a very successful organisation. We have reduced the number of primary fires in Scotland by about 40 per cent over the past decade.

The staff who work at the front line rightly get much of the credit for that achievement, but I am clear that support staff are enabling staff. The fact that they service the vehicles, do the strategic planning and pay people enables front-line service delivery to happen. We are trying to create an organisation in which everyone understands that they are enabling front-line service delivery, they are ensuring that improvements in the service happen and they can clearly see that they are contributing to the provision of the service. It is a strength of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service that we are all part of one organisation and are not separated.

Can you remind us who the accountable officer is for the business of fire and rescue?

He is sitting between me and Mr Boyle.

It is the chief officer.

Yes.

I have a feeling that that was an Exocet question, if anybody remembers Exocet missiles.

A point that has emerged from our discussion with both panels is that there is good partnership working, but a union representative on the previous panel said that real difficulties had been caused by reorganisation, that there was uncertainty among staff and that the training of support staff was an issue. Can you pick up on those issues?

Another issue is that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service now has a three-year plan. I would think that that is much better than having just a one-year plan. How does the three-year plan fit in with the issues that Ms Duncan raised?

People make an organisation such as ours work, so we are very focused on people issues. We have looked at best practice and Audit Scotland very helpfully produced a best practice guide for public service mergers, indicating where mergers have gone well in the past and where issues have arisen. We have used that to guide the whole process. Staff feel uncertain, although the firefighters feel less uncertain because the number 1 aim of the reform is to protect the front line and improve front-line outcomes. They still feel uncertain, but not quite as uncertain as those who work in our enabling services.

We are looking to give staff as much certainty as we can in a time of uncertainty, so we are producing our working structures very early, in consultation with all the trade unions and the other representative bodies, and we are sharing them with the staff. By looking at them, they can see where they have a future in the new Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. They can also see where there is a job that they might be able to do. They might have lived their whole life in Aberdeen and may not be keen on their job being transferred to Dundee or anywhere else in the country. We will, therefore, try to build in an element of flexible working. In addition, we are working on what we are terming our strategic intent document for our main buildings, such as headquarters. We will share that with staff as early as we can, although it will take us a number of years to achieve that.

In those ways, staff will know where we are going and will quickly be able to establish a timeline that we intend to follow to get where we need to be as an organisation. Some will be quite happy because it suits them as individuals and some will feel unhappy because it does not suit them as individuals. However, the fact that they know what is going to happen will help them to come to terms with that. We will then need to give them genuine options and treat them as individuals. We are recruiting firefighters this year because we want to protect the front line, and to show that we are genuine about offering options we initially offered 40 firefighter posts, through a competitive process, to support staff who wanted to transfer over. That is a tangible example of the retraining and redeployment opportunities that we are offering within that flexible package.

I was encouraged by the fact that 72 members of support staff were interested in those 40 jobs, and we have now almost recruited those 40 staff members. That is creating gaps around the organisation, which will enable us to start to move people about and give them other opportunities. A key factor in all this is the genuineness of our approach, which is exemplified by our offering those firefighter posts. That has helped to calm staff down at a time when, understandably, they are feeling slightly concerned about what the future might hold for them as individuals.

Does anyone else want to comment? You do not have to. Sandra, is there anything else that you wish to ask?

No, thank you. That was an excellent answer to my questions.

Okay. Roderick Campbell will be next. Colin Keir has slipped down the list because he has asked a supplementary question.

Good morning, gentlemen. I would like to probe you on your view on the budgetary challenges—[Interruption.]

Please settle down now, Colin. Do not look so upset.

Right. I will start again. I would like to probe you on your view on the future budgetary challenges, particularly the change from resource to capital next year. How do you see the budgetary pressures panning out over the next period?

I will speak for the board and will then hand over to Alasdair Hay or Dave Boyle, who will be able to give you more detail.

This year, we are confident that we will keep in line with our budget. Next year will be more difficult but, given how we are trying to move the organisation forward, we are confident that we will still stay within our budget. There will be opportunities for us to rationalise our buildings, but that will not happen immediately.

For every decision that we make there will be consequences for other parts of the organisation, and we need to be aware of all of those consequences before we make the decisions. As was said earlier, 1 April was only the start of the process, not the end, and it will take us some time to get to where we want to be with the single service.

In speaking to senior management, the board is confident that we can meet the budgetary pressures that are coming up. Will it be easy? No, it will not. There will be difficult decisions to be made, but we are confident that we can do what we have to.

I will hand over to Alasdair Hay, who can fill in more of the detail.

The budgetary challenges for us are significant. I would not seek in any way to underplay the challenges that we face in meeting our budget constraints. However, as Pat Watters has just said, we are planning to meet those challenges.

There are probably four areas that we are focusing on. One is a reduction in staff numbers and the associated costs. That is a key element because 80 per cent of our budget goes on paying staff. The second thing is to look at rationalising not just our property assets but our contracts. It was mentioned earlier that we are running 19 different payroll systems. I find that quite difficult to understand: we were eight services so how did we have 19 payroll systems?

Were people being paid who did not exist?

As the accountable officer, I sincerely hope not. [Laughter.]

We therefore need to rationalise assets and contracts. You can imagine the myriad ICT, payroll and legal services contracts that we have.

Shared services have already been mentioned. We might share services with our blue-light colleagues in police and ambulance, but there are many other opportunities as well.

Finally, another key thing is to streamline process. We will look at all the processes that are happening, recognise that each stage of every process may involve a cost and ask ourselves whether that cost is necessary. We are very focused on those four key areas to drive cost out of the organisation.

In the first year, we have reduced our budget by £19.5 million in real terms. Although the cashable saving was considerably less than that, one thing that we have had to do as a national organisation, in moving outwith the local government finance settlement regime, is to pay VAT on goods and services. That has been a significant challenge for us, which we have had to pick up in year 1. Despite that, we have taken out £19.5 million in real terms.

We have to make cashable savings of £12 million next year and £7.5 million the year after. Those are significant sums, especially when we add on the inflationary pressures. Something that slightly concerns me is the phasing of that—the fact that the sum is £12 million next year and a smaller amount the year after. We cannot deal quickly with the issues that I have just mentioned, such as asset rationalisation and disposing of properties; a whole process has to be gone through.

We therefore have financial challenges, but we are focusing on certain areas and planning to meet the challenges as we go forward.

Do you have a schedule of potential disposable properties?

We have already started work on that, using the professional staff within the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to bring it together. We have also been working on it with the Scottish Futures Trust and hubco. We want to look at pan-public sector property and not just what we have. Police and other public agencies are going through similar processes. We have been working with the private sector, too, initially with a company called Ryden.

At the end of this month, at the June board meeting, we intend to bring forward a paper in which, in conjunction with the board, we would agree the criteria and appraisal process for the disposal of any property assets. In August and September, we would look at the individual business cases for specific types of properties—workshops, for example. In September, we would look at overlaying the business cases for the needs of specific types of properties against the criteria and the appraisal process.

We always have to reference what we do back to the “Scottish Public Finance Manual”, which is the governance regime under which we operate. The manual contains clear guidance on how to appraise properties in terms of acquisition and disposal.

That is a brief outline of the process and where we are now.

We have questions from Jenny Marra, to be followed by Colin Keir—if no one else wants to intervene and depose Colin yet again.

11:30

Mr Watters, would an employee representative on the board be useful?

There is an opportunity for me and the minister to discuss any addition to the board. It is too early for me to say what gaps in expertise and experience we have on our board, but I have agreed with the minister that, after a period of operation, we will sit down and consider where the gaps are. The minister has a clear intention to ensure that, if there are gaps, we can fill them.

To bring a member of staff on to the board would require a change in legislation.

You said, “after a period”. What period is that?

I think that, after about nine months in operation, we will sit down and consider whether there are any gaps in the board.

Nine months from now?

No, nine months from the start. We are only 11 weeks into operation.

As I said earlier, we have trade union representatives as full members of our sub-committees. In particular, we have two trade union representatives as full members of our transformation committee, which considers how we take transformation forward. They are also on the liaison committee that we have with all the trade unions.

There is active employee participation in board work, but we need to sit down and consider what the impact would be of making the board bigger than it is at present. I am happy to do that and the minister is confident that we will do it after nine months of operation.

It will be interesting to see the progress on that because an amendment to the bill on employee representation received a lot of support but not Government support.

I return to the question on fire prevention that I put to the first panel of witnesses. It is particularly directed at Mr Hay. I was on a home fire safety visit in Dundee, which was useful, but perhaps a more comprehensive system should be put in place to enable support staff to use their abilities to interrogate data and their skills for strategic planning and targeting, certainly when it comes to logging and follow-up actions on such visits.

I ask the chief officer to update the committee on that issue and explain a bit more about his ambition on it.

I talked earlier about streamlining processes. We need to ensure that staff focus on doing home fire safety visit work and do not get caught up in the bureaucracy of recording it. It needs to be recorded so that we know that we have done it and so that we can evidence whether it is having an impact on improving outcomes.

It is not only firefighters who do home fire safety visits. We also have members of what could loosely be termed support staff who have expertise in accessing, engaging and working with hard-to-reach communities. They do that type of activity as well.

We need to have a strong focus on that activity early because there are different approaches throughout Scotland. We need to have a clear line of sight between the money that we have in the organisation, the activities in which we engage and the outcomes that we achieve so that we can see whether that public money is being spent to best effect in the activities in which we engage.

There has been much debate about whether to have a targeted approach or a universal approach to home fire safety visits. The answer is that we need a mix of both.

I was a senior officer in Tayside for many years. We went for a universal approach. Audit Scotland figures show that the number of home fire safety visits that the old Tayside service did was, in some cases, 10 or 20 times greater than the number that other services did. I was a big advocate of that. My rationale for it was based on two pieces of evidence.

At the turn of the century, a home fire safety grant was given to fire authorities throughout England and Wales. They had a clear target for the reduction in the number of fire deaths that they had to achieve. They were given £10 million, which sounds a lot of money but you can understand that it is not a huge amount when it is spread across England and Wales.

The fire authorities engaged a company to evaluate whether the money had delivered value and helped them to meet the fire deaths reduction target. The evaluation found that, by simply fitting smoke detectors in every home in England, the fire authorities would meet the target easily and that, in fact, they could probably double it. That was very strong evidence.

The authorities then asked, “What about the economic cost of fire? How much does fire actually cost society when everything is considered?” The evidence that came back showed that the return was between 14 and 30 times what was invested. In terms of value for money, that meant £140 million to £300 million for the £10 million investment. That was not a targeted approach but a universal one.

Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service commissioned the University of Liverpool to do a piece of work. The Cheshire service embarked on home fire safety visits for every house in Cheshire, and then asked the University of Liverpool to compare that work with family group work for fire and rescue services with similar demographics and profiles. The question was whether it could be proved statistically—that is a hard word for me to say—that the universal approach is better than the targeted approach. The research indicated that the universal approach is better.

We must ask why that is the case because, on the face of it, targeting the most vulnerable would seem the right thing to do. We must understand that, although we all know vulnerable people, nobody thinks that they themselves are vulnerable. My father is 86 now and he thinks that he is as robust as he was when he was 25, but he is not—that is just the reality of things. I can give fire safety advice to my parents, but kids who leave home and move into flats or other rented accommodation perhaps need it, too.

The universal approach uses not just the 9,000 staff who work for the fire and rescue service but informed advocates for community safety. We engage with such people, and they can start delivering fire safety messages and changing people’s approach to their own safety across Scotland. That is why the universal approach works.

There is no doubt that targeting the most vulnerable people also works. We heard earlier of examples of such work in Edinburgh, in which senior social workers share confidential information with us so that we can target the most vulnerable. For some people, education programmes alone are not enough, so there are engineered mechanical solutions that can be put in place to help—for example, simple things like fire retardant blankets. Partnership work, in targeting the most vulnerable, complements the universal approach.

I know that this is a long answer, but—

No, I was just saying to the convener that it is very interesting.

Someone could be the best-trained and best-equipped firefighter in the world, but they still need to know where they are going. They must get out and about on their streets and know their communities.

An issue in Scotland that distresses me considerably is the number of attacks on firefighters. It is difficult to attack people who you know and who know you. Firefighters being out and about in their communities and being visible is a side benefit of taking the universal approach. They get to know their station area, their communities and the people in them. While two firefighters are in a property doing a home fire safety visit, the other firefighters check out access at the back of the property and look at where hydrants and other water supplies are. They are therefore out there, learning about and getting to know their station area extremely well.

For any property that a firefighter visits, there might be 200 or 300 in their area with exactly the same layout. There might not be a fire in the property that was visited but, if there is a fire in another property with the same layout, knowing that layout is helpful for firefighters’ safety—which is another big issue for me. There are therefore lots of unseen benefits that people perhaps do not focus on.

On wider partnerships, perhaps 800 to 1,000 people will be killed or seriously injured in slips, trips and falls in homes across Scotland this year and next year. Those people perhaps will come into contact with the health service or other social care providers. We can do work to support them, such as shared assessments.

That is another example of where we add value, alongside our other types of activity, such as the partners doing home fire safety visits. I believe that that is a big part of the future of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. It is a great opportunity to improve outcomes, not just for us but for other partners.

You have mentioned partnerships, but what about the voluntary sector? How much engagement is there with that sector?

I suggest that that engagement is growing. As I said earlier, we have challenges in accessing some of the people who are perhaps less visible in society or who disappear. There are excellent connections with the voluntary sector: we have a partnership with the Angus voluntary sector in the area within Tayside where I used to work, and the Salvation Army is another organisation that we have partnerships with. There are examples of good local partnerships across Scotland.

Our ambition needs to be that the service is a national one and supports partnership working with the voluntary sector. In my experience, most voluntary work succeeds particularly well at a very local level; I envisage that being captured nationally but particularly through the local plans that we have to develop through community planning.

The local fire stations do a tremendous amount of local charity work. As well as doing that, the board’s intention is to meet in other places and not at our headquarters in Perth. We will have a meeting in the northern hub area in September and will then meet in the west and east areas. When we are having those meetings, some of the board will probably have to stay the night in the area. The board intends to invite the local council to attend our meetings, as well as the community councils and other voluntary organisations and businesses, not so much for them to listen to what we have to say but, after a short introduction, for us to listen to what they have to say and to provide them with a cup of tea and a biscuit.

What happened to that half-full glass?

We want to have a regular discussion with those people. Budgets are very tight, so it will be a cup of tea and a biscuit. We will have a discussion about what type of biscuit.

Thank you—that is helpful. The voluntary sector is very useful, as you say, in attending to those who are less visible.

Now we turn to Colin Keir, at last.

No, it is all right. [Laughter.]

Now I feel that I have wounded you. You must have a question.

Okay.

If there was one particular issue that has concerned you since the very quick turnover from the previous regime to the new one, what would that be and how do you see the challenge for the next year?

Perhaps we can make that the final question and ask the whole panel.

After Alasdair Hay and I were appointed in September, there was a period when the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Board consisted only of us. That was before the senior manager and the rest of the board were appointed. We took the opportunity to look at the rest of Scotland; we introduced ourselves to people so that they knew who we were and what we were trying to achieve.

One thing that we need to continue to look at is how we tackle things in our rural communities—although it is not just about rural communities. I was in Orkney recently to look at a brand new fire station that the Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service had developed and was about to open, right opposite the old hut from which the service used to operate. I looked at the huts next to our old hut; I could see the coastguard’s old hut and round the corner the ambulance service’s old hut, from which they still operate. I thought to myself, “Why are we not taking the opportunity to do this better?” For very little—and probably for less than the Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service had spent—we could have got something that accommodated all of those public sector organisations in that area and given something to the community of which it could be proud.

11:45

I want to look at how we provide services in rural areas because, whatever issues we have, our colleagues have the exact same difficulties, and we must do better.

This issue is not something that came as a surprise to me, but I believe that the biggest challenge that we face is the people issue.

I am immensely proud to be a member of the Fire and Rescue Service, and I am delighted to have the privilege of being the first chief officer for Scotland. When I speak to people, irrespective of what role they play in the fire service, I find that they are very proud to be part of it and of what it represents and achieves. However, as was mentioned earlier, they are feeling uncertain.

The biggest challenge is to keep people on the journey of reform and to ensure that we give as many of them as we possibly can a strong future while meeting the considerable financial challenges. Partnership working is key to that, but people are where everything begins and ends.

Being the last to speak has allowed me to jot down two or three points. There is a thread running through them.

The first point concerns communications and the importance of keeping the message going out to people. That relates to Alasdair Hay’s point about the reassurance that people need about the journey that they are on and how we will take them forward.

The second point concerns visibility as a part of communication. How can we show our leadership and be visible when we are covering a large area? I am being very selfish here, as the west of Scotland, which is the area that I cover, has 13 councils and roughly 4,000 staff. There are 129 fire stations with various duty systems and a huge number of inhabited islands. It is a big area, and there is just me.

There used to be 10 principal officers, so we need to consider how I empower my teams to take on the mantle and do some of the work that used to be done by people who were far more senior. There is a cultural change, and people will take on roles that they did not necessarily have before.

People need to understand that there is a new entity and a new dynamic. We will move forward, and we are all learning as we go, but one element at the heart of the reform—as Alasdair Hay said—is the people issue. We need to keep the people on side. Ideas and policies are easy, but the people make a difference, and we need to keep those issues in our sights.

I suspect—without naming any group in particular—that keeping the people on side would be a useful mantra elsewhere. I thank you for your evidence, which is useful and, for a change, very cheering to hear.