LG 11 - Gwasanaeth Tan ac Achub Canolbarth a Gorllewin de Cymru
(Saesneg yn unig)
Dear Mr WilliamsThank you for the opportunity to submit a response to the Committee developing the Proposed Local Government (Wales) Measure following the letter from the National Assembly on 17 October 2008.
The Fire and Rescue Service is committed to working towards safe, sustainable communities, where avoidable deaths, injuries and damage from fire and other emergencies are minimised. We play a key role in the community with services extending far beyond that of responding to fire, flood, road traffic collisions and other incidents. The Service utilises a raft of initiatives to engage with different sectors of our community in accordance with our statutory duties and aims to build safer communities.
In the light of continuing pressure on the public sector to improve efficiency, the planning and improvement process is increasingly important as a mechanism for identifying how service delivery can be maintained and improved in a climate of limited or constrained resources.
The Authority recognises the lack of statutory under-pinning of the Wales Programme for Improvement process and for this reason alone broadly welcomes the introduction of the proposed measure.
As requested, we have framed our response to the specific questions raised within the consultation letter.
1. Is there a need for legislation to reform:
- the statutory basis for service improvement by local authorities; and
- community planning and strategies?
We fully support the reform of legislation to reflect the current position which has in practice moved some distance from the current statutory requirement. This Measure will give additional clarity on service improvement and partnership working.
We have reservations about the powers of direction towards collaboration conferred by the Measure, given that the Minister already has statutory powers to intervene if he or she believes that a Fire Authority is potentially failing to act in accordance with the Fire and Rescue National Framework (Wales).
We see the main purpose of the measure as unifying the statutory approach to service improvement and qualifying the legislative position following departure from the 1999 act. We welcome this unification and the removal of potential confusion in statutory interpretation.
To comply with the detail and spirit of this Measure guidance must be issued in advance of the Measure becoming a requirement. The current Wales Programme for Improvement guidance for FRAs was not issued until 2007 and timely production of guidance would ensure a smooth transition from one regime to the next and allow planning/reporting cycles to be adjusted accordingly.
2.How will the proposed Measure change what organisations do currently and what impact will any such changes have in terms of service improvement and community planning?
The Measure provides clear legal powers to support the Service’s current position and desire to further improve its service to the community. We believe that the vast majority of the provisions within Part 1 of the Measure were already in place in the 1999 Act. As the legislation has matured and further guidance has been issued alongside the introduction of the Wales Programme for Improvement process, some of the rigid nature (an identified weakness of the Best Value process) was removed. We sincerely hope that this is not the intention of the measure, but fear that by introduction of the measure in its current form, some of this rigidity may return.
We share the LGA view that the Wales Programme for Improvement has its roots in the Best Value regime flowing from the 1999 Act, the prescriptive nature of which is not always helpful. We re-iterate again that very clear and timely guidance on the process will be absolutely crucial to the successful implementation of the proposed measure. Given the specific nature of the services FRS’s provide particularly in terms of operational assurance of the fire and rescue role, bespoke and specific fire related guidance will be required.
We believe that the Wales Programme for Improvement has been enthusiastically embraced by the Fire and Rescue Authorities in Wales and whilst relatively new to the Service, it has already established itself as an effective model to drive service improvement.
There are some significant changes proposed around collaboration, delegation and the aspects of improvement which could have a substantial impact on the Service. At present, the Service is driven by the Risk Reduction and Improvement Planning process which takes into account local issues. Both of these processes are carried out on an Authority-wide basis and resources are deployed accordingly to create improvements for the entire Authority area. The requirement to engage to the extent outlined, with the number of our functions and with the multiple bodies and associated strategies/plans listed in the Measure will introduce a complexity to our process. This may dilute our resources, leading to capacity issues which may reduce our ability to service our communities’ needs.
We support the intentions of this measure but are cautious regards the degree of involvement of staff in the range of meetings and planning as identified by this measure. The Service is structured around improving community safety and providing emergency response over a large area and as such has small centralised planning/policy departments. Engagement at this level may produce capacity issues.
As stated, we support the unification of community and improvement planning in this Measure. Improving community safety is at the heart of our policies however, section 37(3) places a potentially unmanageable burden upon our resources. Certainly in principle we support the requirements in that every community planning partner must assist the local Authority in the discharge of its community planning duties. The practicalities of this however, may well create capacity issues since our functions are not always coterminous with demand areas.
3.Are the sections of the proposed Measure appropriate in terms of reforming the statutory basis for service improvement by local authorities and reforming community planning and strategies? If not, how does the proposed Measure need to change?
Broadly the provisions of the measure are appropriate, but we have some concerns in relation to the improvement areas detailed in section 2.
These areas relate to
- Strategic effectiveness
-Service quality
- Service availability
- Fairness
- Sustainability
- Efficiency
- Innovation
These improvement areas are obviously what the Service would strive for but they must be set in the context of affordability and constraints from limited budgets and challenging finance settlements.
Affordability will sometimes mean that certain of the improvement areas set out above may have to be the subject of difficult decisions particularly in the areas of quality and availability. For that reason, we believe that improvement areas should be included only alongside a reference to suitable levels of financial resources/investment being available.
The explanatory memorandum supplied with the proposed Measure states that the Measure will address some of the weaknesses in the current regime.
We feel, however, the Measure is overly focused on short-range goals with;
- Annual improvement objectives
- Annual improvement plans with annual performance information
- Annual audit and annual self and peer assessment
- Annual improvement reports
If Welsh Ministers set performance standards for Improvement Authorities it is difficult to see how Authorities can move away from the current trend of pre-determined planning to meet pre-specified output targets, rather than responsiveness to complex local needs.
4.What are the potential barriers to implementing the provisions of the proposed Measure (if any) and does the proposed Measure take account of them?
We have provided details in other responses.
5.What are the financial implications of the proposed Measure for organisations, if any? In answering this question you may wish to consider whether you agree with Section 6 of the Explanatory Memorandum accompanying the proposed Measure and, in particular, the statement that "The provisions of the proposed Measure do not give rise to any administrative, compliance or other costs.”
We are not certain that the potential costs associated with the Measure were fully considered with regard to FRA’s; since we are single service community partners spanning many Local Authority and other potential partner areas all with potentially differing community strategies and plans. Given this, we wonder if the same conclusion in relation to costs would have been reached. For FRA’s there will be a cost issue and this might be significant.
Concurrent engagement to the extent required by this measure across the community planning partnerships will have an impact on resources. FRAs currently consult on Risk Reduction Plan proposals, however this is on an Authority-wide basis, Section 44 places a responsibility on the community planning partnership to make arrangements to involve and take account of the views of an extensive list when planning, preparing and reviewing the community strategy. This responsibility will be multiplied across the number of local authority areas a service covers. The process of consulting and engaging the public, collating and publishing information, co-ordinating and servicing the community planning process and undertaking compliance will be complex.
As stated above, it is not clear how bodies covering more than one plan area are to manage the conflicting demands placed by local geographical variation.
Whilst it is the intention of this Measure to reduce the audit burden on Improvement Authorities, care will need to be taken in the implementation of the Measure to ensure that the aspiration is delivered, since there is potential for the burden to be increased. Furthermore, we believe there is a potential for increases in audit fees as a result of the increased audit role.
- Are there any other comments you wish to make about specific sections of the proposed Measure?
The Authority welcomes the sections relating to ‘co-ordination of audit etc’ which should, if successful, improve the level of audit and inspection co-ordination at the local level, but with the caveat we fear additional audit fees.
The FRA’s in Wales are committed to the principles of collaboration which forms a fundamental aspect of the way in which they deliver their services. Indeed, collaboration is woven throughout the recently published Fire and Rescue Service National framework for Wales. The framework is clear in its expectations for collaboration by FRA’s and directs specific areas for focus.
Ministers have powers of intervention available to them to act if any of the three FRA’s in Wales are not acting in accordance with the framework. We are therefore unclear of the principle and deliverability in practice of the power to direct collaboration set out in Sections 30 and 31 of the measure, independently of any other power of intervention.
We do recognise however that the explanatory memorandum is explicit in that the power to direct collaboration would be a power of last resort and would only be used if the Improvement Authority had failed to meet its duty as regards collaboration and had not responded to offers of support by Welsh Ministers in this area. Given that there are other mechanisms for Ministers to direct collaboration within the FRA’s we are unclear how this section of the measure would operate in isolation.
As stated earlier, we have a strongly held view that current and future financial settlements could have a significant impact on ability to secure continuous improvement particularly in the areas of service quality and indeed the availability of services.
Furthermore, we caution against the measure being too prescriptive and rooting too many detailed processes within statutory duties which may result in the inflexibility which was a negative feature of the former Best Value arrangements.
Whilst Section 9 confers the power to collaborate on all Improvement Authorities, it provides no mechanism to allow for re-charging arrangements for ‘staff, goods, services or accommodation.’ We note that this Measure does not repeal Section 2 (4) (a) of the Local Government Act and therefore we retain the power to incur expenditure in order to promote well being.
This may be obvious but we would appreciate confirmation of this
Overall, the Authority broadly welcomes the proposed measure and the clarity it will provide in terms of putting the developing areas of continuous improvement once more on a statutory footing.
We are grateful for the opportunity to provide evidence to the Committee as the Measure develops and look forward to contributing to the drafting of specific guidance for the Fire and Rescue Service.
Yours sincerely
R. Smith
Chief Fire Officer
