Joint police and fire plan: Better service or thin end of the wedge?

Last year, then Home Office minister Mike Penning announced new legislation which would give police and crime commissioners the opportunity to make their case for taking responsibility for fire brigades.

Mr Penning, himself a former firefighter, said his own experience had shown him how well the two services could work together.

"Better joint working can strengthen the emergency services, deliver significant savings and produce benefits for the public," he said.

• MORE: Police chief in bid to run Shropshire fire service too

"It simply doesn’t make sense for emergency services to have different premises, different back offices and different IT systems when their work is so closely related and they often share the same boundaries."

Mr Campion says that by making administrative systems more efficient, it will not only save £4 million, but also lead to a better service across the board. The proposals would also bring the Hereford & Worcester service under his remit, potentially leading to greater efficiency.

"Our fire authorities have laid some good foundations, but it’s clear that our communities are not getting the most effective, efficient services they could," he says.

“By ensuring our police and fire services are collaborating and integrated as much as possible we can deliver better emergency responses, improve prevention measures, and increase information sharing between the services."

However, critics of the scheme may well point to another attempt to improve efficiency a short distance down the M54 in Wolverhampton. For years, the £10 million regional fire control centre at Wolverhampton Science Park stood empty, as a monument to a failed attempt to create a leaner, more efficient service.

It was supposed to be a new regional control centre bringing the West Midlands, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Hereford and Worcester fire services all together under one roof, but the scheme was scrapped before a single call had been received.

Former secretary of state for the environment, transport and the regions John Prescott had hoped to replace 46 fire control rooms across the country with nine regional centres, including the one at Wolverhampton. However, the scheme was dropped as costs soared from £120 million to £635 million, and none of the fire services wanted to move.

At the moment, the fire service in Shropshire is overseen by the Shropshire & Wrekin Fire and Rescue Authority, led by acting chairman Councillor Eric Carter, while the neighbouring Hereford & Worcester Fire Service has its own authority. The fire authorities are made of local councillors, appointed by the councils which cover the relevant area – in the case of Shropshire & Wrekin, its members are drawn from Shropshire Council and Telford & Wrekin Council.

Mr Campion is proposing that both the Shropshire & Wrekin and Hereford & Worcester authorities should be disbanded, and responsibility transferred to the commissioner.

He says West Mercia Police, and the two fire and rescue services will continue to operate as individual organisations with their own professional skills and knowledge, but there are many who fear this will be the first step towards future mergers.

Councillor Kevin Pardy, a Labour member of the authority from Shrewsbury, said Mr Campion had told him that members of the public cared little about what badge firefighters wore as long as they had the proper equipment.

"Well people will care if they are waiting for for equipment from a county south of Shropshire and they live in the north of Shropshire," he says.

Councillor Pardy, a retired firefighter, voices deep reservations about the plans. He says, under pressure from central government, fire services across the country have already come under great pressure to make efficiencies, and this has already meant the loss of many firefighters and appliances.

While he agrees sharing facilities, intelligence and communications could bring benefits for the service, he does not believe bringing it under the control of the police commissioner is the right way to go about doing that, fearing it will lead to a politicisation of strategic decisions.

"During my 27 in the service and in the six years since my retirement, although I have not always agreed with chief officer and fire authority decisions, they have always put the people of Shropshire first," he says.

Matt Lamb, secretary of the Shropshire branch of the Fire Brigades Union, says his members will look at Mr Campion's business case in great detail, but questions whether there is much more scope for savings.

"It will be interesting to see his proposals, and where these savings will come from," he says.

"We can't afford any more cutbacks to frontline services."

But Mr Lamb says the biggest concern is that it may blur the distinctions between law enforcement and fire and rescue services.

"There's an important principle that the fire service must take responsibility for law enforcement," he says.

"Our concern is that the PCC was elected to take responsibility for the police, and that doesn't sit well with being responsible for the fire service."

Like Councillor Pardy, Mr Lamb expressed concerns about the possibility of closer links with the Hereford and Worcester fire service, although he said it would be necessary to study exactly what was being proposed.

"If the commissioner is proposing a West Mercia Fire Service, there are going to be very obvious difficulties due to the size of the area covered. Shropshire is a very large area to cover, and if a piece of equipment is down in Worcester that is not going to help.

"You need to have the fire engines close to where they are needed."

Councillor Carter, who is the Conservative member for Newport ward on Telford & Wrekin Council, is keeping tight-lipped about Mr Campion's proposals, saying he is not prepared to comment on the matter until the authority's annual meeting on Wednesday.

Mr Campion says the proposal is about delivering the best long term results for the communities, and insists that fears about blurring the distinctions between the roles of police and firefighters, or the areas the brigades serve, are completely groundless.

“Integration does not mean ‘take over’," he says.

"I am clear that I would fully respect and retain the professional skills and knowledge within each service and each geographic area.

"Integration could not, and would not, come at the expense of standards of service.”

What will the changes mean?

Gareth Boulton from the office of the PCC answers the main questions.

Will this mean we get a better or worse service when I need help from the police or fire crews?

In itself, a change in governance does not directly impact frontline services. Most things would stay exactly the same at first. One aim of bringing governance together is to make it easier for our police and fire services work together more to improve the service you get.

Will frontline officers be lost as a result of this?

No. This proposed change would actually help protect frontline officers. Our police and fire services need to find efficiencies. Working together more would help them find those efficiencies in support functions, rather than on the frontline.

Will specialist equipment be lost from our police or fire services?

No. That would not be acceptable and is certainly not part of these proposals. Police and fire services would work more closely though on joint procurement and sharing best practice to improve resilience.

Would this mean a reduced presence or visibility from our police or fire services in local communities?

No. The PCC is already working to improve community visibility for police and would not compromise that for either service. In the future it could be that, for example, our police and fire services share more buildings, but they would still retain their community presence.

Would these changes mean a loss in local identity for our fire services?

No. Both fire services would still exist as individual organisations, as would West Mercia Police. The same local police and fire teams would be responding to incidents as we have now. Their names and branding etc would not be affected and they would still serve the same communities they do now.

Will this mean that funding from one area, which currently goes to one service, could be used to prop up other services in different areas?

No – this could not happen. Each service would retain its own budget, income, expenditure and reserves. These would all be ring-fenced to each specific service and geographic area.

Would the fire services be merged together? Would they be merged with the police?

No, the services would work more closely together, but they would not be merged. This would help maximise the benefits of collaboration, without losing the identities, brands and public confidence of the organisations.

Would we still pay separate council tax contributions for police and fire services? Will they still have separate budgets?

Yes, because the organisations are not merging and still have their own ring-fenced finances. You would still pay an amount towards policing and a separate amount towards your fire service. From a public perspective, nothing significant would change in terms of how services are paid for via council tax or financed more broadly speaking.

What are the benefits here in terms of finances or efficiencies?

A change in governance would enable a saving of around £4m to the taxpayer. This would be from the efficiencies that can be achieved by our two fire services and our police force working more closely together and sharing more support functions.

Do our police and fire services need to save money? Would this change help with that or not?

Both our fire services and our police force have been well governed up to now, but they haven’t worked together as well as they can. All three organisations do need to find further efficiency savings in the coming years. In percentage terms, our two local fire services are facing the largest savings targets of any nationwide. West Mercia Police is implementing savings of £9.5m this year, with a further £21.9m projected by the end of 2020/21.

These proposed changes in governance will not single-handedly solve these challenges. However, they would save an estimated total of £4m per year and help ensure that each organisation is squeezing as much efficiency from its back-office function as possible, and therefore offering some increased protection to frontline services.

Does the PCC have the experience to run fire services?

Much like the Chief Constable runs the Police force, there would still be a vastly experienced and professional Chief Fire Officer who would run their fire service as well. These proposals are about governance – providing a strong voice for communities, holding those chief officers to account, ensuring the public get an effective, efficient service and making sure services respond to community needs. This is a role the PCC already fulfils for policing and crime and would be expanding to cover the fire services as well in the best interests of public safety.

What if there are major objections to these proposals, will they go ahead regardless?

If there are objections from top tier councils or there is not a local appetite for these changes they don’t have to go ahead. The proposals would be independently reviewed and the final decision would rest with government.

Who is driving these proposals? The government or the Police and Crime Commissioner?

The Police and Crime Commissioner is the person driving this forward. The PCC commissioned the piece of work to look into the possibilities here and has ultimately decided there is a proposal which is worth exploring further in the best interests of public safety and services.

Is this just the Police and Crime Commissioner ‘building an empire’?

This is purely and simply about what is best for our emergency services and our communities in the short, medium and long term. The recommendations for these changes have come from independent experts who have conducted an in-depth review of the current arrangements and what is possible going forward. If there was no prospect of improving effectiveness and efficiency then the PCC would not be pursuing these proposals.

How would this impact rural communities?

By getting the police and fire services to work together better we should be able to provide a better and more resilient service in our more remote areas.

What will happen to the Chief Officers who are currently in charge of the police and fire services?

These arrangements will not be affected by these proposals. Our police and fire services will continue to be run by experienced, professional officers who are experts in their fields.

If these changes make our emergency services more efficient, would that leave them vulnerable to the government reducing their budgets?

The PCC has lobbied the government for fairer funding for policing since his election and would continue that campaign. By being able to demonstrate to government that local police and fire services are as efficient as possible already, it would strengthen the case for fairer funding, with a particular focus on providing services in rural communities.

Is it less democratic to have a single person in charge of governance of our local fire services?

There are currently 40 local councillors who sit on the two fire authorities, who would be replaced by a single directly elected person if these proposals go ahead. Whilst these councillors are all elected, they are only elected to represent their wards. They are not elected to the fire authorities. Fire authority members are nominated by councils without consulting the public. If these changes go ahead, in 2020 our communities would have the chance to directly elect a local Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner. Every voter would have an equal say. This proposal will increase the democratic accountability of our fire and rescue services.

Could we get better collaboration and integration between our police and fire services without this change in governance?

In theory it is possible, but the reality is that it has not happened. Collaboration between our police and fire services does go on, but it is limited and does not go far enough to maximise the possible benefits to our communities. A change in governance to have a single body overseeing all three organisations would help provide the catalyst to get this progress moving forward.