The Fire Control Regionalisation Page |
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This page has been written to try to make people aware of what's going to happen behind their backs. It's not been on the news, or hit the national papers, just the odd column, here and there, in the local publications. A real danger exists that the government could steamroller their plan into effect with little opposition. This is another accountancy idea from the government that, just like cuts in the armed forces costing our sons and daughters their lives in far away lands, this one will save the government a few pennies (although with the amount of money being thrown at the project currently, and the almost obscene haste at which things are being done, it seems unlikely that there could be any cost savings) at the cost of lives: The lives of the general public.
What's this big secret plan? John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, and the local government minister, Nick Raynsford, who has been replace by Jim Fitzpatrick, intend to close down 46 county Fire Brigade / Fire Service control rooms, and replace them with 9 new Regional Control rooms. Sounds fairly harmless, but let's expand on it a bit. There's a lot of preamble and background information to get across here, but please read on. There is a very valid and important point to get across.
When there is a fire and you dial '999', the operator will transfer your call to the relevant county fire control room, dependant upon the area code you are phoning from, or the cellphone mast that you are connected to. Just to make things clear, you don't speak to the firefighter's at your local station (although many people think they still do - "I'm just round the corner from you at the fire station" is still quoted a lot by callers) but the Fire Control Operators working in the County Fire Control Room. They will ask for the address and the nature of the incident. If this is not straightforward, then the operator will need to ask questions to ascertain the correct location, such as the nearest main road, nearby landmarks such as a pub or school. The fire control rooms don't work off postcodes, because the public don't work off postcodes. Remember a fire can be reported by anyone, not just the people that live there. You don't drive somewhere and think to yourself "oh, I'm just passing from EX3 4HU area into EX3 5JJ" - and cars on fire in the middle of the countryside don't have postcodes!
Once the operator has sufficient information, then they will turn out the nearest available fire appliances to your incident. Quite possibly the pumps from your local fire station could already be engaged at another incident. In this case the operator will check what the next-nearest resources will be, sometimes even re-directing appliances as necessary. If any appliances are mobile, then these must be contacted via radio and the information transmitted to them.
This is where the operator's role changes more to that of a controller. The police and ambulance are contacted to go to the incident if required. Other agencies such as the water board or railway controls will be notified. Radio messages are taken from the appliances, further appliances and officers sent out, chemical information relayed, further agencies informed and requested. The operator often follows the job through, right from the initial call to the appliances putting the equipment away and going mobile again. This is in addition to however many other incidents are ongoing at that time.
And this is just a generally 'straightforward' call. The next call could be a bomb threat, a nuclear emergency at a power station, an aircraft in distress over a residential area or a chemical tanker that has overturned. Although calls of this nature are few and far between, all operators are trained, ready and prepared for that call, having the knowledge and skills to deal with such an incident.
How many times do you drive along the motorway, even a familiar one, and lose track of what junctions you are between, even what direction you are travelling in? Imagine late at night seeing the driver in front fall asleep at the wheel and hit the barrier, flipping the car onto its roof and across the carriageway. Being the good natured citizen that you are, you stop to assist and decide to phone '999'. First question - where are you? Where exactly are you? What motorway are you on? Which carriageway are you on? What direction are you travelling? What junction have you just passed? What's the next junction coming up. How far between them are you? What was the name of that service area you just drove by? You are beginning to see it's not as easy as Mr. Prescott and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) nicely preach.
People often panic when they see a fire. Consider a thought - what would a call be like from somebody actually trapped within a fire. A mother who's woken up in the middle of the night to a bedroom full of smoke. The downstairs is on fire and she doesn't know where her childen are. Imagine that. There are so many words; anguish, terror, fear, panic, and more, that even all together can't adequately describe what's going on. For the fire controller it's the same. After calming the person down, it's down to business. The location. We can't help anyone until we know where they are. Once we do, the pumps are running. It's not over there though. The operator then stays on the line to extract as much information as possible. Where the fire is. Which bedroom the person is in. How many other people are there in the house? Where are they? All this is vital information that is being relayed to the crews en route so that they can prepare and effect the fastest possible rescue, saving the lives of those people and even limiting the injuries sustained by the fire. And it's still not over, the operator is still on the line, advising the person on everything they must do to stay safe and stay alive whilst the fire appliances are on their way. All the time whilst this operator is committed to that caller, the other operators are supporting in the background, liaising with the ambulance and police, passing each piece of vital information to the crews, mobilising more pumps and officers as required. At the conclusion of calls like these, the operator is usually in as many tears as the caller, just by doing their duty. It is not a nice experience, especially as, regrettably, they don't always have a happy ending.
The point here is simple - FIRE CONTROL ROOMS ARE NOT CALL CENTRES.
So what does regionalisation mean, and why is it not the right thing for the British people? Well it pretty much means what it says on the tin, replacing a number of county Fire Control rooms with a single regional one. This is to happen right across the country, affecting all counties. Of course this will result in numerous job losses, as fewer staff will be used to crew the new control rooms, compared to the total amount of people currently staffing the seperate control rooms in that region. This is not the main reason for writing this; the primary concern is the reduction in the service to the public. Despite Fire Controls being one of the most efficient and cost effecitve parts of the fire service, according to the government's own 'Best Value' review, they still want to change them. They work perfectly well, so what happened to: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?"
Take a look for yourselves at the size of these regional areas - link to ODPM map and list of regional groups. On average a new regional control will be serving 5 counties, however in the case of the South West it is 7, and the South East, it is actually 9! On paper it doesn't sound too bad but just take another look at the sheer size of the area this actually is. Where do you live? Find your county on the list and see which others it will amalgamated with. Consider that an operator taking a 999 call for an emergency in your home county could feasibly be from any one of the old control rooms serving the other surrounding counties.
Despite what John Prescott says (and even some Chief Fire Officers), local knowledge does play a very significant and vital role in dealing with emergencies. It's also significant that all the people that claim local knowledge is unnecessary have never worked in a control room (or spent more than a five minute stint in one!) Knowledge of the area can greatly reduce the time taken to ascertain a location by asking relevant questions about landmarks and local names. Even being able to 'listen' properly to a particular dialect or accent saves a great deal of time, and time is of the essence. Think of the difference between a Cornish accent, a Plymouth accent, a Bristol accent and a Dorset accent for example. Every single second that a person is trapped inside a house that is filling with smoke, brings them ever closer to tragedy. In the time it usually takes to get there, an unfamiliar operator could still be on the line saying "I can't tell what you're saying. Can you spell that for me?"
As a Fire Controller, one of the worst things to hear when a '999' call comes in is not "There's a chemical tanker on fire", or "An aircraft has just crashed" (not that these are good!), but "I'm looking out of my window...", especially when the word 'binoculars' is also used. It's bad enough trying to pin down the location of a fire when the caller is looking out of their window at 2 in the morning in one county, never mind 9!
Here are some examples of potential confusion from the county I work in (Devon): Woolsery is actually Woolfardisworthy, a Halberton and a Holbeton (both pronounced alike). An Exebridge and an Exe Bridge. Any guesses as to how 'Poughill' is pronounced? [It's 'Poyle'] - and there is one near Crediton and another just over the county border near Bude in Cornwall. There are two Appledores, and three Roboroughs. There are roads in our major city - Plymouth - that cover several areas, and are served by several different fire stations, and area names offered on a computer system may not match with what the caller is saying. If I am unsure which area to match on to mobilise the correct appliances, one of my colleagues will almost certainly know. This would not be possible in a regional control room. People will only commute so far - it is over 200 miles from one end of the proposed South West region to the other - excluding the distance to the Scilly Isles. Do you seriously think that a person from Isle of Wight Fire Control would commute to a regional control based in Banbury (hypothetical location). Not a single shift goes by without Control's local knowledge being utilised on an incident.
Apparently this doesn't matter, as according to the ODPM, the technology exists to negate the requirement of any local knowledge in order to determine a caller's location. This is dangerously untrue. Take a look down the following discussion group about the capabilities of technology link to New Technology - The Saviour of Regional Controls. Remember the previous statement - "Fire Control Rooms are not call centres".
Another issue is that a regional control will handle a vast increase in call traffic, without a truly proportional increase in the number of people on duty. This will inevitably see a reduction in the service that the public will receive, perhaps with targets and limits on call times being introduced and heaven forbid, people being placed in a queue when phoning 999 for the Fire Service (as currently happens with the police and ambulance). How would you like to hear "You are number 14 in a queue. Your call is important to us. Please don't hang up" when your house is on fire?
Also, consider the case of a person trapped inside a house and the operator keeping the caller on the line for 8 minutes until a rescue has been effected. Again this may no longer be possible, with an operator being unable to devote so much time to any one call, and the other operators not being available to support them in the way they normally would, and less information being given to the crews en-route.
One of the drivers behind modernisation is to increase the resilience of the emergency services, especially in relation to the current climate, after the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001. Would you not agree however, that by clumping a whole region's Fire Control rooms together in one building is actually reducing the resilience? The New York Fire Department do, as they have moved to five control centres from one in the wake of 9/11. Our government evidently don't hold to the time honoured proverb of not putting all your eggs in one basket.
The current aim of Al Qaeda attacks is to inflict massive civilian casualties, and we have been shown twice now just how co-ordinated they can be with these attacks.
Imagine an attack that started with a regional Fire Control being hit.
None of the fire appliances would be aware of anything other than being unable to contact Control (unless they were mobile in the vicinity and actually saw the event). The neighbouring regional control rooms, 5-9 counties (hundreds of miles) away remember, would not realise what was going on until they started picking up the diverted 999 calls from the affected region. This control room would then be juggling between answering their own lines, answering a far higher volume of diverted lines and mobilising unfamiliar appliances from places they have probably never heard of, attempting to piece together what has happened and then exercising command and control of a major incident (or quite possibly several) in unfamiliar territory. Not that in the current setup life would be rosy if a County control room adopted the calls for their neighbouring county. No cost-cutting regional control room could possibly operate for a lost regional control room for a major incident or a protracted period. This is supposed to be improved resilience?
The intention however, is not for one control to be the fallback for another. The plan is that the remaining 8 controls will all act as fallback if any one control is lost. In theory this seems a plausible idea, sharing the extra workload out, minimising the impact upon the rest. Consider where the workload is being shared out though. Around the rest of the entire country. Controllers in Devon could suddenly find themselves taking emergency calls for Newcastle, and then having to turn out appliances for that area. Just how would they know the availability of the appliances in that area? Another control might have already mobilised to an incident nearby. How would the operator know whether it was a duplicate incident or not? Oh, and by the way, that was Newcastle Under Lyme, not Newcastle Upon Tyne.
During the recent fire in a British Telecom tunnel, affecting over a hundred thousand telephone lines, Greater Manchester Police and Ambulance service were amongst those affected. The Ambulance lost their entire radio system because the lines that carry the signal to the transmitting antennae were in actual fact, telephone lines. They also lost their locating system, meaning they had no way of telling where any of the ambulances were. The entire despatch system had to be carried out using mobile phones, both in the control room and on the ambulances. This had to be continued for a number of days until B.T. could repair the affected cables. What was the effect on Greater Manchester Fire Service in all this? Not affected at all. That indicates how very resilient we currently are.
The government also intend to unite all the county Fire Brigades and Services under a common radio scheme to improve interoperability. This is the FireLink project and the provider has still not been chosen. What if the contract went to a system similar to Manchester's Ambulance Service? This would mean that in addition, in this situation, the entire region's Fire radio system could go down. This region covers Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria. Imagine trying to control appliances 150 miles away via mobile telephone? Also, depending on the architecture of the radio system and the proximity to network hubs, the potential could be there for the entire National FireLink radio system to be neutralised. Just for a small fire in a BT cable tunnel.
In conclusion, hopefully it has been illustrated that regionalising Fire Control rooms will not be able to provide the excellent service to the public that they currently do. In many ways, this service will be dangerously reduced, leading to longer '999' call times and therefore a delay in the time it takes for Fire Appliances to be where they are urgently required. Would you really feel safe speaking to a Fire Control Operator from Cheltenham when your house in Penzance is on fire? Or perhaps you've rolled your car late at night on the treacherous Snake Pass. You're injured and rapidly losing consciousness. Can you explain to the operator in Kettering where exactly you are on the pass? If you don't know where you are, do you think they would? Do you think you could even explain to them what the Snake Pass is first, before slipping into unconsciousness? (The Snake Pass is the A57, linking Manchester to Sheffield, through Derbyshire across the tops of the Pennines)
Here are a few comparison facts and figures about the cost of UK Fire Control rooms:
What can be done? This piece was written to raise the awareness of this issue up and down the country. Has it worked? If it has (and you didn't previously know anything about the proposed regionalisation of fire controls), then obviously the government and your local councils are succeeding in keeping this very quiet. Perhaps a letter to your local paper, asking some questions and aiming to raise the awareness of others in your community? If you feel it necessary, then what about writing to your MP to raise questions in parliament? According to a leaked government report, the regionalisation of Fire Service Control Rooms has a "very high risk" of "total project failure", and for each six-month delay in implementation, will cost the tax payer £11 million. The report was circulated to the Regional Fire Management Boards, who are supposed to oversee the workings of the new control rooms, but with all the figures blanked out! Many of the regional boards have deferred or rejected going ahead at this stage because they have not been given enough information on which to work, and some have called for an independent review. Out of the list of preferred bidders, three have dubious credentials. SAIC, an American firm whose contract for running the Iraq Media Network TV station was taken away by the Pentagon after being criticised as being amateurish and wasting money. The contract cost shot up from $15m to $82m. Another American military firm, Northrop Grumman, also worked in Iraq, and one of its subsidiaries gained a £48m contract to train the new Iraqi army. When it was realised how badly they were being trained, the Jordanian army was brought in and the original contract was not extended. Northrop has also been repeatedly fined for supplying defective equipment and overcharging the US government. The French arms firm Thales is also bidding, and has been involved in numerous French scandals. This project could cost over £1 billion, according to new research carried out by the Fire Brigades' Union. This estimate is based on international research into IT projects which shows that major IT projects exceed their budget by an average of 43%. The Regionalisation of fire controls is currently estimated to cost £988 million, so could therefore easily break the £1 billion barrier.
The government's track record on major IT projects is not good. Going back over the last few years, all these projects have run into major difficulty, running well over budget, behind schedule, and with systems not working causing chaos for users and 'customers':
Regionalisation of fire control rooms would reduce staffing from the current level of approximately 1500, to around 600 (despite the ODPM denying this figure, which is contained in its own confidential business plan). Almost all of the alleged savings from regionalisation come from this staff reduction. This would leave around 8 to 10 people on duty at any one time to cover massive regions - that equates to about 1 controller per current control room! The idea that "if one control is unable to answer calls because they are busy, the calls will pass to another control room" doesn't stand up to inspection either. If a control is too busy to answer calls because they are understaffed and another control room on the other side of the country takes that call, how do they pass the details of the call back to the original control room? There is no one available to answer it! Could calls end up going around the country in an endless loop?
Here's another thought - if the project runs over budget (very likely - the ODPM has the worst overspending record of any government department - 1.6 BILLION POUNDS), that can only lead to cuts in front line services (less fire engines leading to slower response times), increases in Council Tax, or a combination of both.
Despite the London control centre being held up as the model of a regional control centre, it doesn't meet several of the criteria laid down as the minimum standards for these replacement centres, and during the recent bombing attacks in London on 7th July 2005, it required the operation of its backup centre at Stratford.
On 25th August, the National Air Traffic Control System's computer crashed for 20 minutes, causing chaos. This meant that thousands of passengers were delayed as the control slips that were normally printed by this computer had to be written out by hand. If a similar crash happened in a regional fire control, a whole region would have to resort to some form of paper record system. Imagine how large a gazeteer with every property in 7 counties, plus all roads, roads junctions etc. would have to be. As the proposed computer system would also mobilize fire appliances automatically, how would this cope? A delay in your flight is inconvenient, but a delay in finding your address and sending a fire appliance could cost your life.
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On 10th August 2005, the ODPM announced the locations of seven of the proposed Regional Control rooms. They are:
Jim Fitzpatrick, the ODPM Minister, has admitted that the project costs could escalate to £2 billion, with savings over the current system of £20 million per year. By the government's own calculations, this means it will take 100 years to recoup the investment! £44 million will be spent on consultancy fees - £14 million of that already having been spent.
The technology to be used is believed to be based on that used in Norfolk and Greater Manchester Fire Services. Staff in these brigades report difficulties with these systems, most of which have still not been overcome after two years of debugging, upgrades and repairs. Despite requests for clarification about what backup systems will be in place should the new technology fail, no details have been forthcoming. TECHNOLOGY CAN AND DOES FAIL. Using the same computer system throughout all the new controls will mean that a hacker could install a virus that could wipe out the entire country's fire control rooms. That cannot happen at present as brigades use a variety of mobilising computer systems.
The latest Government IT project is yet another fiasco. The Foreign Office's seven-year £30m 'Prism' system which is supposed to replace 30 different systems for payroll, finance, personnel, procurement etc has been exposed in an official report as a failure. The system which is supposed to bring more than 200 embassies and consulates onto the same computer system is far behind schedule, and where it has been introduced, has had diplomats exasperated.
LATEST UPDATE:
A Select Committee of cross-party MPs has been set up to look into the proposed Regional Control Rooms project.
Here are some of the key points of their report:
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Link to 'Playing With Fire' - a poem by David Prowse, with acknowledgements to the Western Morning News.