TWO new reports portray a catalogue of professional and political failings at the top of Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. In the first, Audit Scotland criticises years of “poor leadership and governance” which have left the service in a position where power has effectively been handed over to a team of troubleshooters which is now proposing major changes to the brigade’s structure and operations.
The crisis is traced back to a decision in 2003 by former firemaster Brian Murray to upgrade 61 auxiliary stations to retained status. While this attracted more funding from the Scottish government and meant better equipped firefighters, it also committed the service to providing levels of training it was financially unable to provide. At the same time efforts to save money by closing stations which received few call outs or were unable to recruit crews were blocked by councillors fearing a community backlash.
Since then prosecutions of other brigades for health and safety failings and the tightening of budgets have left the service seriously exposed. Shortcomings in training mean it is open to litigation if a firefighter is injured in the course of duty but there is no money to address the issue under the current structure. Worse still, many stations require urgent upgrades and 35 retained stations currently have eight crew members or fewer. To bring this up to the minimum level of 10 would cost £2 million a year.
The second report comes from Highlands and Islands chief fire officer Trevor Johnson and spells out for Friday’s fire board meeting the proposed way forward, although the ideas in it are not necessarily his.
Mr Johnson, who has only been in post a few months and is spared most of the criticism heaped on his predecessors, is acting on behalf of the Peer Support Team of three senior officers parachuted in from other brigades to lead the process. It is they who are making the recommendations which Mr Johnson is left to negotiate past councillors and then implement.
Quite clearly stations will shut, and quickly. An emergency meeting of the fire board is scheduled for 2nd March to agree the criteria under which stations will be judged. That could then be used to close stations without individual decisions being referred back to councillors, a source of hold ups in the past. Some may not even last that long. Mr Johnson warns the fire board that he is likely to use his existing powers to suspend “the operational activity of stations which present the greatest risk to the board and service.”
Contrast this to previous attempts to close stations, which frequently dragged on for months and required a series of reports before, in some cases, they secured a reprieve from politicians.
It is not just safety concerns that are driving the process. The report makes clear that all the changes required in 2012
13 will have to be paid for without any increase in budget. As well as the money for additional firefighters, up to £2.3 million is going to be needed for extra training within the next 12 months and this will only be available if stations shut.So there is a plan which the much derided fire board will feel it has little choice but to approve. But will it survive the furore stirred up in close-knit communities when it emerges their fire station is to shut? And is it the right one?
Throughout the two reports Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service is compared to other brigades across Scotland, but should we not be looking further afield for ideas of how to cover such a sparsely populated region? Apparently a return to the use of volunteer units — which provided basic cover in many areas prior to 2003 — has been ruled out. Yet volunteer firefighters are still widely used in parts of the United States and Australia, where the view is taken that any crew, however limited its capabilities, is better than none at all.
