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RDS modernisation –no one said it would be easy |
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FIRE correspondent David Wright takes a detailed look at the Retained Duty System modernisationprocess. He finds that while there is plenty to be pleased about, work still needs to be done
THE GREEN SHOOTS OF THE RETAINED Duty System (RDS) revival that emerged in February 2005 were widely expected to raise the status and standing of RDS staff within the Fire Service. It was to do this by addressing many of the issues that had been seen as a barrier to recruitment and retention into the Service. The key strategic issues addressed by the report The Fire and Rescue Service Retained Duty System: A Review of the Recruitment and Retention Challenges ODPM included the use of terminology, recognition of RDS staff, the effects of modernisation, integration of retained, recruitment and retention and how the changes would occur.
With the Service still short of around 5,000 Retained Duty System staff, the anticipated impact of the report is still absent. Although immediate results were never anticipated, the lack of progress has been frustrating to say the least. To add to the burdens of fire and rescue authorities, the number of local disputes have proliferated, illustrating the need for urgent action if a meltdown in both goodwill and industrial harmony is to be avoided.
After the Hiatus
Since the publication of the report, there have been limited outcomes in terms of changes on the ground. But, following a hiatus, the process has been undergoing a refresh with a joint Chief Fire Officers Association and Department of Communities and Local Government ‘champions’ forum held in Leicestershire in September 2006. The aims were to assess progress, identify continuing barriers to progress, and the sharing of good practice. A number of themes were identified as part of the forum, reported to the Fire and Rescue Service Practitioners forum in December. These included the raised but unfulfilled expectations that arose when the RDS report was published. This lack of progress, along a wide range of issues, had, they concluded, ‘fostered disillusionment and pessimism’ about integration and mainstreaming of RDS issues.
These issues, according to delegates, included leadership, engagement with staff, selection processes and the consistency of rank to role and transferability across duty systems. At a local level, lack of commitment by senior management and elected members, pay, profile, engagement with employers and cultural change issues were identified as barriers to progress. Unfortunately, the loss of momentum undermines the very real commitment to the continued success of the RDS that is felt by many managers within the Service, CFOA, CLG and indeed on the part of RDS staff themselves. The current National Framework Document requires fire and rescue authorities to make efficient use of staff within the needs of the IRMP, allow comparable development opportunities and break down artificial barriers. The Department of Communities and Local Government is keen to reinvigorate the process and is supporting an implementation strategy that seeks to prioritise the list of 51 recommendations that came out of the original 2005 report.
A suggestion that the funding of a project manager and others to move the project forward was considered. However, a broader strategy has been preferred by CLG, relying upon more effective stakeholder engagement and sharing and promoting best practice. Just how successful a consensual approach would be towards achieving its objective remains to be seen. Certainly, the belief among many retained duty staff (judging by comments on the Retained Firefighters Union website) is that the anticipated tangible outcomes that modernisation of the Fire and Rescue Service was expected to deliver have, to a certain extent, bypassed the RDS.
Inaccurate Reflection
Unfortunately, many of the current raft of problems associated with the RDS are those that could be fairly laid at the door of the modernisation agenda. Many services have attempted to develop more equitable pay schemes, that have a salaried basis which stabilises the income of staff. These are reported to have worked well in some services. Some have been well received and implemented. Others however, have rejected proposals for salaried schemes on the grounds that these schemes did not reflect accurately the activity levels of individuals, and that while in any schemes there would be some winners, inevitably there would be those who lost out. Many of the cuts that have been affected across the UK in response to IRMPs have had a major impact upon retained stations. Changes in response times for attendances – elongation rather than reduction – have enabled wholetime response areas to be extended. To a certain extent this has certain benefits – wholetime staff are more likely to have greater time allocated to training. None the less, there is a pessimism among retained staff that they are soft targets for closure or restructure, particularly where the stations are adjacent to wholetime units. In this atmosphere of concern there have been instances when even draft proposals of changes have been the cause of much distress and anger on the part of RDS staff.
While the logic surrounding many of these changes is often irrefutable, there is, however, a case for retaining retained as a reserve, that in the event of the ‘big one’ will be utilised fully. One of the reasons a fire and rescue service exists is to provide a degree of reassurance for the public in much the same way as does a ‘Bobby on the beat’.
The loss of public confidence when stations have closed is intensely felt within the villages with RDS stations and pumps. Some FRAs have been successfully challenged over their IRMPs calling for station closures and/or loss of RDS pumps. However, even where this is the case, the damage done to industrial and community harmony can be long lasting, with personal attacks upon officers and elected representatives being made through the media. If nothing else, many lessons in the area of change management could be learned by studying how not to do what has been done in some FRAs. The notion that a firefighter is a firefighter is one that has been endorsed by all fire and rescue authorities. Unfortunately, the lack of central guidance and control over the way the issue of transferability has been addressed has meant that the Service has been criticised for lack of consistency about the way services manage staff transfer from one duty system to the other. The raised expectations of many staff following the RDS report have been dashed in the face of uncertainty caused by the application of good intentions in the absence of good guidance. The perceptions of the barriers between the RDS and wholetime duty system staff, exaggerated in most cases, are changing as more RDS transfer into the WDS, although the tipping point to true interchangability is still a long way off.
Remaining Challenges
One of the challenges that is still prevalent across the UK, and the raison d’etre for the RDS review, is that there is still, despite many good initiatives, a fundamental lack of individuals that can join the RDS. The increasing difficulties associated with having a recruitment process that is identical to the wholetime firefighter; the ability in some services to transfer from RDS to wholetime leaving a continual drift away of staff; the challenges posed by promotion and development systems. These have all been cited as problematic by RDS staff themselves.
The IPDS structures that have now been put in place in some services have actually become a barrier to development. RDS firefighters who wish to be promoted have to attend lengthy courses at a training centre, often having to take leave from primary employment and compromising the notion of work life balance.
In addition, the collection of evidence to demonstrate competence is a burden to staff whose primary employment is within the Service. The financial incentive to seek promotion in these circumstances for a second job, no matter how valued in the community or rewarding, can seem insignificant compared with the effort involved. It can seem that as one door opens, another one shuts. But there are still the human issues that undermine these good works. The time commitment is still extensive – even 120 hours (48 hours less than the previous maximum) is still a huge disincentive for individuals with any semblance of a social life. Attempts by services to recruit larger numbers of staff to service stations have still not provided enough to reduce the burden at stations while increasing base costs for the Service. So are there any long-term solutions to the recruitment, retention and development of the Retained Duty System? Perhaps it is time to think outside the box.
Radical approaches to the use of retained staff could be possible through taking the Retained Duty System to the centres of population – trading off the five minute response time by acceptance that the great success of the fire prevention agenda has meant that the actual ‘global’ risk in cities will not be adversely affected to a significant degree by the delayed turn out. This proposition is made more palatable if strategically sited wholetime pumps mean that the speed of attendance is maintained while the weight of attack could be enhanced to compensate for the delayed attendance of the second and third pumps. In an ideal world, the savings made by the changes in crewing type at these stations could then be invested in providing enhanced, possibly wholetime, crewing in the traditionally retained areas, which have crewing difficulties.
Taking stock of the RDS is difficult for a variety of reasons. A lack of national consistency of approach very often means the idea of an integrated service is full of holes and contradictions. Equivalency between the wholetime and retained duty systems is a laudable aspiration but one that is difficult to achieve due to the practicalities involved. The lack of progress reflects these difficulties in implementation. Trying to make real changes without resourcing the innovation process can, and has, led to frustration on the part of many people on both duty systems – managers and civil servants alike. With the refresh of the initiative underway and with sufficient resourcing and commitment on the part of government, the green shoots could eventually blossom. |
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