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From invisible to fully integrated Service |
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This month’s feature on the retained has opened a Pandora’s Box. FIRE calls for Fire Service leaders to pick up the gauntlet and drive the Service beyond limited expectations
When it comes to the retained, there have always been more questions than answers (see Troubleshooting the Retained feature, from pg 44, where we ask a few more). Now, it seems, it is ‘teetering on the edge’, facing unprecedented pressures and lacking a national, cohesive approach. Pockets of good practice aside – Oxfordshire and Humberside feature this issue, plus plenty before – it is difficult to bounce with optimism from our contributors’ comments. ‘A firefighter is a firefighter’ is an oft-repeated assertion, but does it hold any real meaning?
Dr David Paton, Humberside (see pg 53), contends that it held little sway at last year’s DCLG/CFOA conference, ‘The Retained Duty System: Making Change Happen’, where he reports: ‘A number of speakers echoed it was not possible to include the RDS as a full member in the modernisation agenda and we should all accept that and stop upsetting everyone by bothering to do the impossible... a firefighter is a firefighter – I don’t think so’. In her address at the LGA Fire Conference, Susan Johnson stressed the importance of language and the counter-productive effect of negative labels (see pg 36). So it goes with the retained. So long as the difference is highlighted, the difference will remain, and never the twain shall meet. Mike Fordham (see pg 49) concludes that: “We do not have a ‘Wholetime Service’ and a ‘Retained Service’ – we have a Fire and Rescue Service.” Indeed we do, but how aspirational is that Service? What is holding it back?
Aspirations Abound
At last month’s Managing Strategic Performance conference organised by the change management company Alexander, Tony Travers, London School of Economics, claimed the Service is being taken for granted and it has become ‘invisible’. He told delegates that although it is well thought of, it is not using marketing effectively to promote achievements (see Jerry O’Brien’s report on pg 32 which seeks to redress the balance). The point is, he says, that the Service never fails, yet leaders are failing to make their voices heard ‘in the halls of power’.
Lee Howell (see pg 39) raises the question of ‘our ambition for the future’. He asks if the Service is in the business of wider public protection or is it limiting itself to fire-related education, prevention and response? He contends: ‘We have an opportunity to progress a much wider safety role within a Safer Communities agenda and could we not become the foremost authority on safety in the home, working with partners but not necessarily leading on everything?’ It is a role FIRE has long supported: but who will pick up the baton and run with it? Where is that voice in the corridors of power? Who is beating the Fire Service drum? We link the retained with the wider role because the retained is the wider role; this is all about integration, aspiration and moving beyond the confines of a limited ‘modernisation’ agenda prescribed by people no longer with us.
Practical Reality
Our correspondent argues that ‘taking stock of the RDS is difficult… a lack of national consistency of approach very often means the idea of an integrated service is full of holes and contradictions…’ He is not wrong.
A representative at the FBU conference (see pg 11) claimed that delegates were there purely to represent members on pay and conditions. He may not be wrong either. FBU conference voted resoundingly to maintain its resistance to co-responding. They may feel justified. The notion that a firefighter is a firefighter ‘is one that has been endorsed by all fire and rescue authorities’ (see pg 45). That may not be wrong again. How restrictive these approaches appear when viewed in isolation. What else is there? How much more can be done?
It comes back to what Susan Johnson says: we are shackled by the limitations imposed by the language we use. The question should not be concerned with what is wrong, but how it can be put right and most importantly, who or what can make it happen? The DCLG or next incarnation does not regard the Service as ‘invisible’ but the majority of government does. CFOA can do more, as can the union (see coresponding), as can the LGA, as can we all.
The centre for excellence, housed within a Fire and Rescue Service Improvement Agency, supported by all of the aforementioned, overseen and driven by a Chief Fire Advisor who is big and bold enough to take those leaps forward, would be just the ticket. FIRE’s aspirations are boundless, not out of unbridled optimism, more from the realisation that the right questions are now beginning to be asked, and the structure is almost there to make it happen. All it needs is inspired, aspirational leadership. Who will make it happen? We wait with baited breath…
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