If a week is a long time in politics, how momentous are five years? We start with this most common of political clichés because, in this last BlackWatch, it is timely to review the Westminster scene over our past 60 commentaries. And, of course, the status of fire safety during that same period. Except for a generally healthy economic scene, which will shortly see Gordon Brown into No 10, it has hardly been an uplifting picture. Bound to a relationship with Mr Bush Jnr (living proof that political skills rarely run in the family), Tony Blair has swung from towering success to demanded departure. And by also following the American habit of trying to overwhelm problems rather than solve them, new Labour has flung money around without any proportionate success to show for it.
Although swollen – and swelling still – the civil service has hardly raised its status either. Again scale has not produced performance. ‘Home Office Statistics’ is now as infamous an oxymoron as ‘Treasury Forecast’ or ‘Military Intelligence’. Sniggers all round.
Such heavy reliance on civil service competence and the fruits of technological efficiency is disturbing when one views recent failures in both areas. The latest is DEFRA with its appalling mishandling of subsidies to our farmers.
Because, of course, such approaches are exactly those being applied to the future of UK fire safety. We have the FireControl project; the roll out of New Dimension assets and training; the FireLink digital radio network; and the FireBuy common procurement service. Not even to mention a total review of service structures following a strike which is also now seen as clumsily handled by government. Take the FireControl project alone, recently justified by DCLG in a ‘Full Business Case’. At a time when the same department issued a White Paper extolling the virtues of ‘localism’, this scorns the effectiveness of our 46 separate ‘localised’ control rooms.
Hardly logical. Nor is any alternative being put forward. If current technology is so efficient why not have a single national control centre with a single back-up, not nine regional set-ups. A government-led private report has, indeed, made such a suggestion but plans were too far advanced on property purchase to adopt it. Much play is also made of ‘engaging even more closely’ with stakeholder interests over all these reforms. But, one wonders, how genuine are the current advisory processes? Since the demise of our FSAB, we have two consultative forums. There is the energetically-led but virtually unfunded Business Community Safety Forum, and the Practitioner Forum – very differently directed by a largely government funded CFOA. The case for re-uniting these bodies is strong albeit they should be looking at proposals from a different viewpoint.
Long may FIRE remain as a vigorous sounding board for such proper concerns, however much it sometimes embarrasses the self-centred. To paraphrase our opening remark as we end, ‘The weak are a long time in politics’. True, and they need constant shake-up.
The views in this column are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect FIRE’s own