The Comprehensive Spending Review

[Midland Retty]

Now that details of the spending review have been announced how do you think your sector of the industry will be effected ? Is it too early to tell? Do you already have a fair idea? perhaps you are already experiencing the effects prior to the announcement!

It is fair to say that firenet has a broad church of members ranging from fire service personnel to fire risk assessors both self employed or employed by a multitude of different organisations working in different fields, to engineers, technicians sales people etc etc alike.

Discuss>

[jokar]

As far as the FRS is concerned, they have been asked to look at recruitment, CFO's to cover more than one Brigade, flexible and different working patterns for all staff, the level of service they provide but more importantly the support grant received by each FRS is to be changed which will leve some better off and others such as large Met Brigades much worse off if inddeed this happens.  The Chief Ececutive for Chatham House was interviewed on Friday and aired her views on voluntary firefighters as other countries have.

[nearlythere]

There are massive savings to be made in the Fire & Rescue Services but as long as they are run by uniforms they will never be found.
Hell of a statement, what?

[Davo]

MidlandFire

We have to make 4% cuts for the next 4 years commencing 1 April.
Unless I am much mistaken I will be one of them due to lack of shiny certificates
There are two of us, apparently there is not enough work for both.

davo

[BLEVE]

Sorry to hear that Davo, hope you are wrong

[Cat]

Sorry to hear that Davo.

We were feeling the effects of it even before the budget was released.  The way our force polices was called into question and the way we provide a service to MoP's when theyuy compared our performance to similar sized forces.  Everyone started getting moved around to allow for several million pounds in cuts to be acheived.  Most officers work in neighbourhood teams now - traditionally known as your local bobby on the beat - so you will be lucky if you have 8 officers on response (i.e. dealing with 999 emergency calls not local community issues) for the whole division.  In one case a grade 1 (a call that should have an officer in attendance within 10 mins) took 3hrs for someone to arrive!!!!  So much for improvement to the service we provide. 

They have also said they are likely to reduce our fleet numbers as there are always loads of vehicles sat at the station with nobody in them.  Thats cause the officers are stuck doing paperwork half the night, given the run around by CPS and end up going full circle with the person being release with NFA 3 hrs later!!!!!

[Midland Retty]

MidlandFire

We have to make 4% cuts for the next 4 years commencing 1 April.
Unless I am much mistaken I will be one of them due to lack of shiny certificates
There are two of us, apparently there is not enough work for both.

davo

Hi Davo

Very sorry to hear that - sincerley hope your job will be safe.

[wyngwili]

I doubt that any firefighters are gonna be made redundant. 

[kurnal]

Yes best wishes Davo, hope things work out or you and that the axe falls elsewhere.

On the other hand it may prompt you to open a tapas bar on some greek island. That would be hell after thirty odd years serving the police but I guess you would put up with it.

[Davo]

Hi Prof


Meze, please


davo

Although the government said 4% for the next four years, we are doing 6-6-2-2 in preparation for regionalisation

[jokar]

No, probably not, the reference to firefighters.  However, support staff jobs will go and as firefighters retire there will be no recruitment into those posts and therefore the staff numbers will fall dramatically over the next years.  Perhaps we will go back to palques on the walls with Asset and co providing the fire service for those that can afford it.

[Mike Buckley]

Yes I agree, I can see the numbers falling and a move towards day staffing especially in the shire brigades. I can also a reduction in the uniformed fire safety staff with more inspections done by the crews.

It may seem silly, but wait until some bright spark comes up with the idea for brigades to hire in Fire Risk Assessors to do their inspection work.

Line up for bets on which brigade goes first Merseyside?

[nearlythere]

I see radical changes on the horizon.

Uniform only up to ADO level (or whatever they are called now)
Abolish Crew Commander role.
Civilianisation of Fire Safety.
Civilianisation of Senior & Principal Management with major reduction of numbers.
More centralised strategic management.
No deputy to Chief.
Review of second pump policy. (meaning the removal of many)
Introduction of firefighter/paramedic role.
Charging for services.
Less stations and appliances.
Larger turn out areas.
Selective retained callout.
Stations mostly day manned.

and cynically - Local Tescos manger eligable for principle management positions. (And why not?)

and more cynically - Control Room operators taking pizza orders during rest periods. ( I draw the line at that)

[Steven N]

nearly there
have you been photographing ministers papers?

[Golden]

First post here so don't be too hard on me! I too see radical changes and really can't understand how naive the unions can be in trying to resist when change seems unstoppable. Many of those listed above are already well under way. Along with others in the country London will lose many pumps at nights and weekends as the number of fires drop and ability to get around quickly increases. Officers on a recall to duty basis will mean even less have to be available on rota. HQs will be staffed with uniforms who could respond to larger incidents in minibuses for example to make up the numbers; its always been the case that after a while the fire engines are superfluous and its bodies that you need, I've fought fires at night before with minimum crews waiting for light and further resources to make a concerted attack.

If the fire brigade is to survive the union needs to work with the management as this "can't do" attitude is playing into the hands of those who want to decimate the uniformed service. Previous regimes have asked for 'cashable savings' - i.e. lets play around with the figures a little bit to make it look like we've saved money - I don' think this will work with the CSR.

There won't be many Ffs made redundant as we're marking just over 30 years since the fourth watch was created and many are  due to retire so to cut now would make sense as there's no point training people up now to make redundancies in a few years. It would be interesting to know how many brigades are operating well under their establishment figures.

It will be interesting to see what happens in London tomorrow - how many Ff are going to turn up for work as normal?