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Division(s): N/A

ITEM CM8

COMMUNITY SAFETY SCRUTINY COMMITTEE - 3 JULY 2006

FIRE SERVICE COMMAND AND CONTROL ROOM – THE FIRECONTROL PROJECT

Report by Senior Divisional Officer Colin Thomas

(Oxfordshire’s Senior User for the FiReControl and Firelink Projects and Joint Regional Project Board member)

Purpose/Background

  1. This note brings Members up to date following earlier reports.

  2. Further information is available via the national FiReControl and Firelink websites https://fire-control.org.uk/, https://firelink.org.uk a new FRS website https://frsonline.fire.gov.uk and through a periodic local briefing note available on the OCC inter/intranet (under Community Safety / Fire).

    3. Project Timescale

  3. The estimated date for Infrastructure contract let for FiReControl has slipped slightly from 1st/2nd to 2nd/3rd quarter of 2006 although this has not led to any revision of the estimated go-live date for the RCC which remains at 2008/2009. The earliest the South East RCC is expected to become operational is early in 2009. We are not aware of any other changes and the national project team have said that they are expecting to move to the Best and Final Offers stage soon in the process to let the Infrastructure Services contract.

  4. The Joint Regional Project Board meeting, held on 25 May 2006, concentrated on Firelink with presentations and displays by the Firelink project team. Following contract award more detail is becoming available. We now expect the initial background work to integrate Firelink into our existing control systems to take place in 2007 with the fit-out of vehicles following in 2008. The system will provide voice communications until the Regional Control Centre comes into operation when full data services will be activated providing information directly to a mobile data terminal in appliances and officers’ vehicles. Work is still ongoing to determine the costs of service provision and maintenance but it is already clear that this could represent a considerable increase when compared to our current radio system expenditure. DCLG will pay for basic system provision and operation until the South East Regional Control Centre is fully operational. Thereafter, DCLG should meet the additional costs of the system within the overall revenue support grant to the Council but the detail of this has yet to be confirmed.

    5. Accommodation

  5. It is anticipated that the ground breaking ceremony for the start of the build of the South East RCC at the Kite’s Croft Business Park of construction work will take place in October 2006. Construction work on all 3 of the first wave Regional Control Centres (South West, East Midlands and North East Regions) is now well underway. Details of the work can be found on the FiReControl website.

    6. Process Work

  6. The FRS is undertaking a major task to determine the implications of implementing the first 40 Convergence Outcomes as approved by Chief Fire Officers’ Association. These are the actions necessary to standardise processes, terminology and standards to allow a Regional Control service to operate successfully. This is the first work for FiReControl to be undertaken under the direction of the FRS Joint Implementation Group and has proved to be a good test of the structures set up within the brigade to coordinate project work. At the time of producing the report the assessment is still ongoing but already it is clear that the work involved in developing new processes, changing documentation and systems, data collection, any necessary modification of existing systems plus training all personnel to ensure effective operation is a major task which will impact right across the brigade. The initial assessment work will be completed by 30 June 2006 and the results from all 46 FRAs in England will be analysed by the national project team. One possible result is that some of the more demanding Outcomes may be simplified; a result we would welcome.

  7. Following the earlier work on Out of Scope activities (tasks currently carried out by our Control room that will not be undertaken by the Regional control Centre) the national project has released updated process diagrams which now incorporate changes to both ‘in scope’ and out of scope’ processes. The Regional Project Board has tasked the Strategic Gap Work stream to review the work done earlier to estimate the resource required to meet Out of Scope work in brigades. The aim is to refine the estimates and explore the potential for regional and sub-regional collaboration to reduce costs. We plan to be fully involved in this work. The outcome will be presented to the Regional Project Board later in the year.

    8. Finance/Legal

  8. There is still uncertainty over the costs for both FiReControl and Firelink. Although, in the case of Firelink some more reliable costing information is expected to be released in July 2006 that should allow us to assess the costs for the options for the maintenance of the system. The Full Business Case (FBC) for FiReControl is now not expected to be issued until autumn 2006.

  9. The Fire Lawyers Working Group has put considerable work to look at the issues surrounding TUPE, redundancy and wider personnel issues. However, whilst progress has been made there is a divergence of legal opinion on several issues concerning TUPE and how consultation should be handled and we await firm guidance before we can reliably inform staff on these vital aspects of the project. Much will still depend upon the decisions made on all of these issues will be made by the Employing Entity for the RCC once this is in place.

    10. Governance

  10. The Cabinet discussed the response to the DCLG Consultation Document on the governance of the Regional control Centre Company on 6 June 2006. DCLG asked for general comments on the suitability of the Articles and Memorandum of Association and the Authority’s view on 7 specific questions. The stance taken was developed as a result of detailed work by Council legal staff (and the Fire Lawyers Network) and the Fire Executive. Following Cabinet direction, a response was sent to DCLG by the 14 June 2006 deadline. The aim was to provide positive criticism of the draft proposals. These still require additional work as they fall short of the Fire Authority’s requirement to ensure a robust governance structure that allows effective management of the RCC whilst maintaining the level of FRA control to match local accountability. The DCLG target is to have the governing entity structure in place by the beginning of January 2007. This is a challenging timescale with several significant issues yet to be resolved. The Fire Authority’s response is attached at Annex 2 (download as .doc file) for Committee members’ information.

    (Annex 1 - download as .doc file)

    11. People and Organisational Design

  11. We continue to maintain our policy to fully staff the Control Room. One of our experienced control staff left at the beginning of June 2006 leaving the staffing 1 below establishment. The reason for leaving was uncertainty for the future, primarily because of the FiReControl project. Subsequently, we are in the process of recruiting 2 additional Control Room staff to bring us up to 1 over establishment. However, the training and experience necessary to become fully competent as a Control operator takes 2 years - it is a demanding job requiring a high degree of knowledge, an ability to operate accurately under pressure and deal with the unexpected. The loss of experienced Control Room Operators and the subsequent reduction in the overall experience of Control room staff is of concern and the present lack of firm timescales and reliable information on personnel issues such as TUPE and Redundancy/redeployment exacerbates the problem. As the time left before the Regional Control Centre comes into operation reduces, recruiting and retaining staff, in particular experienced staff, is likely to become more difficult and is regarded as our highest risk to maintaining our control service. In the meantime, we are actively investigating the measures that can be taken to inform and reassure staff. As part of this work we are investigating how to help staff take advantage of any redeployment opportunities whilst maintaining the current control service until the Control Room eventually closes.

COLIN THOMAS
Service Support Manager / FiReControl & FiReLink Senior User

Background papers: Nil

Contact Officer: Colin Thomas Tel: (01865) 855211

June 2006

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