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A controversial Government project to close all 46 fire service control centres in England has a “very high risk” of “total project failure” says a confidential report leaked to the Fire Brigades Union. The union says the report, marked restricted and confidential, highlights concerns the project will lead to cuts in fire services, push up council tax and put lives in danger.

The ODPM report – Firecontrol Project, outline business case volumes 1 and 2 - is so confidential the version given to fire authorities has all the key figures and financial estimates deleted because, it is claimed, they are “confidential or sensitive”. In fact the hidden figures (leaked to the union) simply show how expensive and precarious the project is and torpedoes ministerial promises it will save money and improve the service.

Fire Brigades Union General Secretary Andy Gilchrist said:

“This dangerous plan will axe all our excellent command and control centres and be a financial burden on the fire service and council tax payers for years to come. It’s expensive, it’s risky, it won’t save a single life and could end in total failure.

“Ministers are hiding the true costs from fire authorities and have made public claims which cannot possibly be justified. Slashing staffing levels from the 1,500 already over-worked personnel to 600 is dangerous folly which is why they want to keep the numbers secret.

“Our current ability to respond very quickly to fires, traffic accidents, flooding, environmental, chemical, nuclear and radiological incidents will be badly damaged. If such a key part of the fire service collapses into the total failure they say may very well happen then lives will be lost.

“It won’t be benefits or tax credits being delayed, as happened after other Government foul ups, it will be a frontline 999 service. If the Government presses ahead with this folly they will have taken leave of their senses.”

The 9 new regional control rooms – it will now include London’s control room - will be “based on a Company Limited by Shares, or a Company Limited by Guarantee” (page 79 paragraph 222) although they will stay under the control of fire authorities. The private sector will provide the new buildings under an expensive rental agreement known as a Private Developer Scheme which will account for nearly a quarter of the annual operating costs. There will be a separate arrangement with the private sector to supply the technology.

The report reveals for the first time that the plans to close all existing centres and open 9 regional centres will cost a massive £754.5 million at today’s prices. (page 33, paragraph 73: net present value figure). The report estimates there may be savings of £42.3 million over ten years, £90,000 a year for each Fire Authority. (page 33, paragraph 73: net present value figure). All these figures are concealed from Fire Authorities.

But the report also makes clear there may be a loss of £107 million over the same period, costing Fire Authorities over £200,000 a year more. (page 43 net present value upper limit figure). And this figure may grow if the project does not run relatively smoothly. Again, the figures are concealed from Fire Authorities.

The project has enormous upfront costs of well over £300 million in the early years to which hard-pressed Fire Authorities will have to contribute. As most of them do not have large cash reserves and some face rate-capping the money will almost certainly have to come from cuts to frontline services.

The risks associated with the project show it is an enormous gamble while “existing arrangements for delivering core services (including call-taking and dispatch functions) is perceived to be excellent.” (Page 11, paragraph 30).

The report assesses the risk of “delay or even total project failure” as very high/high. This is because “the recent history of delivering IT/change projects in the public sector has demonstrated a less than 50% success rate.” (page 52 paragraph 141).

There is a high/high risk “that the current provisional timescales may not be achieved” which would “increase project cost”. (page 52, paragraph 142) These are earlier estimated to be around £11.4 million for each six month delay for each region (page 46, paragraph 124)

There is a high/high risk that Council Tax may be pushed up and the fire service cut as a result of project cost overruns. The report says: “Failure to deliver economies would reduce the resources available to further service aims and objectives, and might impact on Council Tax” (page 52 paragraph 142)

Although the report does not explicitly say so the risks of failure are likely to be higher because the project is unique. “There is no precedent for a regional structure to deliver an operational function such as this.” (page 79, par 110) There is also wider opposition to any move away from brigade level controls as the report acknowledges: “There is a limit to the degree of integration that the public, the Fire and Rescue Service and its representative bodies are likely to find acceptable” (Page 30 par 68)

Almost all the savings come from slashing the workforce to 600 staff from the current number of 1,500 (London has around 98 staff) leaving little more than 40 people to staff each of the new controls, figures also concealed from Fire Authorities (page 47 and 48, paragraphs 127 and 128).

This would mean in practical terms – it is a 24 hour 365 day service - around 8-10 people on shift at any one time to cover massive regions, or about one for each current brigade, a number most in the service would consider dangerously low even for dealing with normal call volumes. The figures are concealed from fire authorities.

The report makes clear that staffing numbers have to be slashed to these levels or the project cannot make any savings at all. Every additional 100 staff adds around £40 million to the project costs and would wipe out any “savings”, figures also concealed from Fire Authorities.

The staff cuts are so severe that the system will routinely transfer calls away from controls which have reached saturation point to whichever control room can take the call. “Control loads will be managed by the transferring of calls to alternative regional control with spare capacity” (page 18) which could be anywhere in England.

This could see – as a matter of routine – 999 calls in Cornwall being handled in the North East. Or 999 calls for incidents in Cumbria being handled in Kent. Each remote regional centre would also have to deal with one of the 99 police controls or 43 ambulance controls close to the site of the incident, a logistical nightmare.

Even the supposed critical need to deal with terrorist incidents does not escape the tight financial constraints needed to make the project self-financing: “There is a trade off between achieving security and resilience requirements, and the cost of implementation” (page 22)

Claims that there will be any service improvements at all are undermined further because no attempt has been made to estimate the impact of the changes: “No attempt has been made to quantify the value of lives saved, injuries avoided or reduction in damage to property” (Page 106, paragraph 110)

The claimed savings of £42.3 million over 10 years do not amount to the 30% savings promised repeatedly by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The possible losses of £107 million - around 12% - is a figure never mentioned by ministers.

The figures for savings have to be taken with an enormous pinch of salt as so many costs are either excluded from the project costs, ignored altogether or effectively shifted onto other budgets and counted as savings. The costs exclude depreciation, capital costs, “migration costs”, the costs of building “maintenance and rehabilitation”, the cost of patching the current system until the new one comes on line, write-off costs for existing systems (some only recently upgraded).

Also excluded are the costs of withdrawing from any existing arrangements including the very expensive PFI deal the London Fire Service reached to open its new control centre last year. That deal is so costly that PFI is excluded as an option for regional control centres. (Page 60, paragraph 171)

Also excluded are any additional costs to the police and ambulance services of linking up with the new fire service controls. They have no plans to regionalize their command and control centres although they often have to respond to the same incidents.

 

Some work excluded from the proposed new regional controls will still have to be done and paid for by fire brigades with the information passed to the new controls. This includes crucial information on the constantly changing status of retained stations, the numbers on duty and local details of road closures or traffic delays and many more, most of them not even listed.

National media contact: Duncan Milligan 07736 818100

Ends

Notes: the document (with almost all the embarrassing figures blanked out) is currently out for consultation. The full document (with all the figures intact) is available on our website from 10am January 3: www.fbu.org.uk

Fire Authorities have been asked to respond to the document by 5 February although all the key figures and estimates have been removed from the version sent to them.

The union is sending the document to all members of the Public Accounts Committee, all members of the ODPM Select Committee, the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Chancellor Gordon Brown, the National Audit Office and the Chairs of all Fire Authorities.

CLAIMS MADE BY NICK RAYNSFORD SINCE THIS CONFIDENTIAL REPORT WAS PRODUCED

Cambridge Evening News 14 December 2004

“it is not a launch into the unknown.” In fact the project is described as “unique” in the report which also states: “There is no precedent for a regional structure to deliver an operational function such as this.” (page 79, par 110)

“…the new centres will have more staff on duty” No they won’t, the report’s confidential figures show a reduction of nearly two-thirds.

“if the number of calls to the centre is overwhelming they will go to another centre and no-one will be left waiting”. With far fewer staff the new control rooms will reach saturation point much more quickly even under normal operating conditions. The other control rooms will also be operating under the same pressures with far fewer staff.

“...there will be a significant saving”. There is no such certainty even with the very questionable figures they use. There may also be a far more significant loss and a “very high” risk of “total project failure”. All that information concealed from fire authorities and the public.

East Anglia Daily Times

November 30, 2004

“A spokeswoman from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister said the setting up of regional fire control centres would create a better, more efficient fire and rescue service that saved more lives.” Or, according to the report, create a system which might fail completely, cost vast sums of money, push up council tax and result in cuts to the frontline fire and rescue service.

“The spokeswoman said the new centres were expected to achieve a cost saving of about 30% on current control room running costs.” In fact the true estimate is that the £750 million project might produce savings of around 5%, might result in a loss of 12%, might push up Council Tax, might mean cuts in frontline services and has a “very high” risk that it faces “total project failure”.