Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Oral evidence: The State of the Fire and Rescue Services, HC 733
Tuesday 27 October 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 27 October 2026.
Members present: Ms Abena Oppong-Asare (Chair); Sagal Abdi-Wali; Chris Curtis; Mr Will Forster; Mr Gagan Mohindra; and Alan Strickland.
Questions 1 to 36
Witnesses
I: Jonathan Smith, London Fire Commissioner; Simon Tuhill, Chief Fire Officer, West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service; Kathryn Billing, Chief Fire Officer, Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service; Jon Lacey, Chief Fire Officer, Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service.
II: Roy Wilsher, His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services; Phil Garrigan, Chair, National Fire Chiefs Council; Cllr Wendy Maples, Chair, Local Government Association’s Fire and Rescue Authority Committee; Steve Wright, General Secretary, Fire Brigades Union.
Witnesses: Jonathan Smith, Simon Tuhill, Kathryn Billing and Jon Lacey.
Q1 Chair: Good morning and welcome to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. My name is Abena Oppong-Asare and I am the Chair of the Committee. This session, we are going to be looking at the state of fire and rescue services. We are very happy to have you all here because you are experts in your field so I hope you can guide us in terms of raising with the Government what we need to strengthen policy-wise. Before we start, I would be grateful if you could all introduce yourselves.
Jon Lacey: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity. I am Jon Lacey, chief fire officer for Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service.
Simon Tuhill: Good morning, everyone. I am Simon Tuhill. I am the chief fire officer for West Midlands Fire Service.
Kathryn Billing: Good morning, everybody. It is a privilege to be here. My name is Kathryn Billing and I am the chief fire officer of Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service.
Jonathan Smith: Good morning, everyone. I am Jonathan Smith. I am the London fire commissioner.
Chair: Can I ask Committee members to introduce themselves?
Alan Strickland: I am Alan Strickland, Member of Parliament for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor.
Chris Curtis: I am Chris Curtis. I am MP for Milton Keynes North and I should declare that my brother is a local firefighter in Milton Keynes.
Sagal Abdi-Wali: I am Sagal Abdi-Wali. I am the MP for Holborn and St Pancras and I should declare that I am still leader of the council in Camden.
Mr Forster: I am Will Forster, MP for Woking.
Mr Mohindra: I am Gagan Mohindra, MP for South West Hertfordshire.
Q2 Chair: First, I want to say thank you for your service. I know it is not easy to do the work that you do. I am going to start with a question on wildfires. I am not sure whether you also went to the Government’s wildfire summit on Friday. If you did, it would be good if you could weave some of the answers through when responding.
The wildfires took place over the summer. Can you describe the scenes that you saw as a firefighter and cover how that is impacted your work and what you would like to see the Government implement? I understand that on Friday the summit discussed the wildfire action plan. I understand that that is something that the fire service sector has been calling for. If that is the case, tell me what you would like to see in it.
Simon Tuhill: Thank you for the question. Perhaps I will pick that one up initially. I attended the major incident wildfire in Stourbridge in the west midlands. It is fair to say that the scenes that day will stay with me for ever. I have nearly 29 years’ service in the fire and rescue sector, and the things I saw that day were something that I have never seen before. The scene of devastation across such a wide area of a relatively urban part of the west midlands was deeply upsetting.
The firefighters were magnificent. My firefighters went above and beyond what could be reasonably expected. The incident was physically demanding for them. It was the hottest day of the year and very windy. Not only was it physically demanding—and there were firefighters who had to be treated by paramedic colleagues for heat exhaustion—but it was also psychologically really taxing.
At that incident, 20 residential properties were fully consumed and destroyed by fire, and that is something that my firefighters took really personally. We had members of staff crying at the scene because they felt they were not doing the most they could, and of course they were working in incredibly difficult conditions.
At one stage, almost every single resource in West Midlands Fire Service was deployed not just to Stourbridge, but to the nine other significant fires going on across the west midlands, including three other major incidents, and the hundreds of other fires that were taking place, even those smaller fires. The impact on us was huge and the impact on my staff has been quite profound.
To speak to the Government’s commitment around the wildfire action plan, the fire sector really supports that. We know that fire and rescue services are not going to be able to fix the wildfire challenge on our own. This takes a whole-of-society approach. That includes fire and rescue being adequately resourced and prepared to deal with wildfires, meaning that we have the right PPE for our firefighters, the right vehicles, the right equipment and indeed the right numbers of firefighters. That day showed, not just in the west midlands but across the whole of the country, a sector that was incredibly stretched due to the loss of firefighters over the last 15 to 20 years.
It is not just the fire and rescue sector that can do the response part of wildfires. We also need government support around bringing together the whole of the community. That includes local authorities that can support with public space protection orders so that we can enforce people behaving responsibly when we are at those times of significant wildfire risk. It includes the use of national alerts to let people know what they should and should not do. It includes landowners, the Countryside Alliance and the National Farmers Union thinking about responsible land management, particularly in the west midlands where there is urban-rural interface. This is not just burning in farmers’ fields, peatland or moorland, but it is impacting on residential properties, which is something that many services are now starting to face as we go forward.
Then there is the civic duty of the public behaving responsibly. The wildfire in Stourbridge was deemed to be caused accidentally, but over the course of the summer we had several wildfires caused by people behaving a bit more irresponsibly, with the use of disposable barbecues or careless disposal of smoking materials, or indeed deliberately.
One significant incident that happened on the 13th in Highter’s Heath in south Birmingham that resulted in the total loss of six houses was deemed to have been started deliberately. There is a whole-society approach not just around regulation but also society having that civic duty to come together as climate change makes the role of the fire service more complex.
Q3 Chair: That is really helpful, particularly your perspective on the whole-society approach. You mentioned the national emergency alerts. As we saw for the first time last year—I believe it was in August—national emergency alerts were issued in relation to the wildfires. There was a bit of criticism, as you know, in terms of whether it met the threshold and why the alert was issued, particularly with the wildfire. Do you know whether you have done any lessons learned to see whether this was effective and is something that should be embedded in the system going forward?
Simon Tuhill: The sector’s belief is that that message was effective. In fact, we would have advocated for it to have happened earlier. That day there were wildfires going on across the whole of the UK and major incidents declared in many fire and rescue services. That message, telling people what they should and should not do, was one of the crucial bits of public messaging that enabled us to get the hook in to speak to the public about how we would like them to behave at a time of extreme risk of wildfire.
Q4 Alan Strickland: Building on what you have mentioned so far, I am interested to hear, given the lessons from the wildfires and that climate change means we might expect more of those, how your plans and tactics might change. Is there a need for different innovative methods? I am thinking about the commitment around military air support. Different fire brigades during the summer were testing out different new bits of kit. How might we expect your approach to change and what support might you need from Government to help you do that?
Jonathan Smith: Funnily enough, back in 2022 the London Fire Brigade experienced significant challenges with wildfires, as colleagues on the panel will remember. Particularly 19 July 2022 will live long in the memory. There was 40° to 41° heat that firefighters had to operate in.
We have had to completely overhaul our operational response to deal with these challenges. In a bizarre way the fact that the London fire commissioner is having a conversation about wildfire probably tells you where we now are. Six or seven years ago, we were not having that conversation. We had had some significant grass fires and some significant challenges previously, but nothing to what we saw back in 2022. We as an organisation, specifically the LFB, had to learn a number of lessons to make sure that we were as prepared as possible. Over the last three to four years, we have overhauled our training provision. We have brought in new kit and equipment. We have different vehicles. Our incident commanders deal with wildfire in a different way.
As you will appreciate, we had been set up predominantly as an urban fire and rescue service. We were still dealing with the aftermath from the Grenfell Tower inquiry and the subsequent recommendations that the LFB was having to deliver against. To then find ourselves dealing with the incidents that we faced back in 2022 has meant we have had to re-posture ourselves as an organisation. Now, as we approach the summer period, there is a long run-up.
Simon’s point is right: this is a whole-society approach. One thing that we now do is to write to all the local borough chief executives to talk about how we manage open green spaces and encourage people to behave in a different way when we get into the summer. The emergency alert is something where, as a country, we have to get into that habit. In southern Europe, for example, that is a very common occurrence. These alerts will be sent out and it changes the way that people behave and think about wildfire.
If I talk parochially from the LFB’s perspective, we have had to completely overhaul our operational posture for the summer period. We brought in significant numbers of firefighters over the summer period because we were anticipating significant heat. On the hottest day of the year, which I think was 13 August, we got up to 38°C or 39°C. We use a system called recall to duty, so we have 2,500 firefighters who are signed up to a voluntary recall to duty. When we anticipate particular challenges around our operational capability, we are able to bring additional resource in. It meant that, on that day, we crewed every single pumping appliance and every single specialist vehicle to try to maintain the position that we had in London.
If I may go through the call figures, in July we were 40% up on the previous three-year average. In August we were 49% up on the previous three-year average. We have done 20% more wildfires in 2026 than we did in 2022, which is the biggest challenge to us as an organisation. We are having to think very differently about how we posture ourselves as an organisation to deal with what is now, to use that hideous phrase, the new normal.
We are thinking about next summer now. I know that we will need additional PPE. We will need additional kit and equipment. I very much welcome the Government’s positioning on wildfire at the moment, particularly the summit, but we would need to see the resource flow in to fire and rescue services right across the country in order to deal with what is now a significant challenge. This has been rising for some time. We experienced it particularly in 2022, where we lost over 40 houses in Wennington and Dagenham in particular, because the fire had spread in a way that we simply had not anticipated before.
This year we have been able to hold it in London and support the national endeavour. We have sent 300 LFB firefighters to major incidents in England and the south of Wales. Nearly 60 vehicles have been deployed to support the national resilience effort. That is what this is going to take. This is a UK issue for us to contend with. The national resilience of UK fire and rescue services has been severely tested over the summer period. We now have to think very seriously about how we make sure every fire and rescue service has the resource it needs to deal with these issues, which we know we are going to face for the foreseeable future.
Mr Mohindra: Can I start by thanking you all for what you and your teams do to keep our communities safe? Mr Smith, you spoke about the national alert. Some of the feedback we had from domestic abuse charities was the concern that victims of domestic abuse may have secondary phones. The feedback I would offer is this: can we roll the pitch if we are going to send out a national alert to make sure those people are able to hide their secondary phones? I wanted to make sure that that was on the record.
Q5 Chair: I wanted to follow up on what both Jonathan and Simon said, particularly about the increase in resources, the different vehicles and PPE. Have you identified new technology that you think should be factored into part of what the Government are looking at, which will help mitigate particularly stuff such as wildfires and other things that you are responding to?
Jon Lacey: An alternative option is a predominantly on-call fire service. Most people in Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service have day jobs and then respond by pagers to the emergencies as and when they happen. They are hugely dedicated people giving up their time to respond to emergencies every day of the week and evenings. Under normal circumstances that works quite well, but on the Dunwich fire during the summer that we experienced in Suffolk the turnaround of staff was hugely challenging.
Technology can help to a point there. As soon as we brought air assets in to the Dunwich fire, that quenched a large amount of the fire quite quickly. We had to take that at a risk of cost, because Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service already runs at a budget pressure this year, meaning that any other resources that we bring in for spate conditions, such as wildfires, floodings or coastal inundations, come at an extra cost that we then need to find through our fire authority, which of course is challenging.
In terms of the technology available, it is encouraging to hear that the RAF may well be providing us with firefighting aerial capability. The challenge there is that that may then come at a cost to local authorities to be able to fund that, which will be impossible because we are already running at pressure.
Drone capabilities and technology such as robotics also can play their part in wildfires and other emergencies. The challenge there is that certainly local authorities and fire authorities do not have the capital investment to bring in this technology. We certainly do not have the capital and revenue budget to keep up with emerging technology that could be so useful to us and could prevent fatalities in the public, but also firefighter fatalities.
The budget also comes into effect where we have seen cutbacks over recent years, and certainly over the decades, where firefighter numbers have been reduced. That provides its challenges. Dunwich is an example. Where we have on-call firefighters, you can only rotate them around a shift so many times before you are putting their pager down to bring them back to another fire, or to the Dunwich fire only a few hours after they just left.
We think that national resilience and the capability there should be looked at for investment to make sure that, when you press the button, it is not just London that is supporting but all the other fire services. Another 14 came to assist Dunwich. Just as Dunwich finished, we then put Suffolk firefighters across the country to Hampshire and to Wales to help them when we were already stretched, because we knew they needed that help.
There is technology out there. It needs to be worked through carefully. Support through capital and revenue investment will help us to embrace that, take it on board and move it forward at pace.
Q6 Sagal Abdi-Wali: I wanted to come in on something that Mr Smith mentioned about being prepared for next summer. We are seeing a lot of extreme weather. It is a lot more frequent now and it is going to probably impact us in the winter as well, especially with flooding. I understand that that is not a statutory duty for the fire brigade. I wanted to understand how you are prepared for other extreme weather incidents, especially flooding if it is not part of your duty.
Jonathan Smith: It is a key question for us. Yes, we are now anticipating warmer, wetter winters as well as longer, drier summers. The kit and equipment that we have purchased to deal with wildfires—we have these terrain support vehicles—during the summer give us a four-by-four capability to deal with wildfires and in the winter give us an enhanced flooding capability. We are looking now at our next generation of pumping appliances, which are going to need to be as multifaceted as possible. We are going to have to make sure that we are postured correctly in the summer period to deal with wildfires, but now there is what we are seeing in the autumn and winter.
There was a week in April that sums up where we are at the moment. On the Monday night, we had flash flooding in south-west London and what are referred to as spate conditions, so we had significant numbers of calls coming into the control room. We had to then think about how we were deploying our resources. At the end of that week we then got temperatures of 30° to 32°, all in the same period. In a microcosm, that gives you an understanding of some of the challenges for all fire and rescue services.
This is a global issue clearly, not just for the UK, but it is something we are having to think about very carefully in our longer-term strategic planning and when we are buying kit and equipment. There is the PPE challenge. What we are looking at next year is lightweight PPE that can be used in a wildfire scenario, but in a whole range of other rescue scenarios as well, so it is multi-purpose, because that is the nature of modern firefighting.
Last year, we went to 44 different incident types as a fire and rescue service. The role continues to expand. The risks and challenges that fire and rescue services are dealing with continue to expand. That is something we have to think about very carefully in how we plan for the future.
Kathryn Billing: In Cornwall we had the first two named storms that hit us this week. For areas such as Cornwall, rurality really matters. We have dispersed communities, long travel distances and critical infrastructure vulnerabilities among our communities, and they become isolated really quickly. We have touched on wildfires and then gone more broadly into storms and flooding.
We have to look at the risks that we are facing as a fire and rescue service. They are changing significantly and quickly. The question for all of us is whether the resilience arrangements that we have in place are changing quickly enough to keep up with that pace of change. If we are serious about committing to building resilient communities, which touches on wildfires, flooding and storms—it is the whole piece—from my perspective fire and rescue services need to be seen as part of the nation’s resilience arrangements and critical to that infrastructure, not simply about that emergency response piece.
If we look at it at the macro level, we support nationally. We are sat there as a critical part of the UK’s resilience architecture. It is not just the fire piece. It is the critical national infrastructure, the support for energy resilience, and food security more broadly. We respond to the impacts of extreme weather, as we have just pointed out. If we then look at that meso level, we bring together partners through our local resilience arrangements. We connect places and communities. We strengthen resilience and we are there really often to support community cohesion. At the micro level, we work directly with individuals, the most vulnerable people and families, to safeguard and build capacity.
The value from the fire and rescue service perspective is that we operate all three of those levels. We do that simultaneously. We are trusted and respected. We are embedded nationally, but also embedded within our communities. I have 31 fire stations. They are absolutely at the heart of our communities. My firefighters are predominantly on-call. They are the people; they are the communities. That resilience cannot rely on good will alone. It requires sustained and sustainable investment. From my perspective, the fire and rescue service is absolutely critical to the nation’s resilience.
Q7 Mr Mohindra: I am going to move on to the fire safety risks from e-bikes and e-scooters. What are the trends you are seeing locally in the incidence of fires involving e-bikes and e-scooters?
Jonathan Smith: Someone described e-bikes and e-scooters perfectly to me the other day when they said that that has become the new chip pan fire. It is lithium-ion batteries more broadly actually, the truth be told, not just confined to e-bikes and e-scooters. It is a challenge, because we want to support green technology. We want to see that continue to evolve, but there have been very significant risks with e-bikes and e-scooters, particularly on the black market.
Regulation has a key role to play here. We are really keen to see that the secondary legislation around the Product Regulation and Metrology Act now comes forward. There is a key role, particularly when it comes to the regulation of the online marketplace. We really need to see that come through. At the moment, there are too many counterfeit products on the market.
There is still a lot of education required to make sure that people understand the dangers of self-conversion kits with bikes, and the importance of charging e-bikes and e-scooters properly. We have run a significant campaign called ChargeSafe, which is directly focused on the issue around e-bikes and e-scooters, and particularly safe charging in HMOs and other shared accommodation, where we have e-bikes and e-scooters being stored in escape routes. We are pointing that out and working with housing providers.
It is definitely something we have to keep coming around to. Back in 2020, the London Fire Brigade did 20 e-bike or e-scooter fires. In 2025, we did 210, so it has been going on an upward trajectory. Actually this year, and we think it may well be down to some of the education that we have been doing, it has started to come down slightly, but at this moment in time we have to be relentless about it.
My big ask is that we push forward with the secondary legislation and see that come online. I was having a conversation with the commissioner of the Singapore Civil Defence Force at the World Fire Congress, which was held in London about three weeks ago. I was asking him how Singapore deals with e-bikes and e-scooters. It is through very strict regulation. There are only certain manufacturers that people can purchase e-bikes and e-scooters from. It is very clear. There is proper kitemarking and real strict safety standards that sit around it. There is a huge role for education, but also a huge role in regulation as far as we are concerned.
It is a broader question around lithium-ion batteries, not just e-bikes and e-scooters. Another trend we have seen over the summer period is recycling sites that go up in fire where people are not discarding lithium-ion batteries properly. There is a whole range of challenges that come with new and emerging technology, but of course we want to see that new and emerging technology come through because, going back to our previous conversation around the impact of climate change, we know that that is the route forward. There is a whole range of measures we would want to see, not least, in the regulatory space, to see that secondary legislation come forward, which I think will then make a big difference.
Jon Lacey: Jonathan has explained that exceptionally well about the increase of e-bikes, the challenges that they face and the fatalities, sadly, that they cause. “Counterfeit” was a word that was mentioned by Jonathan there. That is why it needs to be part of a whole system approach to dealing with e-bikes and lithium-ion batteries that are not legitimate batteries manufactured in the correct way.
For a long time, the fire service has worked with partners across the system to deal with faulty washing machines, dishwashers and a whole load of other things. That is why we need close partnership working with trading standards across the board to make sure that we are all working on this together, that whoever has the legitimate powers is able to deal with these, that the resources at the import area, such as Felixstowe port, are taken seriously, and that we have the right resources in there to prevent them entering the country in the first place.
Q8 Mr Mohindra: Do you think we need to get to a kitemark standard? Mr Smith referred to that.
Jonathan Smith: You look at the role that regulation can play. A lot of this is to do with education, and giving people very simple, straightforward instructions—so that they are able to recognise straightaway whether something meets a certain safety standard—is definitely something I would support. Having listened to international experiences, that seems to be the way that they have seen a significant reduction, as in the Singaporean example that I gave, in the numbers of e-bike and e-scooter fires that they were dealing with. I would certainly welcome that.
Q9 Mr Mohindra: Excuse my ignorance. Are e-bikes and e-scooters a problem nationwide?
Simon Tuhill: Yes. Like Jonathan, West Midlands Fire Service responds to numerous incidents. We tragically had a fatal fire in November 2024 where a young couple and their dogs died as a result of an e-bike being charged in the hallway of their family home. We have launched a really big national campaign—“Fast. Fierce. Fatal.”—which explicitly addresses the challenges around lithium-ion battery fires. As Jon says, they are a problem for us throughout the system. They are a problem when they cause fires in people’s homes, but at the end of their lives when they end up in recycling plants they are a huge issue as well. When they catch fire, we can be on site for many days. That is something where the entire UK fire and rescue service is facing a pressure.
We have talked about the changing landscapes of climate change. This is one of those weird ones where it is an impact of climate change that is not really weather-related. New technology such as that is something that the fire service is having to pick up, alongside lots of other things that we deal with now. Thirty years ago, the fire service did not really deal with cyber threats, as an example. Now my service spends hundreds of thousands of pounds protecting our systems from attack so that our systems are able to take the 999 calls and we can mobilise fire engines. That was something we never used to spend money on and now we do, and we do not get funded to do that.
Alongside the reducing budgets that we have had since 2011, we are also dealing with new threats, whether that is lithium-ion battery fires, cyber or a way more complex built environment now. There is the proliferation of houses of multiple occupation, particularly in more urban areas. Those are all emerging risks for fire and rescue services, and we are dealing with those with less money in the first place.
Q10 Mr Mohindra: Before I hand over, I have one separate question. The life of someone who is fighting fire has changed significantly over the years. How much would you guess is actually spent firefighting versus spent educating and on prevention?
Jonathan Smith: We operate to risk, rather than demand, as an emergency service. When you look at the percentages, even in some of London’s busiest stations you are looking at around 7% to 8% in terms of emergency response. When you start talking about the role that firefighters have around prevention and protection in particular, again in a heavily urban and very complicated built environment such as London, they are now spending nearly 20% of their time on prevention and protection work.
The big one is around operational training, which is always the bit that gets missed. The only way fire and rescue services can keep pace with this changing nature of risk, as Kath was alluding to, is through much more regular training. A question we were debating the other day is that, in two or three years’ time, we will be sending firefighters to risks that we do not yet know about. We are going to have to be as agile as an organisation can be so that we can re-posture, as we have done in LFB for wildfire, for any particular challenge that comes over the horizon.
The big thing for us as an organisation is that, when you need the fire service, you need it, and you need it in numbers, as we demonstrated over the summer period. One of the things that came out of the wildfire summit held last week was that we have to have the ability to flex, as a sector, when the demand demands it, so in a summer period have the option to draw down on national funding to bring in additional firefighters to deal with peak demand, and then have an opportunity to do something differently when that demand is not there—for example, more prevention work, protection work, work in other areas or time available for training.
It is one of these things where we are postured for risk, as we should be. When you need the fire service, you need it there in numbers and you need them well trained, fit and able to deal with what is in front of them. At the same time, the role of the fire service continues to evolve. We have to have that agility in our training provision to make sure we can keep pace with it.
Kathryn Billing: The majority—over 70%—of my service is on-call. That means that they do around about 120 hours on call a week. There is not a lot of time left in a week. They will be called when they are needed. In that context, arguably 100% of their time is dedicated to emergency response, because we will call them when we need them.
I would also add to that point that we need the ability to flex. We did not declare a major incident during the wildfire. We were very close. I had some of my on-call firefighters working in excess of 12, 18 or 20 hours, and less than six hours later they were back again. That is great, but is it resilient? Is it appropriate for us to be asking our people to work in those challenging conditions? Throughout the storms, I had over 250 firefighters out at the weekend. That is half my staff dealing with the storms. Again, it is that resilience piece. On Jonathan’s point, the ability to flex is important.
At the World Fire Congress, Sweden talked about its resilience model. It has people who almost commit to community service. They have different routes of how their young people are trained and educated. Some go into the public service life, but, for those who do not, when the nation needs them or the communities need them, they have the ability to call on them because they are already trained in certain roles.
Simon Tuhill: I was going to reinforce Jon’s point around the fire service being a three-legged stool. You have response, which is the fire engines on blue lights that people classically think the fire service is about. Equally important is the prevention work that we do, often with the most vulnerable communities. The best fire is the one that we have prevented, because we have done the prevention work in the first place. Then there are our protection colleagues, who use the legislation to ensure building safety. It is a three-legged stool. If you take any one of those away, the fire service will fall over.
The demands on us now are so much greater that sometimes we are having to make difficult decisions about resourcing. Jon and Kath have talked about seasonal demand and temporal demand. We know that, in west midlands, we attend 50% more incidents and there is more risk in August than there is in February. We attend 70% of our incidents between 10 am and 10 pm, and that is when almost all of our community work happens as well. By and large, fire and rescue services have quite a static model of their distribution of firefighters. Without investment in the fire service, all of us, as chief fire officers, are having to make difficult decisions around where we put our firefighters and assets.
I would like to have more firefighters available in the summer, as well as maintain the numbers in the winter. At the moment, I might have to make difficult decisions about moving my workforce around, based on the fact that our funding has not increased in line with CPI. One stat that I have written down here is that, since 2011, if our revenue budget had gone up with inflation, I would have £36 million more to run West Midlands Fire Service. My budget is £150 million. That is a substantial loss in real-term spending power that we have had to absorb in the west midlands.
Q11 Chris Curtis: Can I follow up quickly? Jumping back on e-scooters and the fire risk, like many other places in the country, Milton Keynes has a real problem with illegal e-scooter use on many of our roads and pavements. Because of the fire risk, it creates real challenges for the police in terms of confiscating and disposing of those e-scooters, which makes it very difficult to stop people using them. Do you have any thoughts on how we can better support the police with that process, given the fire risks?
Jonathan Smith: This question is interesting, because this was one of the areas that we discussed at the World Fire Congress three or four weeks ago. There is no actual silver bullet for dealing with lithium-ion battery fires, and e-bike and e-scooter fires in particular. A number of options are available. For example, in London, we work very closely with the Met police in having secure compounds. There are sensible things that you can do. You can have an external compound that is away from any life risk, and sleeping risk in particular. You make sure that you separate out the lithium-ion battery or the e-bike or e-scooter from anything else that could be combustible. Of course, those storage facilities do not exist in the numbers that we require.
There is a lot of science going into dealing with this issue of lithium-ion batteries. There are dry powders that are now available. There are particular fire blankets that are available. We have an ultra-high-pressure lance that we can use that can penetrate a battery and flood it, in effect, to prevent it becoming a fire risk.
When we are talking to any colleagues, including housing providers—we do a lot of work here with Peabody—we recommend very safe and secure storage for e-bikes and e-scooters that is away from the living accommodation. The key thing is that it needs to be away from the living accommodation. We need to make sure that it is not compromising means of escape. We need to separate out where e-bikes and e-scooters are, and put additional mitigations in place that will stop any spread of fire.
In terms of actually resolving the issue of lithium-ion batteries themselves, science is still playing a bit of catch-up, if I am honest with you, in terms of giving us, as a fire and rescue service, the additional measures that we need. There are things you can do. You can take sensible precautions that mean you can store these in a safe place.
The actual answer is to make sure the vehicles being used are safe themselves, hence my answer to the question before. It is around the regulation. If we have people using lithium-ion batteries, and e-bikes and e-scooters, whether they have a kitemark or a safety standard that we would all accept, that is how we resolve this issue. That is something that we have learned from international comparisons, which is why I was keen to stress the point that we want to see that secondary legislation come forward on the PRAM Act. That is how you resolve this issue.
Q12 Sagal Abdi-Wali: I have a quick question in regards to the awareness campaign and ChargeSafe. With the companies that are most likely to be users, so Deliveroo and Uber Eats, how much response have you had from them? How collaborative are they in raising that awareness?
Jonathan Smith: Funnily enough, we have done a significant amount with particularly Deliveroo, actually. We have run a number of sessions at a number of fire stations in London with those who are operating in the gig economy, in particular Deliveroo, Just Eat and a number of others that are predominantly the users of these e-bikes and e-scooters. I have to say that, particularly with Deliveroo, to give it some credit, it has really stepped into this space about protecting its drivers.
A lot of this is education. It really is. It is about explaining the real dangers that come with this technology if you are using conversion kits or equipment that does not have the appropriate safety standards around it. When we do that, we have had really good engagement, particularly with companies such as Deliveroo. We have to keep that momentum going forward. That needs to be matched with the legislation keeping pace as well.
Q13 Chair: I wanted to follow up on that. Is it a matter of it being difficult to identify which is not the appropriate battery to use, or is it down to cost? I want to understand a bit more.
Jonathan Smith: It is a combination of all those things, the truth be told, which is why we want to see the secondary legislation come forward, so that it is very clear what charging capability is safe to use. We always advise away from purchasing online in areas where we do not know what their safety standards are, which is another reason why we want to see the legislation come forward. There is no one thing. It is a combination of these elements that come around it, which is again why we want to see the legislation come forward.
Simon Tuhill: I was going to answer Mr Curtis’s point. It is an area that the fire service can assist with. My understanding normally of lithium-ion batteries is that they are relatively stable if they are just sitting on a shelf. It is when they are charged or suffer some thermal shock or impact. That is when there can be an issue with them.
The example that I mentioned before was when it was on charge overnight. As Jon said, often what happens is that people leave them on charge in their hallways, which is the worst place they can be, because that is where you would try to leave the house should there be a fire. My understanding is that they are relatively stable. It is when they are subjected to either charging or a shock that issues are caused.
Q14 Chris Curtis: As far as I understand, the police’s risk assessment is that they cannot move them through their normal processes, though. That is part of the problem, because that makes it more difficult to confiscate them. Is there anything we can do about that?
Jonathan Smith: Are they saying that in terms of putting them in their vehicles and moving them to a location? The key thing—and this is what we do with the Met—is a conversation between the local fire authority and Buckinghamshire police, in your case. There are things you can do. As Simon said, as long as they have not been involved in an accident or subjected to heat, they should be relatively stable.
If the police have concerns and are worried about how they transport this kit and equipment, it is a conversation with the local fire service to provide that reassurance and potentially some options to help them in that endeavour, because that is the biggest risk. When you see these illegal e-bikes and e-scooters on the road, as well as being dangerous from a road traffic collision perspective, we need to consider the fire risk that comes with it. There is a key thing around partnership working there. If there is concern, I would expect the local fire service to step in and assist.
Chair: That is really helpful.
Q15 Mr Forster: The Government are currently reviewing the Civil Contingencies Act. How confident are you that your respective fire and rescue services and local partners are prepared to deal with either one major prolonged incident or several incidents that run concurrently?
Jonathan Smith: From a London perspective and building on what Kath was saying before, this is the question for our time when it comes to the civil defence and homeland defence of the UK. I was very pleased to see that the Defence Secretary was saying the other day, supported by the Prime Minister, that we need to have a serious conversation about the resilience of this country. It does not matter whether it is wildfire, flooding, a pandemic or, heaven forbid, some sort of war scenario that we are having to plan for. There are huge challenges to the country’s civil and national defence, and fire and rescue, as Kath was saying before, has a critical role to play.
We are working very closely with Government at the moment at both a local level and a national level. There is a significant role for fire and rescue services to play in this civil defence and civil resilience space. We have well-trained, well-equipped and capable professional firefighters who can be deployed in a whole range of scenarios. If you look at what happened during covid for example, firefighters were driving ambulances, setting up vaccination centres, and doing body recovery and a whole range of other activity.
Getting it on to a firmer footing around what the role of the fire and rescue service is within civil defence and civil resilience is a huge opportunity, not only for us as a sector but for the country’s defence. If we look at the pressure that is undoubtedly going to come on the military over the next few years, we need to make sure that fire can step into that space behind the military. Often you will hear of MACA requests: military aid to the civil authority. If the military is having to think about our external posture, it then requires additional support in managing the resilience of the UK more broadly. Fire and rescue has a key role to play in supporting that.
We very much welcome the refreshing of the Civil Contingencies Act. There is a huge societal question around our civil and national defence and how we are more prepared as a country. Kath was alluding to European examples. If you listen to Scandinavian fire and rescue services, or you listen to the fire service in Poland and other places in Europe, they are really stepping into this whole civil defence space. I would very much welcome the opportunity for fire to be in there. Those are the conversations that we are having through the National Fire Chiefs Council with the Fire Brigades Union and Government around what more we can do.
This is something we really have a USP as a sector to be able to step in and support. I still have three fire stations in London that have London Fire and Civil Defence Authority written on them.
Kathryn Billing: That will save some money.
Jonathan Smith: Some of this is a bit back to the future. When you look at the challenges that we are facing, the risks that the four of us have already discussed this morning, as well as the preparedness for any potential conflict that the UK could find itself dealing with, this is a real question of our time, and fire has a real opportunity to step into this space.
Q16 Mr Forster: Does anyone disagree with Jonathan?
Kathryn Billing: As I said, for me the fire and rescue service is right at the intersection of risk, people, place and community. More broadly we hosted the Duke of Cornwall, Prince William after Storm Goretti in Cornwall. I said to him at the time, around the Civil Contingencies Act, that that was written back in 2004. We are in a very different place in the context of risk and challenge, and complexity of that risk and challenge.
You have your cat 2 responders. You have your water and your power companies. Openreach and network providers are not even on the list, because who would have even thought that we would be living in a world where we rely so much on connectivity in our phones? So, again, what is the biggest concern of our communities? It is the fact that they lose power, water and connectivity. Those people are not necessarily required to be sat around the table or even in that cat 1 responder role.
More broadly, I think your question was around the local resilience forums. I talked about the risk becoming much more challenging. From my perspective in Cornwall—and obviously colleagues may disagree—local resilience forums work because of the strong relationships that we have and the committed people. That is what I would absolutely say, but too much of the system relies on good will. As that demand grows, we need to ensure that the arrangements that we have are absolutely sustainable, but also invested in.
There is a funny thing about preparedness, which is that the challenge is almost how you know whether it works. If nothing happens, you do not actually know whether it has worked. It is very much like prevention, and the time to invest in it is in peacetime. We tend to invest in preparedness or prevention once a crisis has happened. As we said, the challenges and risks that our nation faces, from our perspective and my perspective, absolutely require that investment now. Let us invest in peacetime. Let us ensure that the fire and rescue service is prepared to step into that resilience space.
Jon Lacey: If I may build upon your question as to whether we disagree or agree, I agree with Jonathan and Kath’s comments around what the fire service could and does provide for resilience and working within our resilience forums in our counties.
The challenge is that, as we have talked a lot around, we have an amount of resource and we have to apply that to the risk that we see within our own areas of the fire authority. Sometimes we have to make choices and decisions about where we put that risk. That can be difficult and uncomfortable because you cannot always address every risk that you have.
With the new risk we talk about, the civil resilience piece is growing, and it quite rightly should to protect our country and our communities. It is a difficult choice for fire services as to where they are going to put that resource. Do we do that three-legged stool and put it into prevention and protection, response, and resilience? That gets to the point where we stretch ourselves too far.
You will find that, across the country, fire and rescue services support their resilience forums across all our areas, and quite often chair those resilience forums on a day-to-day basis. That is an added responsibility, which we enjoy. We know it is the right thing to do. You are right: we are best placed to do that. We have to think about the capacity of the fire and rescue service, our resource, what our statutory duty is and what we get provided funding to be able to do. We are always keen to help, but it comes down to capacity sometimes to achieve it.
Q17 Mr Forster: Aside from resources, what extra powers or reforms could strengthen your ability to tackle these incidents? I will turn to Simon, because I appreciate you have not commented on the first one.
Simon Tuhill: I would support my three colleagues in what they say around resilience and where fire can step into that space. We would really like central Government to tell us what they actually want from the fire service and firefighters. Sometimes we think that that central government guidance is lacking.
It may surprise members of the Committee to know that in England the fire service has no statutory duty to respond to flooding. Of course we respond to flooding, we have lots of kit and equipment, and we train our firefighters to do it, but we do not get any funding to do that. I know that that is one area that was raised in the summit the other day, and there was commitment to consider that statutory duty. Wales has a statutory duty to respond to flooding and the Welsh Government provide funding to the fire service for some of its equipment. We would like that to be rolled out in England as well.
Kathryn Billing: Government are absolutely the strongest when they provide clarity, consistency and capacity. That is what we would ask for.
Jonathan Smith: The only thing I would add to what my colleagues have said is that there is a question around what the role of a 21st century firefighter is. We are having lots of conversations with the Fire Brigades Union; I know that Steve Wright is on the panel next. When the role maps that we currently operate to first came in back in 2003-04, the world was a very different place. With where we find ourselves now in 2026 and all the issues and threats that we are now dealing with as organisations, that needs to evolve as well.
We are having some excellent conversations with the FBU and the national employers. Underneath all this, there needs to be a complete overhaul of the current role map structure that fire and rescue services operate under, because the world has changed. When that first came in, in the early noughties, we were dealing with issues that were what you would call traditional from a fire and rescue perspective. That is not the world we are operating in now. In a post-covid, post-Grenfell, post-Manchester Arena world, we are operating in a very different space and we need the role maps to keep pace with that changing nature of the role and the organisation. That would be the big thing I would look to change.
Kathryn Billing: One thing that has not changed, though, is the outstanding commitment of our firefighters and our staff who work within fire and rescue services, their ability to continue to step up and their desire to serve their communities. The value and the respect that the public have for our fire and rescue services has not changed. The opportunity is now to not necessarily take advantage, but recognise the incredible asset that you have, invest in it and allow it to support community and national resilience much more broadly.
Q18 Mr Forster: The final question from me is on building safety. MPs are debating the Second Reading of the building safety Bill. If you do not know it—this is not a test—the Bill is there to make some progress on tackling unsafe buildings, particularly following Grenfell. Quite a lot of campaigners have said that it misses a lot of issues and does not make things anywhere near as safe as they need to be. Do you have any comment on that draft legislation or other building safety issues?
Jonathan Smith: Is it the remediation Bill that you are referring to? We are keen to see the remediation Bill come forward, because we still have 1,600 buildings in London that have a simultaneous evacuation strategy on them because of various fire safety defects, including cladding. We very much welcome the remediation Bill, but we want to see these things accelerate.
For me, there are still far too many buildings across the whole of the UK that are unfit and unsafe. They have additional remedies in place, particularly around simultaneous evacuation. Fire and rescue services are having to take account of buildings not behaving in the way that we would expect, which cannot be right, so we want to see legislation come through.
To be fair, in the post-Grenfell world there has been a whole slew of legislation designed to improve building safety, and it is all heading in the right direction. The big ask from us is that we want to see that accelerated. All of this legislation we see as only the first part, and we will need to build on it. There are the RPEEPs—the residential personal emergency evacuation plans—which bring equity of rescue to disabled people. We see that as a very good first start but there is more that needs to be done. The same is true across a whole slew of legislation. Is it moving us in the right direction? Yes, it is, but we want to see the pace continue to increase.
Q19 Mr Forster: How long do you think we should give landowners and landlords the chance to make their buildings safe?
Jonathan Smith: It is very difficult to put a set timeframe on it, because every building is very different and no fire safety risk is exactly the same. You have to think about the type of cladding or the type of fire safety defect. For me, it has to be very, very strong legislation that puts that emphasis on the responsible person and the building owners, when they know that they have unsafe buildings, to see them remediated and to see the fire safety changes made that make those buildings safe. We want to see that happen as quickly as possible.
Next year is the 10th anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, which in itself is extraordinary. We have done a lot of good things around legislation to push this forward. The establishment of the Building Safety Regulator has been a very positive thing and working very closely with the BSR has been important.
This legislation is only the start. The bigger issue is the culture change within the sector and making sure that safety is at the centre of everything. When we are building new houses or looking at the built environment that we are operating in, safety—fire safety specifically, but also building safety more broadly—must cut through the culture of everyone who is involved with building moving forward. If we get that right, the legislation will keep pace with that change. It is something we have to be relentless about. A big lesson that has come from Grenfell Tower is that we have to be relentless in that space, making sure that fire’s voice is heard loud and clear at the table when it comes to building safety.
Q20 Chair: It is 15 months the Government are planning to give landlords. There are over 100 buildings that have yet to identify whether they have cladding.
One thing I have been thinking about—I found this really useful—is that we are looking to do a submission to the Government and we want to be helpful in terms of the work that you are doing and what to prioritise. I have heard that the secondary legislation, particularly with the lithium batteries and scooters, will help mitigate that substantially. I am hearing from you that emergency alerts are the way forward and that is something you would probably want us to recommend.
As you know, the Government did the wildfire summit on Friday. I know that you went to a summit in Singapore. I was wondering whether there are any gaps that you want to mention to us that we could put in. We could certainly follow up.
There is also the Civil Contingencies Act. I know that the Government are looking at that and I think that you are best placed to give direction, given that you chair a lot of the forums up and down the country, in terms of what you want to see on that. I know you have said that you are looking for clarity from the Government about what they want to see.
If you could give us a steer as to what you want us to say and what your sector is saying, we can certainly make those recommendations. I am not expecting you to answer that now. You can follow that up. If there is something burning that you want to flag with us now, that would be helpful.
Kathryn Billing: It is that key piece around the fact that we recognise, as we have said to you today, that the complexity, challenges and risks are significant, and they are coming at us, as a nation and communities, at pace. You have four of us here today, but you have all fire and rescue services, and I am sure you will hear from the chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council later. We are always willing to step up. We are stood there saying, “We are ready but we are probably not as prepared as we should be”.
Q21 Chair: It is resources.
Kathryn Billing: Yes. It is the clarity of the role of the firefighter. What is it that the Government would like us to do? If you do not want us to step into the resilience space, that is fine as well. From our perspective, we believe that we have a compelling case. We kind of do it anyway. Take advantage of the incredible, respected and trusted asset that you have at your disposal, but provide us the clarity, provide us that direction and set the expectations. Unfortunately, as you probably hear from many, we just need that capacity and investment.
Jonathan Smith: The resourcing for me is the key point. Fire and rescue services, whether they are the largest one, such as London, or one that is very reliant on on-call services, such as Kath’s and Jon’s, have been significantly underfunded for 20 years. The resourcing that we have available now to deal with these risks that we are facing is not enough to deal with the plethora of challenges that the modern fire and rescue service is now expected to deal with. We will deal with them, but they require that investment, which is why the wildfire summit and the proposals that were coming from that is a really good step forward.
There is the acknowledgement that fire and rescue services need that resource, but it will look different. For example, I will not need an air capability to deal with wildfires in London, but I will need PPE for frontline firefighters. It will be different across the board. If we are getting into a position where there is an acknowledgement that resourcing needs to come forward for UK fire and rescue services, there will also have to then be a degree of localism that comes with that. The risks and challenges in London are obviously very different from the risks and challenges that Kath will face.
Broadly speaking, the investment in fire and rescue services will have huge dividends for the UK’s civil resilience. That is the big thing. This is not just an ask for more resource for the sake of it. This is actually to deal with the risks that we are now faced with in order to help the country be more resilient to the types of challenges that we know we are going to face over the next five, 10 or 15 years.
Chair: That is really helpful. I know that the wildfire summit looked at PPE in terms of making sure that that was adequately resourced.
I found that really helpful. I am sure that the rest of the Committee did as well. You have given us a lot to raise on your behalf. If there is anything you feel that you have missed out, please liaise with our team. Thank you for your time.
Witnesses: Roy Wilsher, Phil Garrigan, Cllr Wendy Maples and Steve Wright.
Q22 Chair: Good morning. If you heard the first session and what was discussed, I guess that some of it is linked into some of the issues that you are going to raise today. Could the witnesses introduce themselves?
Steve Wright: I am Steve Wright, general secretary for the Fire Brigades Union. I have been in the fire service for over 25 years and worked in a couple of different services, Buckinghamshire being one.
Chris Curtis: It’s the best one!
Steve Wright: It was when I was there. I am representing nearly 34,000 firefighters across the UK.
Phil Garrigan: Morning, everyone. I am Phil Garrigan, chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council and previously chief fire officer for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service.
Wendy Maples: Hello. I am Councillor Wendy Maples. I am the chair of the fire and rescue authority committee with the LGA. I am based in East Sussex, where I am a county, district and town councillor.
Roy Wilsher: Morning. My name is Roy Wilsher. I am one of His Majesty’s inspectors of constabulary and fire and rescue services.
Chair: Thank you for taking the time to see us today.
Q23 Chris Curtis: We will start off with two questions briefly to all of you, if that is all right. First, how would you describe the state of the fire and rescue service in England today? Secondly, how would you describe the resource challenge that the fire service is going to face between now and 2030 or the end of this Parliament? Steve, do you want to go first on that?
Steve Wright: It is an important question, is it not? What we have seen and what you have just heard from the chief fire officers is that, over the last 20 years, there has been a severe underinvestment in funding for the fire and rescue service across the UK. In particular, England lost 10,000 firefighters from 2010 onwards, one in five of the workforce. That has a huge impact. It has an impact on not just firefighter safety but public safety. It means we are getting to incidents slower than we used to. We saw 10 fire stations closed in this city alone. That has an impact on response times, when we are responding to the array of incidents that we attend now, as you heard from the previous panel.
I joined the fire service in 2001. The job has changed significantly since then, but what has not kept pace is the resources that we need to respond to these incidents. If you look at the wildfires this summer, do not underestimate the conditions that firefighters were working in. I was at a fire station last night, and a fire station in Wales last week, talking about the impact of not having the right PPE, not having the right resources and limited welfare breaks during that period.
When firefighters were on the frontline of these wildfires, it was the same time as the world cup was taking place, when professional footballers were taking hydration breaks every 20 minutes. From the reports that we had, firefighters were on the frontline for over 20 or 30 hours. That has had a massive impact on the mental health of firefighters.
We had the Stourbridge incident and the Wennington fires in 2022. Firefighters respond to incidents expecting to be able to deal with what is in front of them. We get reports from our control rooms across the UK. Our members in those control rooms are taking 999 calls from members of the public and having to tell them that there are no resources to send to those incidents.
I am speaking from the perspective of someone who has been on the frontline, dealing with these wildfires. I have sympathy for the chief fire officers who are having to make those difficult decisions without the resources in place to deal with them.
When we talk about on-call firefighters, the impact on our control members and the impact on officers, there are just not enough resources in place. It is a tragedy that in 2026 we are really not learning the lessons of the past. As an example, wildfire was placed on the national risk register in 2013. In 2022, we saw a whole street in Wennington burn to the ground, and yet we are still here making the case that we need more firefighters on the frontline.
Phil Garrigan: It will be no surprise that I will reiterate some of the things that Steve just alluded to, to be fair. Both Steve and I attended the wildfire summit in Merseyside last week. If there are any specific questions, I am sure we can field them.
You asked us to describe the state of fire and rescue services as it stands. The climate and the context in which we operate has changed significantly over the 37 years since I have been in the service. The role and responsibility that fire and rescue services hold now is significantly different. The risk and demand are changing. Again, I will not go back as far as Steve, but, if you go back 10 years, the increase in demand on the fire and rescue service has now risen by 21%.
Jonathan Smith, the commissioner of London, describes going to 44 different incident types over that period. That does not surprise me. It probably extends to 50 or so types of incident that we respond to across the UK fire and rescue service. You have seen the number of firefighters over that same period decline by 14%. We have 11,000 fewer firefighters than we had then.
Fast-forward into what has been a significantly busy period for the fire and rescue service over that wildfire period. Steve is absolutely right. There were times when services were requesting resource, human resource specifically, and we were not able to facilitate those requests at times during that really peak time of activity.
As I said previously, I was the chief of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service. We would often co-ordinate the national response. I know about mutual aid. I am very familiar with it. I know what that looks like that. That is probably the first time that we have been unable to facilitate the demands that were placed on the fire and rescue service.
That is climate-related. We talk about wildfire specifically. We have seen some really positive indications from the current Government in regard to investment in the response. I still think it requires more than that. It is workforce capability and capacity that we need to address. I would hope and suggest that, in the longer term, we see this as a really strategic solution to some of the broader challenges facing the UK, particularly around its resilience. It is not just wildfire or flood. It is the geopolitical threat. It is where the fire and rescue service can step in and support communities.
There is one more thing that I would say before I pause. The role that we fulfil is predicated on putting the communities that we serve first. The public always come first. Everything that we do is to protect them. That is really important. The things that I am saying here and the things that I have said over the last number of years in this role are very much about ensuring that the public are protected in every eventuality. Whether that be the risk that they face in high-rise buildings or the risks that they face from wildfire or flood, it is about ensuring that the fire and rescue services are on the front foot and are equipped and capable of dealing with every eventuality in the way that the public would expect.
Chris Curtis: Does anyone else want to make any points on that?
Roy Wilsher: Yes, I will chip in. As people have mentioned, it will be 45 years next month since I joined London Fire Brigade. I have been around for a while. I now inspect fire services and police forces. We are into our fourth round of inspection of fire services. We look very clinically at what fire services are doing. I am pleased to report that we have seen some improvements this year. It has been quite a journey. We have seen lots of improvement in terms of leadership, culture, prevention and protection.
Strangely enough, it is the response area that needs a bit more work. What is behind that is the identification of risk. Chief fire officers in their community risk management plans are looking at risk much better; they are allocating resources much better to where it is needed. In terms of resource, for everyday work it seems to manage. It is the surge capacity that is the problem. For wildfires or flooding, you need extra resource. It is not every day of every year, although there has been a reduction. It is that ability to step up and surge, as Jonathan Smith was describing, that they link into.
Undoubtedly, resources are tight. Resources have reduced. The grant allocations have not kept up with pay rises. There are fewer firefighters. There is not enough capital investment. That is a real issue, if we are talking about new equipment for fire services. The cost of borrowing to buy that equipment is increasing without capital investment. Overall, I am pleased to say that, in our fourth round, halfway through, we have seen some really pleasing improvements.
Q24 Chris Curtis: Can I ask you a quick follow-up on your answers, please? It would not take much to convince us of the challenging financial situation that many of our fire services have been in and that, given the extra pressures of climate change and lithium batteries, the cuts that we saw in the previous years were clearly a mistake. We still operate in a world where there is a fixed pot of money and it is never going to be enough.
Is there anything that the Government can do to help fire services—you are probably operating far more efficiently because of those difficult challenges—to operate more efficiently or to move resources towards the challenges that we are going to face in the future?
Phil Garrigan: Yes. It is interesting. We talk about reflecting the risks, and the risks are significant, but we also have to reflect the demand that is placed on the sector. Roy gave you an example of that.
From a financial point of view, in trying to ensure that we have the right resources to respond to the challenges that we face, there are some things that are challenging for us at this moment in time. We welcome the multi-year funding settlement, by the way. That is absolutely applauded, but some of the financial implications of that, and the link to the GDP deflator, mean that the uplift in grant that the fire and rescue service will receive will not reflect the inflationary pressures that we are facing. When we talk about uplifting wildfire PPE, by way of example, the cost of the PPE will increase with inflation; the money that we are receiving will not.
Equally, we have inequity that exists across fire and rescue services around governance models, which I am sure we may well touch on. Some have the luxury of council tax flexibility. Others have significant restrictions still built in. Some fire and rescue services can address the shortcomings within their services or the gaps that they perceive by increasing council tax.
The only other financial consideration that I would make is that the fire and rescue service used to receive capital funding up until 2013. We receive no capital funding now. In effect, we have to borrow. As we borrow, that has an implication on revenue. We build up the revenue, so we take it away. That means we are sometimes papering over the cracks.
When you look at the fire stations that the firefighters work in, many of them across the UK now are not fit for purpose. They do not have the facilities around diversity. They do not manage the contaminant risk that is present in the everyday life of a firefighter.
Ensuring that the grant reflects inflation, ensuring that council tax flexibility is afforded across the board, and recognising the capital challenges would be my three asks around the financial envelope.
Q25 Chris Curtis: There is one final bit from me, Steve. You just mentioned contaminant risk. We know that there is plenty of evidence now that firefighters face a significantly increased risk of cancer later into their lives. We had some welcome measures from Government back in April about how they are considering that. Do they go far enough? As a union, is there anything more that you would ask for from Government?
Steve Wright: There are three elements to DECON, our campaign to prevent the risk of cancer in firefighters. It is a personal issue for me. It is something that I campaigned heavily on when I stood to be the general secretary a couple of years ago, having lost my father, a 30-year firefighter, to cancer. Having a son in the job as well, it is about protecting the future of our firefighters.
The first element of DECON is about making sure that there is investment in every single fire and rescue service and that fire stations are adequately prepared to deal with contamination risk.
The second is—we welcomed the announcement from the Health Secretary at the time, Wes Streeting, in September—health monitoring. We are working hard to make sure that is in place in 2027 as per the Government’s commitment. That will go a long way to deal with the mental issues that firefighters face, knowing that the threat exists but that something is in place.
Thirdly, it is about having a conversation around presumptive legislation, which is in place in many parts of the world but not here in the UK. We lag way behind many countries, the US, Canada, Australia and many parts of Europe, in that.
Those are the three areas that we really need to get investment in to make sure that firefighters are protected from what is a known risk but not necessarily in plain sight at the operational incidents that we attend.
If I may, I will just take the opportunity, as everyone has, to speak about the lack of resources and the cuts that we have seen in the fire service. This past year, we have had to run significant campaigns to keep fire stations open. In Oxfordshire, our members were balloted for industrial action and kept open four fire stations. In Dorset and Wiltshire, we were set to see eight fire stations closed. We are having to run campaigns at the moment in west midlands and Cleveland, where there are proposals to reduce night-time cover, close fire stations in some places and reduce the number of fire engines.
It is not a historic issue. We cannot keep pointing to austerity as what has dropped the number of firefighters. As me and Phil have both spoken about, it is happening now. What you can do now is to prevent those issues that we are facing and the frontline cuts that are having an impact on our safety.
Q26 Chris Curtis: We know that there is an increased risk. There is a very real chance that that risk may continue to increase. If you look around the rest of the world, wildfires arguably have a very big impact on cancer risk for the people who live near them. Therefore, the fire service increasingly going to these incidents could increase that risk.
When you look at the way that the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council works, it acknowledges that there is an increased risk, but because it does not double the risk of any illness—the numbers that I have here give a 16% to 58% increase in cancer risk; it is potentially a bit higher—that limits fire personnel’s ability to get compensation or access to some of those extra health protection measures that you talk about. Do we need to rethink the way the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council works so that it can better account for places where there is an increased risk but not a doubling in risk of things such as cancer?
Steve Wright: Yes, 100%. We need to learn our lessons from other countries. We speak to firefighter unions all across the globe. In Norway, they have just advanced the case on presumptive legislation. It is certainly something that should be explored and looked into. As you quite clearly state, we need to consider this in how we look at things.
Q27 Chair: You talked about work capability earlier, Phil. This is for anyone on the panel. I just wanted to understand whether staff retention is a concern at the moment in terms of keeping people in posts. We know that generally with the fire service you have people working in posts for a long time, but I am just worried about the new generation that is coming up. I hear that there are challenges.
Roy Wilsher: I can start from an inspection point of view. So far we are not finding that in fire services or in the people who manage fire services. We do in policing. It is quite a big issue with constables leaving and retention there, but we have not found it in fire so far.
Phil Garrigan: Yes, I would concur with that from a whole-time perspective, for the firefighters who are employed and where that is their career. People referenced the on-call system in the previous panel session. We have done some research around the on-call arrangements that are in place. The report described the position as “fragile”. We often find that we are not able to field fire engines because we have a lack of available people, who work a day job and then make themselves available for the fire and rescue service out of hours. That is a real challenge for us.
There were 104 recommendations made with the Exact report that was commissioned to look into the on-call system and how we can strengthen that. We welcome the support from MHCLG. MHCLG has committed financial resource and individuals to work with us to explore the ways in which you can recruit more and retain people for longer. We recognise that we are operating against a societal challenge. We have to ensure that there is a strong offer to the employee, the on-call firefighter, and to their employer to allow them to stop their day job, put some stuff down, and go and spend a week or so dealing with a wildfire.
There is a significant amount of work for us to do in regard to strengthening the on-call system, but what I would say is that it is not always motivated by money. In fairness, the people who step up and spend days on hills dealing with wildfires are motivated particularly by a community spirit and protecting the communities in which they live. We have to find that sweet spot where we are able to meet their ambition and their aspiration and to protect them and the communities that they serve in a really effective way.
Retention within the fire and rescue service for whole-time provision is not an issue, but the on-call system needs to be strengthened because it is fragile.
Chair: That is really helpful.
Q28 Mr Forster: It has been almost 10 years since the fire at Grenfell killed 72 people. What progress has been made to eliminate fire risk in buildings and particularly to ensure that that incident could never occur again?
Phil Garrigan: I will go first. We have made some significant progress. On the previous panel, Jonathan Smith talked through the legislative changes that have happened as a result of Grenfell and the recommendations that have followed. The national fire chiefs have been working tirelessly in seeking to work our way through the recommendations that were applicable to either the sector more broadly or London specifically and take some of the learning from that.
There is undoubtedly still work to be done. I would go back to Jonathan’s point around still unremediated buildings. He referenced there being over 1,000 in London. There are over 2,000 across England that have not yet been remediated. Self-evidently, we are 10 years on and there are still some buildings that are classified as unsafe, which we need to seek to address.
It is not singular. You would accept—the Grenfell inquiry would accept this too—that there is a system requirement in this. It is not just down to fire and rescue services and the role that they fulfil. There are a number of key partners and organisations that need to support us to collectively address the gaps that remain.
We have learned a lot. Self-evidently, some of the biggest learning has come around the families, the survivors and those affected and how they felt during that period. We have done some extensive work on this. I really do applaud the work around the duty of candour, with the Hillsborough law and the likes, because that puts the victim, the survivor and the family at the centre of some of the decision-making for organisations. That is really important. It is something we have sought to instil in fire and rescue services across the length and breadth of the country.
There is still work to be done. Jonathan talked about accelerating that work and doing it at pace. That is still required. We should not find ourselves, 10 years on, with unremediated buildings and people living in unsafe conditions.
Roy Wilsher: From an inspectorate point of view, we put specific questions into our inspections about how fire services have dealt with the recommendations that apply specifically to them. Again, there has been really good progress in terms of fire protection and safety, the competence of the officers, the work that they do and the work in fire controls on fire survival guidance, if a number of calls come through, and the communication between the fire and the controls themselves. The work is there.
This is one area where retention of staff can be a problem for fire services. They get trained up and skilled up, but there is work in the private sector, so they might leave. There is also pressure from the Building Safety Regulator, particularly in urban areas—you have west midlands and London here, and I know East Sussex is dear to Wendy’s heart—where there is a lot of high-rise.
We have seen good training, good survival guidance and training on protection. It is the remediation. There are other parts of the system that really need to catch up with the work the fire service has done.
Wendy Maples: If I may, just to echo that, one thing that is a real problem is that you have councils that are also responsible for these buildings. While councils are very keen for the housing stock that they provide to be at the appropriate standard—at the LGA, we believe that everybody should have the right to a safe and secure home—keeping pace with that is really difficult, with councils really struggling financially.
The other side of that is also looking at, when remediation has happened, whether the fire safety engagement assessments are at the right standard. We need to make sure that there is training in place to keep building up that workforce and that the workforce is working to a suitable standard so that we can trust that the remediation that has happened is of a quality that is appropriate to make those homes safe. It is a real challenge.
An ask from the LGA is that industry should be paying for building safety remediation. That includes also looking at how that gets paid for when assessments are done of remediation to be sure that the remediation is of a good standard.
If I can come back to the point about the state of fire, I would make a strong argument about needing to have additional resource in terms of both revenue and capital. The LGA absolutely welcomes the multi-year settlement, but I will give you an example of the lack of capital investment. As Roy has pointed out, I am in East Sussex. I am specifically in Lewes. Lewes has a fire station that was meant to be the gold command centre in the Lewes 2000 floods. Twenty-five years on, that fire station is still in the floodplain. Even though there have been increased flood defences nearby, that station is likely to go under, should we have another flood. That is a massive challenge. I am talking about Lewes and East Sussex, but that is something that you see repeated nationally.
The last thing that I wanted to say was that we hold such respect and appreciation for all the hard work of our firefighters. It is remarkable what they managed to achieve this summer, but one thing that has not changed in the state of fire—I say this in a general way—is just how much of a resource they are for our communities. They are a key resource for our communities because of the respect in which the fire service is held. That has not changed. While we have had all these other changes around extreme weather, new technologies and pressures on finances, what remains is the respect in which our fire service is held by our communities. That is a huge asset and a huge resource, if we are looking for whole-society resilience.
Steve Wright: The Grenfell Tower fire was a measure of the state of the fire and rescue service. Systemic failures, including in the fire and rescue service, played their part. We need to listen when Andy Burnham talks about 40 years of neoliberalism and the impact of deregulation and privatisation. Lessons are still not being learned after 72 people lost their lives and 300 people lost their homes.
That is why we firmly stand with the bereaved, the survivors and the residents. We attend the Grenfell Tower silent walks every year to make sure that they understand that we stand with them. There are lessons still to be learned around this.
One recommendation from the Grenfell Tower inquiry was for a college of fire and rescue, which we may get into. That is an opportunity for the fire service to set national standards, to deliver a fire and rescue service fit for the future, to be resilient, to respond to the incidents that firefighters attend and to make sure firefighters are paid appropriately to deal with those.
When we talk about understanding risks that are coming down the line, it was our union that sat in a room much like this in 1999 and warned the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee about cladding, and yet the fire commissioner from London talks about cladding still being wrapped around some buildings, unsafe fire safety practices and failings in buildings that firefighters are having to deal with on a daily basis. That is in all parts of the UK. It is about learning those lessons, taking them forward and making sure that there is justice for those affected by the Grenfell Tower fire.
Q29 Mr Forster: MPs are today going to be debating the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill. Every now and again, I use the shorthand. Today is the first time that we are debating it. It is to tackle unsafe cladding particularly, as we have not made the progress we should have in the last 10 years as a country. What amendments, if any, would you like to see in the Bill?
Phil Garrigan: To be honest, I am probably not in a position to give you that specific level of detail. I can come back to you on that and give you an indication of what would be the strongest amendments to make in that context.
My only ask, though, would be to ensure that the remediation Bill is moved through at pace. You asked the previous panel around time and when you would like to see unsafe cladding removed from every high-rise building as defined. There was a commitment for that to take place by 2029. My view is that we would want to accelerate that, but, self-evidently, if we were assured that by 2029 all buildings across England were safe and remediated, that would send a strong message to the victims and survivors of Grenfell.
Wendy Maples: I would add ensuring that there are powers to compel building owners to do the right thing.
Q30 Mr Forster: Thank you very much for offering to come back to us, if you have anything. I suppose that turns the question around. Have the Government, in drafting the Bill, consulted you, the National Fire Chiefs Council or your respective organisations on this Bill before they published it?
Phil Garrigan: Yes, it is my understanding that they have.
Steve Wright: From the reports that we have seen and the information that we have had passed to us, it will take a decade for this remedial work to take place. In that next decade, with the shortages of firefighter numbers and the lack of resources available, we are going to be dealing with that threat and risk now.
We can all sit here and say that we want it done quicker and that we want you to move as fast as possible. I am sure there will be speeches to the effect that that is going to be done, but the reality is that it will not be done. Over the next decade, firefighters and members of the public are going to be put at risk because this work is not taking place as quickly as possible. It is a known risk and we need to make sure that it is being dealt with.
Roy Wilsher: Again, as the inspectorate, we have not been consulted, but neither were we invited to the wildfire summit or the wildfire congress, which is an oversight considering we have more evidence on the performance of fire services than any other organisation.
Wendy Maples: The LGA has been engaged through the joint inspection team.
Q31 Chair: I want to direct this to you, Wendy, under your LGA hat. We have heard from this panel and the previous panel how the roles and responsibilities of the fire and rescue service have changed. We asked in the last panel about the Civil Contingencies Act and what changes the fire and rescue service would like to see. I understand that for the previous panel it was more about clarity.
I just wanted to hear, particularly from the LGA specifically, whether there has been any specific ask for how that could change, particularly in terms of recognising the fire and rescue service.
Wendy Maples: There are a number of different ways to come at those two questions. The roles and responsibilities have changed in effect by virtue of the fire service responding to changes in conditions. We are now working on a fire sector review, looking at roles and responsibilities and what elements of that could be included in statutory responsibilities, particularly the responsibility for flooding and new technology responses.
In terms of the Civil Contingencies Act, we would be really interested in, with Government and partners, having discussions about what a whole-society response and whole-society resilience would look like. We would see having partnerships and conversations with Government, the fire service and local authorities at a range of levels as absolutely instrumental to making that move forward. I am not sure whether I have answered your question.
Chair: That is really helpful, particularly on the whole-society approach, how that would look and how the service will factor into that. That is helpful, particularly around identifying the other risks.
Q32 Alan Strickland: I have a couple of questions around standards and performance. I will start with you, Steve. You mentioned in your written submission to us that the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 shifted and replaced national standards with locally agreed arrangements. You expressed concerns that that has led to slow response times and basically a postcode lottery in the provision of fire services. Could you say a bit more about that and give us some examples of the variations that you think that has created?
Steve Wright: Of course, yes. There has been a huge fragmentation of the UK fire and rescue service. We often phrase it as a postcode lottery, which is very much what it is. Firefighters are getting paid different amounts in different parts of the country. The training, including initial training, and competencies are different. That exists.
Not having national standards has meant that there is a worsening of the response and capability that we give to our communities and your constituents. When you talk about figures, we now take three minutes longer, on average, to get to primary fires, dwelling fires, than we did in the mid-1990s. That cuts across the board.
We have a bit of an issue with how this data is collected. The MHCLG figures only report back on the first appliance getting in attendance. Ordinarily, that is four firefighters on a fire engine. Safe crewing levels are five. That is what we campaign towards. We always had five firefighters on a fire engine when I joined the fire service.
Worse than that, in some places, the first response that is recorded is by a small fire vehicle response. It is not necessarily a fire engine that can deal with the issues that are facing them, the dangerous issues and incidents that firefighters attend. We have seen an increase in that. We have seen an increase in demand for the fire and rescue service over the last 10 years. The risks are evolving, yet resources are diminishing.
The postcode lottery exists. One prime example of that is wildfire PPE. The services that I have worked in, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, do not have lightweight PPE to attend wildfires, yet neighbouring brigades have managed to do that. That comes to the point about the need for central government funding. In the past, it was a 50:50 split. It is some way off that nowadays. County councils and other fire authorities are having to make tough choices on what they invest their money in. I have attended incidents across the Thames Valley where different services respond with different kit, different training, different resources available and different response standards.
This is a question of what we want from the inspectorate. An inspectorate that can inspect national standards set by a college of fire, for example, would be the way to start improving standards and not allow this continual slide that we have seen over the past 20 or so years.
Q33 Alan Strickland: Roy, do you want to come in on that? It would be good to get your view on it. Do you agree with Steve? Have there been some benefits from different services being able to adapt and do different things?
Roy Wilsher: I agree and disagree. I agree on some things. There is not a national standard on response. That went a long time ago. A lot of it is based on risk. That probably needs to be a bit more scientific in some places because some of the standards for response are based on what the service has always had. It could be a bit more scientific.
In terms of wider standards, there are a lot of standards that have really benefited. The code of ethics is a classic. It is read into the standards. The culture has improved in fire and rescue services. Embedding that core code of ethics has been one of the reasons that those standards have improved. We look at standards. Those standards are now characterised as good. We inspect, and they work pretty well.
I also agree with Steve and probably everyone else on the panel that a college of fire is vitally needed in terms of a college like the College of Paramedics. It could set the standards for training as well. The National Fire Chiefs Council does its best to offer guidance, but if there were mandatory standards for training you would avoid that need.
I agree and disagree with Steve. There are some standards that work very well, but they could be improved, alongside a college of fire.
Q34 Alan Strickland: Just to pick up that point about a college of fire and rescue to develop national standards, we would be really keen to hear the witnesses’ views on, as you started off, Roy, what standards that college should push nationally, which elements should be set nationally and whether there are standards that are so important that they should be mandatory.
Phil Garrigan: If I may, I will comment on the broad question of standards, in the first instance. Steve is quite right. Inconsistency has developed over the last number of years. As austerity kicked in, we moved things to more local determination, probably legitimising the removal of some of the infrastructure that supports fire and rescue services to co-ordinate on a national scale. As a result of that, we found local solutions to national problems. My view is that we need to find national solutions to local problems, with interpretation somewhat applied at a local level.
There is inconsistency around the standards that are applied in fire and rescue services. Roy is quite right. The National Fire Chiefs Council, as a convening body, seeks to address that and support fire and rescue services to secure that consistency.
The need to reverse some of the impacts of austerity is probably the reason why the recommendation sat there from Grenfell in regard to a college of fire. A college of fire gives us a legitimate way to drive standards across the board, not singularly response standards—I may come back to that in a second—but competency standards and the like.
There are a multitude of areas where we think we need to be more consistent. You become more consistent by setting a standard and then applying that standard back into the sector. We have done a lot of work. The Fire Standards Board has really strengthened the work that we do on a national level. The HMI reviews those national standards to see whether they are applied in service. The introduction of inspectors has been fundamentally beneficial to the UK fire and rescue service. Since its introduction, I have seen fire and rescue services improve across the board. That is evident in the work that Roy has alluded to and what he has seen.
But—there is a “but”—we need to see the college of fire brought to fruition. It is coming to the point where have talked about it and we have gone out to public consultation in regard to its introduction. We need to move away from a concept into something that is more of a reality. Given the financial predicament that the Government find themselves in, we know it will require investment to deliver exactly what we know and have been saying is required for the UK fire and rescue service. We also need to understand its operating model, its governance, its functions and what standards fit within it.
A lot of that work has been done, and we now need to move it on to the next level, to implementation, but it takes legislative change and it needs financial investment. That is absolutely fundamental in shifting the UK fire and rescue service significantly around its professionalism and the standards that are applied.
Alan Strickland: That was really helpful.
Q35 Sagal Abdi-Wali: Thank you for those answers. I quickly wanted to ask about the Government embarking on reforms to devolve more power to mayors, reorganise local government and realign public services. What potential benefits and/or risks do you see for the fire and rescue services in those reforms?
Wendy Maples: Again, it is a good question. It is a tricky question. We already have a number of different models for governance, all working towards the same standards hopefully, across counties, standalone fire services, PFCCs and deputy mayor models.
The risk is that we either add yet another model into what is already a complex equation or decide to create something that is more uniform, when the models that are in existence, whether it is county or standalone, work in their context.
That really comes down to this whole question about risk. Assessing local risk and fire services doing that through their CRMP is absolutely critical to understanding how communities are best served. Having a broad-brushstroke model that goes across the whole piece risks missing that. At the same time, I do understand that there may be a real interest in having something that is more uniform. Uniform is not necessarily better in terms of addressing local risk. There has to be that iteration between the two.
From an LGA perspective, we are interested in having those conversations and in where Government are going with that, but we have to make sure that fire has a seat at the table when we are having those conversations. To give the example of East Sussex and West Sussex moving towards a mayoralty, our fire service had to invite itself along to one of those first meetings of the SBSA. It is fine now. That has been done, but there needed to be a little bit more foresight about that.
Roy Wilsher: We need certainty for fire services. They were an afterthought. Every time we inspect a service, they are not quite sure. Sussex is quite settled compared to some areas. If you go to Northamptonshire, at the moment there is a police, fire and crime commissioner whose term is ending, but there is no certainty about where that fire service will end up in terms of governance, if and when a mayor is coming in, or whether there will be a strategic authority. Certainty for fire services, with a bit of resource to help them change, would really benefit everyone at the moment.
Steve Wright: We welcome the discussion around devolution and what that brings to the fire and rescue service, but we want to make sure that there is maximum democracy and democratic scrutiny. As politicians, you would all want that. Our fear is that we will lose some of that. We have mayors in London, Greater Manchester, York and North Yorkshire who directly manage fire and rescue services.
I will make one point around PFCCs. We welcome the move from the Government to abolish those. Looking back to the previous Government and the White Paper in 2022, we and our members felt that PFCCs were an alignment of us and the police service. As firefighters, we are always proud that, when we turn up at incidents, people like to see us. That is not always the case for the police. We are a humanitarian service. That allows us to do a wide range of activities. We have had lots of discussion today about what more the fire and rescue service could do. Keeping that separate from the police is important.
For us, it is about making sure that there is democratic scrutiny of the people who are making decisions for the fire and rescue service around budgets and cuts. If we had not had that this year, we would have seen more closures of fire stations and fewer fire engines, and we would probably be talking about even greater risks being faced by the communities that you all represent.
Phil Garrigan: Just very briefly, Roy has alluded to certainty. Sometimes it has felt like the fire and rescue service is a bit of an afterthought in terms of governance and the arrangements that are put in place. Wendy has alluded to the number of governance models that we have in place. It makes no sense to me, to be fair. We need some level of consistency in how fire and rescue services are governed and how they are made accountable to the people who they serve.
There have been commitments around reviewing the operating models. We know that mayoral authority coterminosity is really important in regard to how the fire and rescue service functions. “Coterminosity with who?” is the question. You can look at it from a mayoral authority point of view. We want someone to make that commitment. “This is what the governance looks like, and this is where you sit within it”, rather than there being multiple different ways in which that is discharged.
When I talk about coterminosity, I talk about it from a mayoral authority point of view because that strengthens the work that we do around resilience. When we look at how the fire and rescue service can support the national resilience response through local resilience forums, that is through a mayoral authority.
Chair: I have a very quick question. Has anyone left a bag outside the room? We cannot move, if not. I am glad that we have the fire and rescue service in the room today.
Roy Wilsher: Look for the people in uniform.
Chair: No one has left a bag outside the room. Have you? Do you want to quickly get your bag? It is creating a bit of a panic. Thank you.
Wendy Maples: I just want to add to the point about the importance of democratic scrutiny. One of the key points about the college of fire and rescue is that it will provide an opportunity to create a clear leadership programme. One thing that has come up a number of times is the importance of the international research that has been done and making sure that it is shared so that you have that golden thread of research running through fire and rescue.
For fire authorities, we need to make sure that fire authorities—people who are working in that democratic scrutiny realm—have the training and resource to understand exactly what they are scrutinising. The LGA is working very hard to ensure that that is in place for anybody who is on a fire authority and anybody who is in local government, regardless of which format that is in.
We have that in place. We could do with more of it. It would be fantastic to link in with the college of fire and rescue so that it happens across the piece.
Q36 Chair: I have one final question. I know we have gone over time. It is just directed at Roy. The inspectorate did an annual assessment just recently, which demonstrated that more needs to be done in terms of equalities. You may remember that in May 2024 the Home Affairs Committee did a report into the fire and rescue service. I know that a lot of work has been done over the years, but concerns were raised about homophobia and racism. I just wanted to understand why the inspectorate said that and what further needs to be done in this space.
Roy Wilsher: I personally issued two reports, one on value and culture, and one on misconduct and discipline, in the service. We did find—this was only back in 2023—that a lot needed to be done. The code of ethics had not been embedded. Some of the behaviours we found, particularly on watches, were not appropriate for a public service. There was some lack of understanding of why diversity, equality and inclusion was important and certainly why positive action was important.
I am really pleased to say that, with really good leadership from everyone here, the LGA, the NFCC, the Fire Brigades Union and the leadership in fire services themselves, we have seen some significant improvement. What is really pleasing about this round is just how embedded that code of ethics is. We are seeing behaviours start to change. It is not everywhere. The fire services—it is the same with policing—do not represent their local communities as much as they should, but there is great effort to move that way.
People now have difficult conversations more often, which is often the start of reducing poor behaviour. The culture is more open. We are seeing better leadership in terms of communication and chief fire officers being seen. Again, it is not everywhere, but it is three years on from when I reported in 2023 and, in 2026, while there is more work to do—there always is in this area—we have seen those improvements.
Chair: That is really helpful.
Steve Wright: I will just make one point, which is slightly separate. There has been an improvement from the Westminster Government since 2024. The creation of the ministerial advisory group was an important step forward, bringing together key stakeholders in the fire sector to discuss the ongoing issues.
I would just make one point to encompass everything that everyone has said today. The Fire Brigades Union and the employers have embarked on an ambitious joint agenda about what the role of a firefighter looks like. We are making great progress on that. It comes back to the funding and investment to do that, and to deal with the resilience issue and the threats and risks that this country faces.
There are some positives that are coming. With the Prime Minister, the current Secretary of State Angela Rayner and the announcements last week, we have an opportunity—I believe it is an opportunity—over the next year or so to make the fundamental changes to fix some of the issues that we have been talking about for the last 10 or 15 years where the fire service has taken a downward trajectory.
Chair: Thank you for your time. Steve gave us a call to action in terms of democratic scrutiny, which is essentially what we are trying to do. Roy, you mentioned earlier that you were not consulted about the wildfires summit in terms of what the Government are doing. We will feed back and make sure that you are involved properly in the process because you have a lot of expertise to feed in.
As I said to the previous panel, we will be looking to make recommendations to the Government, particularly on some of the stuff that is impacting the fire and rescue service. There may be some follow-up actions after this meeting. I just want to say, on behalf of my colleagues, that I found this really insightful. I really appreciate your time and what you are doing to keep us safe. Thank you.