Tag: 2022

The press release issued by the Fire Brigades Union on 14 November 2022.

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack gave evidence to the Home Affairs select committee in Westminster last week.

The select committee is made up of MPs. Matt gave evidence on a range of current issues in the fire and rescue service including pay and conditions, wildfires and climate change, Grenfell, and more.

He gave evidence alongside HM Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services Roy Wilsher and National Fire Chiefs Council chair Mark Hardingham.

The evidence session came in the context of an earlier evidence session of the committee, on 2 March this year. At that session then-HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services chief inspector Tom Winsor alleged that the FBU had obstructed the fire and rescue service assisting Covid efforts, specifically the vaccine rollout.

The FBU then wrote to Diana Johnson (as reported in circular 2022HOC0128MW), chair of the Home Affairs select committee, to correct the record on this clear untruth, pointing out that an FBU circular in December 2020 clearly stated that “Firefighters are ready to assist the UK’s rollout of Covid-19 Vaccines after an agreement was reached between the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and the fire and rescue service national employers…”. In the letter to Johnson the FBU also provided clarification on various other statements Winsor had made.

In its letter the FBU asked to be called to reply in person at a further session of the committee. This session of the committee then took place.

Covid

Wrack made clear that the FBU and firefighters had not obstructed the Covid response as alleged by some, and in fact had been a significant aide to it. Describing the process that initially happened after Covid hit, Wrack said “We very rapidly took a decision that we would be keen to support wider efforts to engage in the Covid response. That took place very quickly – tripartite talks between our employers, national fire chiefs council and the FBU. We reached a whole series of agreements”.

These agreements were praised as “groundbreaking” by then-National Fire Chiefs Council chair Roy Wilsher throughout the first wave of the pandemic, Wrack pointed out. The NFCC and later fire employers then unilaterally pulled out of the agreements during the second wave and made unfounded criticisms of the FBU.

Wrack then described in some depth the impact that Covid had had on firefighters and the extent to which firefighters had done everything they could to help.

“Firefighters as key workers, unlike millions of other people, were required to continue attending their workplace, with all the risks that that brought. And we have had members who have died of Covid, some of which we believe are linked to their attendance in the workplace. But additionally to that, we had members who volunteered to do a whole range of activities. So they were delivering PPE to care homes and other venues. They were delivering other items to vulnerable people in the community. They were driving ambulances. They were training people in the use of PPE.

“And I think the one that possibly brings home in the most stark way what our members volunteered to do, in agreement with their union, was that we had specialist teams in at least two services moving the bodies of the deceased, and that included FBU officials.”

He said it was “absolutely and utterly untrue” that the union had tried to obstruct Covid efforts and that suggestions otherwise in a previous evidence session of the committee had “caused a great deal of offence”.

Pay

Wrack told the select committee that “The question of pay is an urgent one. Pay has fallen in real terms for the last twelve years. A competent firefighter on the national rate of pay is at least some £4,000 a year worse off than if their pay had kept pace with CPI inflation. That is alarming”.

He continued to describe the material impact financial struggles are having on FBU members, stating “We have firefighters using foodbanks. We have firefighters being referred by their union officials to foodbanks. We have at least one chief officer, of Avon, who publicly wrote that he is aware of firefighters using foodbanks. There is a growing cost of living crisis, as there is for millions of other people, very much in the fire and rescue service and it has been allowed to drift for more than a decade.”

Even Mark Hardingham, head of the body representing Chief Fire Officers, concurred to an extent, stating that the level of pay was an issue when it came to recruitment and retention.

Climate change

Wrack stated that fire and rescue services were “extremely stretched” when it came to dealing with the effects of climate change. He stated that wildfires touching on London over the summer “should be a wake-up call for us all”. He said “We need to build in thinking about wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events. These incidents are often very large-scale and they are protracted. A major flood may last for days and indeed weeks. If you think about the resource implications of that, that’s something I don’t think is adequately addressed”.

He emphasised the issue of firefighters being asked to go to large wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events far away for extended periods of time, not knowing “when they’ll get home”, and the impact of this on “families, commitments and so on… [and] that’s quite a regular occurrence”.

He highlighted a moorland fire in Scotland which “over the days in which it burnt produced the same emissions as the entire rest of the Scottish economy during the same period”. He said that this “showed the scale of what we need to think about”.

Wrack also highlighted an exchange he had following a significant wildfire, relaying that “a comment was made by a principle [fire service] manager who said ‘perhaps the community needs to be told not to be able to expect us to be able to tackle fires on that scale’. I found it quite shocking. I said, well actually if your fire service hadn’t been cut in half over the past 15 years perhaps you wouldn’t be making that point. I think communities have the right to expect that their fire services can put out fires. We need to build in the resilience to make sure we can deal with what can only be a growing threat”.

Grenfell

Asked about Grenfell and the ongoing aftermath Wrack said that the FBU was “taken aback” by the response by the Government on the question of personal evacuation plans for disabled people despite a Grenfell Tower Inquiry recommendation. The government ruled it out on grounds including cost. Wrack said that “Along with people who are bereaved, survivors, residents, the local community, and campaigners on housing and disability rights, we had expected something on that issue”.

Wrack also emphasised the extent to which fundamental change was needed when it came to being prepared for risks in the future. “In our view, there was a failing at a national level of this horizon-scanning and monitoring the changing risks. We have put that in our evidence [to the inquiry] about the risks of the external spread up a building as the result of a cladding system. We gave evidence on that issue here in the House of Commons more than 20 years ago. Frankly, it was ignored for the intervening 17 years”.

He spoke about the concerns around the ideology that led to Grenfell still being present. “Our concern is that policy is still driven by a desire to deregulate [reduce and remove rules and restrictions]. For us, in terms of fire and housing policy, regulation is the difference between safety and non-safety, and, on this occasion, the difference between life and death. Sometimes there is too much lazy talk about the need to deregulate, and we have made that very clear throughout the inquiry”.

The press release issued by the Fire Brigades Union on 9 November 2022.

As the Grenfell Tower Inquiry draws to a close, the FBU’s lawyer has told the Inquiry that “the disaster was a direct consequence of a generation of government policies which combined to create a death trap for the residents of Grenfell Tower”.

The comments came in the closing submissions for Phase 2, which covers the run-up to the night of the fire.

Commenting, Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, said:

“The evidence that is coming out of this inquiry should outrage us all. Looking at the evidence from the last forty years it is clear what caused Grenfell. Political decisions have been made in service of a social and economic system driven by greed. Private interests have been allowed to take priority over the needs of ordinary citizens when it comes to building safety and fire safety. Rules have been removed or watered down in service of this political agenda. That’s what led to lethal cladding being put on Grenfell and that’s what led to the utterly tragic loss of 72 lives. Those who made and drove those political decisions need to be held to account as do those who took part in that deadly refurbishment.”

Deregulation

Deregulation is the removal of regulations or restrictions, and has been named as a key cause of the Grenfell Tower disaster by the Fire Brigades Union.

Martin Seaward, speaking to the Inquiry on behalf of the union, said that whilst “the private sector companies involved in the refurbishment [of Grenfell] bear a heavy responsibility… it would be wholly wrong and provide no justice to victims to leave the blame there”.

“They were encouraged to act by 40 years of political decisions in the service of an ideology [deregulation] based on the prioritisation of commercial interests and profit above all else, including public safety”.

He said that “the real culprits of the disaster are those in power at the top, ie ministers following their deregulatory agenda to the detriment of fire safety, and the directors of industry on which they depended for sponsorship and party funding”.

Seaward said that deregulation “has become synonymous with central government abandoning responsibility for… building regulations, building control, testing and certification, fire and rescue services and fire safety”. Deregulation policies “tragically came together on 14 June 2017 to create the worst residential fire since 2017” and these policies meant that Grenfell “was a disaster to waiting to happen”.

Politics driving deregulation

He described deregulation as part of a set of ideas that drives for a “largely unfettered” free market and a role for the state that “limited to… supporting the free market”, and “prioritises… entrepreneurial freedoms and private business interests”.

He highlighted how ministers pursing this agenda had “deliberately and irresponsibly undermined” a “culture of health and safety”. Regulations were “repeatedly depicted as pointless, time-wasting administrative bureaucracy”.

Already-deregulated legislation “has not been effectively enforced” with effective enforcement “instead progressively weakened by successive governments”.

Refurbishment

Seaward did however highlight the role of the individual organisations involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell.

The refurbishment covered Grenfell in cladding that had a flammability which some have compared to petrol.

He said that “the key players [in the refurbishment] amply demonstrate the widespread disregard of fire safety”. He pointed to cladding manufacturer dishonesty and manipulation here, and several agencies including the architects and the design and build contractor failing to complete the fire risk strategy.

London Fire Brigade

Seaward highlighted the structure of the Inquiry, which first involved a close analysis of the emergency response and then returning to discuss the run-up to the disaster in phase 2. He stated that the Inquiry “risks distracting from the real causes of the disaster and creating a scapegoat that would allow those truly responsible, including senior politicians and company directors, to evade responsibility”.

He said that “Firefighters risked their lives going into the blazing inferno to try and rescue residents and extinguish the fire. They and the control staff did their duty professionally, bravely and to the best of their abilities in the face of a rapidly developing fire that was beyond anything any of them had ever experienced or trained for. They followed their procedures and applied their training as much as the extreme conditions allowed”.

What’s next?

After this set of submissions there will be a pause whilst the Inquiry prepares its final report, which is likely to be published next year.

The press release issued by the Fire Brigades Union on 9 November 2022.

New data shows that a controversial practice that allows fire service bosses to halt pension contributions and receive tax-free payments has been used in 13 fire and rescue services. The government has formally discouraged the practice in England.

The practice involves predominantly senior fire officers retiring and then being re-appointed into the same or a similar post, in arrangement with their employer.

The practice allows them to access a quarter of their pension pot as a tax-free lump sum and then return to post and cease paying employee pension contributions. The employing fire and rescue authority also ceases to pay pension contributions.

It results in taxpayers being left to pick up the bill as it requires the taxpayer to make up the difference between now-halted pension contributions and the pension benefits to be paid.

Senior fire officers are more likely to be able to make arrangements with their fire and rescue service to allow the practice to take place.

The 13 services includes London, the biggest wholetime fire service in the UK, where five high level ranking officers including a former Commissioner have retired then been re-engaged in the service.

Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union general secretary, said:

“It is outrageous that bosses in fire and rescue services are being allowed to rob taxpayers in this way. It’s deeply unfair and unjust, that bosses on six figure salaries are making cosy agreements that the firefighters they preside over could never hope for. FBU members will be furious that this is continuing despite the government formally saying it shouldn’t. FBU members have suffered pay restraint for over a decade, with chief officers standing idly by and doing nothing to demand better for their employees. That bosses have been able to play the system to make themselves even richer when ordinary workers are struggling to make ends meet is truly abhorrent.”

The fire and rescue services that reported that the practice is being or has been used are:

• Bedfordshire

• Berkshire

• Buckinghamshire

• Cambridgeshire

• East Sussex

• Humberside

• Lancashire

• London

• Northamptonshire

• Oxfordshire

• South Yorkshire

• West Sussex

• West Yorkshire

The government, in the 2018 Fire and rescue national framework for England following a consultation, formally discouraged this practice and affirmed that it should be utilised only in “exceptional circumstances when such a decision is necessary in the interests of public safety”.

The data comes from Freedom of Information requests made by the Fire Brigades Union.

Please note that some of these occurrences of retire and rehire took or may have taken place before the government’s formal discouragement.