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A new report from the London Assembly finds that the first of its kind Professional Standards Unit in the London Fire Brigade has seen such a volume of ‘contacts’ from concerned staff that it is struggling to deal with them in ‘a timely fashion.’ This is leading to concerns about the health and wellbeing of staff as well as the costs of staff remaining suspended on full pay for long periods of time.
London Fire Brigade established its Professional Standards Unit (PSU) in January 2024, the first fire and rescue service to take this approach and ahead of a recommendation by HMICFRS for all fire and rescue services to do so. This trailblazing approach has seen the Brigade having to expand the number of staff in the PSU to cope with the demand and it is now looking in more detail at the proportionality of the disciplinary process that follows complaints.
In its first year of operation, the PSU activity received 400 ‘contacts’ and there have been 28 suspensions. The committee says that the PSU is struggling to handle the volume in a timely fashion and this is having ‘a detrimental effect on firefighter wellbeing.’ It also has concerns about its independence and ability to be seen as separate from the existing HR function.
The cost of suspensions in the first year of the PSU operating is nearly £900k as accused parties are suspended on full pay for the full duration of a case. This does not include the cost of operating the PSU itself.
The unit of now 14 (with two more due to be added to head count during 2025) staff has an investigations function to resolve conduct matters such as grievances, which include bullying, harassment and discrimination.
This approach comes after the 2022 independent report by Nazir Afzal where he looked at the culture of LFB and found problems of institutional misogyny, racism and issues with how mental health was treated in the Brigade.
The Fire Committee of the London Assembly launched its investigation into the PSU in September 2024, six months after HMICFRS announced that the Brigade was no longer in special measures. The investigation lasted until December and during this time, the committee held formal and informal meetings, talking to Brigade staff on a confidential basis.
“In this report, we have found that more work needs to be done to build trust and confidence in LFB’s new policies, procedures and mechanisms.”
There is some commentary in the report that draws on Baroness Louise Casey’s report into misconduct in the Met Police. It questions whether by modelling the PSU on police equivalents, ‘LFB may be basing its approach to complaints and misconduct on a flawed system.’
One change that has been introduced is a set of key performance indicators to provide metrics for time taken at each stage of the disciplinary process.
These concerns lead the report authors to recommend that a new independent Standards Commissioner with separate reporting lines within the LFB. There are a further nine recommendations in the report covering aspects of the PSU, diversifying recruitment of firefighters and promoting bystander training to give staff confidence to call out poor behaviours.
The Committee is concerned that LFB does not yet appear to have a clear understanding of the scale and specifics of disproportionality within the complaints and grievances procedures.
Deputy Fire Commissioner Jonathan Smith said that he did not know if the disproportionate number of disciplinary cases handed down to ethnic minority staff in the first year of the PSU’s operation was a “particular spike” but the London Fire Commissioner Andy Roe committed to “eradicating disproportionality in discipline and measuring it “very, very carefully in the PSU.”
The committee jumped on this and said that the Brigade should carry out a review examining disproportionality in PSU cases covering its first 18 months of working January 2024 to June 2025. This should, it said, include a thematic analysis of why cases are being raised by Brigade staff with protected characteristics, as well as the levels of ‘disciplinaries’ handed down to these groups.
Looking at how those who are dismissed for gross misconduct could, currently, be employed by another fire and rescue service, the committee provides some commentary on the national changes that will see a College of Fire created during this Parliament.
The government has committed to the creation of a College of Fire, picking up on recommendations from HMICFRS and from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. Such a body could, where the legislation is in place, regulate the fire and rescue service as a profession and enable the creation of a national barred list. The committee pushes hard for this in its report, recommending both and saying that a national barred list would mean that a firefighter dismissed for gross misconduct could no longer apply to join a different service. This models what currently happens in policing.
The full report can be read here – Action and Ambition: London Fire Brigade’s culture.
Read more about HMICFRS inspection of culture in fire and rescue services – Fire services make progress to improve culture but more must be done, fire inspectorate warns.
