Fire chiefs suggest focus on resilience for proposed College of Fire

Meeting in Manchester last week, fire chiefs heard more detail on the plans for a College of Fire and Rescue ahead of the public consultation due to start at the end of May, with the NFCC Chair suggesting its remit should embrace resilience.

Described as a professional body run for the sector by the sector, this new organisation will, said Kevin Finch, who is leading on this for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, take a ‘hub and spoke’ approach. This would see a small central body working with pre-existing regional training facilities. There is an exercise taking place currently to map the detail of training provision across England.

National Fire Chiefs Council Chair Phil Garrigan spoke at the same event and said that a lot of the functions of the College are already being delivered by the NFCC. “We are trying to repair some of the impacts of austerity,” which he said had resulted in substantial reductions in the number of firefighters in recent years.

Questioning the remit of the College, Garrigan suggested that it should embrace resilience and reflect the preparedness work of fire and rescue services. He urged fire and rescue services to consider whether the College should be for fire and resilience. “Maybe that’s something for us to factor into our constant responses,” he said, “reflecting the ability for fire to step in and step up during a crisis.”

The College of Fire and Rescue will require legislation to allow it to operate as an arms-length body. this means it will be remote from central government, but delivering public services using public funding. There are over 300 ALBs operating today.

Finch said that the legal basis for the College is likely to be part of a wider bill that will include other aspects of recommendations from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry reports. Given that, the earliest date the College could launch would be late 2028, early 2029.

One of the aims of the College is to embed and champion the highest levels of conduct by staff working in fire and rescue services. The consultation paper will be seeking views on the college potentially having the power of being the holder of a barred worker list. This means that information about those barred from working in one fire and rescue service would be held centrally.

Other aims of the College include:

• driving professionalisation of the fire and rescue service
• Improving leadership development
• Promoting health and wellbeing of staff
• Promoting and sharing research and good practice
• :Promoting opportunities for joining up work across emergency services
• Delivering improved outcomes for the sector

“Overall, we want the college to drive improve outcomes from the sector, not just rehash existing work under a new organisation,” added Finch who encouraged fire and rescue services as well as the wider fire sector to respond to the consultation.

During the 8-9 week consultation period, the government will also carry out stakeholder engagement sessions and aim to publish its response at the end of this year.

Read more – More detail on College of Fire revealed in latest Grenfell update.