Information
Fire Accountability Meeting – 11th December 2024
| Welcome and introductions.
Attendees:
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| Minutes and decisions of previous meeting
DS welcomed everyone to the new style Problem Solving meeting. Apologies were accepted from Jonny Bugg and Rob Porter |
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| Draft budget proposals
This discussion relates to the submitted paper containing the Chief Fire Officer draft budget proposals for 2025/2026. It will also include the discussion relating to any requested investment proposals and required savings plans. The 2025/26 budget paper was taken as read. The Commissioner requested a 1-page business case that provides a breakdown of funding across other Fire and Rescues services based on spend per head of population. She would like this information to strengthen the case for increased funding for Northamptonshire to the fire minister. NA explained that there is inconsistency across the fire sector and Northants is one of the poorest funded services with the low reserves. Given that some Fire and Rescue Services have high reserves, having a precept of £5 will make no difference to Northants ability to catch up with richer services. On the per head of population question, VA confirmed it is £29.93, the HMI figure is £20.63 versus a national average £26.96. Returning to the draft budget, NA advised a zero-based budgeting approach has been taken and includes all 2024/25 pay awards and the assumption that will have £5 recept and flat cash on pensions. Increase in dwellings lower than anticipated last year but moving back to previous position of higner than normal growth. A 2% increase is anticipated across the north and west (higher in West). Fire fighter establishment is ranges between 254 and 259. The current is 255 and is expected to average 256 during 2025/26. The Net budget for 2025/26 is expected to be £35.39m which includes transfers from earmarked Reserves. As part of the annual budgeting process the Chief Fire Officer is currently considering a number of business cases for additional investment. -For 2025/26 the CFO requested greater flexibility on the manner in which she was required to decide on investments and rather than submit papers each December she requested an annual investment fund of £0,25M to be spent across the year as required, with appropriate measures in place to be held to account for that. After a lengthy discussion the Commissioner agreed to this. The Commissioner asked why these were not already built into the budget and accounted for. The Chief Fire Officer replied that the exact costs were currently unknown. The Commissioner made it clear that her preference was for ear marked reserves and flexibility to adapt to change more quickly rather than adding in to a formal budget. PF challenged that having a set of costed investment proposals rather than a discretionary budget was helpful when asking for public support for any precept increase but made the point that it would be easy for the service to be able to provide details on what previous years investments were for and what they achieved with them. The new investment fund would be baselined into the NFRS budget any underspend can be carried forward. Decision – The provision of an annual investment fund was agreed in principle with the final decision being made after announcement of all funding streams has been made. Action – Collaboration around energy including generation discussion to be added to future considerations.
MTFP The MTFP has been updated to reflect developments since last year’s budget round. Maximum precept increases are expected to be £5 in 2025/26 and 1,99% thereafter. Assuming 2% inflation and 2% pay award returning to 1% historic norm in future years. ECR discussion on response times will not be completed until April 2025 and therefore the operating model for Fire cannot be finalised. If assumptions are right The Service will still have a funding deficit of £1.4m if planned efficiencies and savings are met. NA reiterated that the Service does not currently do not have a balanced budget at this time. The national Funding settlement and council tax will determine the final shortfall. At this moment in time, to balance the budget, will need to move £1.4m from Reserves or find additional savings. NA will update on the final position in January 2025. Action – Given that 63% of the NFRS budget comes from council tax DS to write to the fire minister for a farer funding settlement. Factor in explanation that whilst this makes the budget setting process more controllable it is entirely unfair that the burden on the local taxpayer is so high. It was noted that since 2010, the burden of funding has shifted from Grants to council tax and this is likely to be part of devolution agenda pushing even more burden to local tax payers. Decision – The requested budget for NFRS was agreed as a principle but will need to be formally agreed after announcement of all funding streams and settlements. |
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| Prevention
In the context of observations relating to the prevention function in the most recent HMICFRS inspection of NFRS, the results of the recent internal NFRS workshop relating to prevention and after consideration of the outline of the developing Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner’s Safe and Sound plan, the Commissioner welcomes a discussion of the current structure and approach to fire prevention of NFRS, and how the future structure and approach of the service can be developed to meet the needs of the above, as well as seeking to expand the reach of the NFRS prevention approach into the wider community safety space. Lisa Bryan delivered a presentation which provided an overview of department functions, safeguarding and partnerships. The team want to make the biggest impact they can with the resources they have. The delivery triangle shows how they create capacity in a tiered approach to prevention. Safeguarding partnerships are considered to be very effective. There had been some concern about the effectiveness of the NSRA without an County executive structure but this had now been resolved and the first act of this new group needed to be the creation of a revised County wide road safety strategy. Highways contracts are outsourced to Kier who are a supplier and sit on the NSRA but so do Local Authority Highway Departments now On HFSVs, referrals to the team have increased. This is due to increased awareness, better targeting and a general rise in need. LB is heavily reliant on two business analysts. Budget for HFSVs is exhausted. If want to do more than 5000 visits will uncover more safeguarding referrals and more risk. The Commissioner asked if station crews could do more of the higher risk visits. LB explained that most of the high-risk visits are to very complex and often very vulnerable people, under the influence of substances, severe MH issues or very frail and it would therefore not be a good use of their time. It was noted that 60% of fire fatalities had care needs. KSIs were showing an increased trend towards a suicidal motive. The Commissioner was impressed by the work undertaken by the Prevention team and suggested that this would be a good presentation to bring to a future Police, Fire and Crime Panel. |
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| Fire Control
ACFO Porter has stated that there are some short-term staffing decisions that need to be made in relation to Fire Control that require discussion at this forum ahead of a wider discussion about the Fire Control arrangements at a future meeting. MB explained that there are capacity issues within Fire Control. In addition, demand is increasing, and the nature of the calls are becoming more complex. ACFO Rob Porter is currently reviewing the situation with five potential options to resolve. Options 1 & 2 would mean an increase in establishment in conjunction with reviewing duty systems and improving training. Option 3 would be a collaboration with Warwickshire – not recommended. Option 4 – would be outsourcing the function – not recommended (loss of local knowledge). Option 5 would involve a local collaboration with Northants Police. There are technology issues to overcome but there are advantages to co-location (JESSIP Principles) Mindful that the Service may have to find £1.4m of savings, this project needs to be added to the list alongside all the other projects that require funding. Whilst it was accepted that Fire control can be a difficult working environment and is a small team this is a transformation project that needs to be properly scoped and then formally added to list. Action – RP/MB to bring forward an interim plan for VA and NA to review to include any temporary interim solutions that can provide resilience in the short term. Decision – In principle agreed investment fund should be used for this.
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