A review of service reform in Scottish fire and rescue services – podcast transcript

Leon: Hello, I’m Leon Thomson and I’m joined by Sarah Pollock, Portfolio Manager and Rebecca Seidel, Project Officer at Audit Scotland to talk about the latest report a review of service reform in Scottish fire and rescue authorities. So Sarah, why has Audit Scotland produced this report?
Sarah: We were asked to look at progress made by 8 Scottish fire and rescue authorities in modernising their services since the introduction of the Fire (Scotland) Act in 2005. Now this act was really designed to move the fire and rescue service to a more targeted approach to preventing fires, protecting the community and providing and emergency response. 

Leon: I see. So briefly, what has the report found?
Sarah: We found that fire and rescue services in Scotland had changed. They are no longer just dealing with fires when they happen, but they’re working in the community to prevent them. So, for example, fire and rescue services are working with the police and council services in developing safety programmes that target young people, elderly people and individuals from minority ethnic groups. However, it’s really too soon to know if this approach, overall, is making communities safer. For example, while the number of deaths and house fires fell from 74 to 54 last year, which is of course to be welcomed, the overall number of incidents attended by fire services increased by 3.7 percent. We’re also recommending that fire and rescue services do more to evaluate the impact of this community safety work to really make sure they can make the best use of the resources available to them. 

Leon: Now you mentioned there community safety programmes. Can you give us more examples of what’s working well?
Sarah: All fire and rescue services in Scotland are working with young people running fire cadet schemes and intervention programmes for example Fire Reach and Diversifire. Now these initiatives are designed to educate school children about the risks of fires and also really to divert them from anti-social behaviour. There’re some early indications this work’s having an impact. For example, many of the malicious calls to fire and rescue services are actually made to young people however in the last year it’s encouraging to note that these have actually gone down by 8 percent. 

Leon: Now Rebecca, the report highlights the employment statistics for women and ethnic minority groups and highlights them as being very low. What do fire and rescue services need to do to improve this.
Rebecca: There’s no doubt the employment figures for women and ethnic minorities are much lower than they are in other public services and they need to be improved. All fire and rescue services recognise this and they’ve been running targeted recruitment campaigns. The nature of the job’s changing from the traditional role of primarily putting out fires to one based on working in the community. Fire and rescue services need to communicate this better and that may help their efforts to recruit fire-fighters from across the communities they serve. 

Leon: The report talks about the important role that elected members, councillors, play on the fire boards. What do members need to do more of?
Rebecca: We found that elected members on fire and rescue boards and committees are committed and supportive and active locally visiting fire stations and attending community safety events. However, they need to be more involved in the strategic development of the fire and rescue service and in scrutinising performance. We recommend improved training for elected members on fire and rescue boards and committees. This should help them get more involved in the strategic development of the fire and rescue service.
	
Leon: And finally, how will you follow-up the recommendations of this report?
Rebecca: We will be monitoring progress against the recommendations we’ve made in this report later in the year.

Leon: Rebecca, Sarah, thank-you very much.