Fire and Rescue National Framework for England

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

I have today published a consultation document on the fire and rescue national framework for England. A statutory requirement under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, the consultation sets out our proposed priorities and objectives for fire and rescue authorities in connection with the discharge of their functions. A copy of the document has been placed in the Library of the House.

The document marks a key milestone in resetting the relationship between fire and rescue authorities and Government. It proposes moving away from Whitehall prescription, enabling fire and rescue authorities to deliver their services in a way that makes sense locally, while continuing to meet the wider needs of national resilience. This includes working collectively with other fire and rescue authorities and collaboratively with a wide range of other organisations to improve public safety and cost-effectiveness.

It sets out the risk that occasionally we may be faced with incidents of such scale or complexity that all available resources could be overwhelmed, even if pooled or reconfigured. Her Majesty’s Government retain an over-arching responsibility for defence of the realm, ensuring we are resilient as a nation to such risks but this must be based on and drawn from local capability, expertise, knowledge and leadership. This will be supported by a new strategic governance arrangement in partnership with the fire sector to be developed with key partners alongside the consultation.

This more localist approach builds on the approach of the coalition Government in ending the regionalisation of the fire service and dismantling regional government in England. We have already announced that fire and rescue authorities no longer have to work through regional management boards, and we have stopped the forced regionalisation of fire control rooms through the termination of FireControl.

The Government are continuing to fund the existing national resilience capabilities to build specialist capability to manage fire and rescue related risks, for example: additional, specialist urban search and rescue capability; high volume pumps; mass decontamination equipment; detection, identification and monitoring equipment for chemical, biological and nuclear incidents; and additional command and control capability.

The document builds on existing notable practice by fire and rescue authorities to promote greater accountability to local taxpayers, more partnership working and open data transparency. It proposes high level expectations for fire and rescue authorities to develop arrangements that are effective locally along with a requirement to produce assurance statements and to make comparable performance data available to communities.

I am grateful to the national framework partner working group for its assistance in developing this consultation document and look forward to receiving responses from across the fire and rescue sector and more broadly. The consultation closes on 19 March 2012.