Fire alarm

It may have been St Valentine's Day, but there was little love lost between fire chiefs and union officials at a crunch modernisation meeting.

There was no fine food or romantic candles on the table in the conference room at Easingwold Fire Training Centre - just 23 proposals smouldering away on the agenda.

They made up a reform package fire bosses hoped would catapult the service into the 21st century and save 125 lives over ten years.

But the February 14 talks quickly turned as sour as week-old wine, as union members tried to pour cold water on controversial parts of the deal.

The Fire Brigades' Union (FBU) claimed management moves to step up community safety work, while saving cash, would compromise responses to 999 calls and put lives in danger.

They pointed to First Response Vehicles (FRVs) - much maligned Transit vans pencilled in to perform roving community safety duties - and said they were ill-equipped to deal with major incidents.

They said shift changes would lose the county 24 firefighters at York, Harrogate and Scarborough.

They hit out at proposals to "dual crew" the three 100ft ladder appliances used in major blazes, like the recent Fulford flats inferno, releasing staff who would normally

man the ladders into the community on smoke alarm and hoax call advice duties.

Fire chiefs flatly rejected those claims, but deadlock had been reached, as rank and file members claimed the fire service would go into "meltdown" if the modernising agenda saw the light of day in its February format.

However, fast forward five months, and North Yorkshire's newly-installed chief fire officer, Nigel Hutchinson, was expressing "delight" after his reform plans were unanimously passed by fire authority members in the same Easingwold meeting room. So what changed?

Given the union mood in February, senior fire officers privately admitted after last Tuesday's decision that they would have expected scores of firefighters to protest at such a crunch meeting.

As it was, only a handful of FBU members turned up to lobby councillors from York and North Yorkshire.

What defused a potentially destabilising situation was a crucial series of talks between unions and management in an attempt to wrestle a compromise deal out of fire.

Six meetings took place after February 14, and a new joint consultative committee was set up in an attempt to break the deadlock.

Mr Hutchinson, who took the reigns from former county fire chief Eric Clarke midway through the talks, said the meetings not only improved communications between the sides, but also improved "transparency and openness".

Alongside the meetings, local fire bosses met informally with staff at fire stations to hammer out the detail behind the plans and to identify alternatives. Senior management also dropped into stations across the county to discuss issues raised.

Mr Hutchinson said the revised plans passed by last week's meeting would cause less disruption than the original scheme, but also were better news in terms of community safety, service improvements and value for money.

What difference will the changes make to residents?

The controversial FRVs - now rechristened Community Safety Vehicles - will only have a preventative role, although intervention work will be considered once they have been established and after talks with unions, still heavily opposed to such a move.

Eight of the vehicles will hit the road, to be based at Whitby, Malton, Northallerton, Richmond, Ripon, Tadcaster, Selby and Skipton. Previous plans had six FRVs at York, Harrogate and Scarborough.

There will be a move to 12-hour shifts in Selby and York, which unions have raised concerns about, but these crews will no longer be asked to go out on roving community safety roles.

But no agreement was reached on the contentious issue of the aerial ladder as FBU policy is to reject dual crewing outright.

Although the package was approved by the authority, there were still murmurings of discontent among union officials.

FBU York member Lee Smith said the "cutbacks in disguise" would leave stations short-staffed. "That's obviously a danger," he said.

Mr Smith said the changes had got the balance between prevention and intervention work wrong.

"All the good work on safety will be lost if intervention isn't enough," he said. "The public want fire engines there, fully-manned, as quickly as possible. That should be a priority."

But fire chiefs are convinced the multi-million pound savings package will leave the service fighting fit.

"This outcome will enable us to provide a better service to all communities of North Yorkshire and the city of York," said Mr Hutchinson, "giving an opportunity to save more lives and prevent more injuries."

Time will tell who is right.

Updated: 09:13 Monday, July 18, 2005