London Assembly

Appendix 2 Confirmation Hearings Committee – 9 June 2016 Transcript of Agenda Item 6 – Confirmation Hearing in Respect of the Appointment to the Office of Chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority Andrew Boff AM (Chair): We now move on to our main business of the day, the actual Confirmation Hearings, and can I first of all welcome Assembly Member Fiona Twycross to the meeting? At this Confirmation Hearings Committee, we will be putting questions to you in relation to the proposed appointment of yourself to the office of Chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA). Can I, before moving to the question and answer session, ask the Committee to formally note the background information circulated with the agenda for the meeting? All: Noted. Andrew Boff AM (Chair): There is some information that was received after publication of the agenda and this has been circulated to Members separately. OK, we now move to questions. I am going to start off, if that is all right with Members. Assembly Member Twycross, could you tell us why you think that you are qualified and capable of becoming the Chair of LFEPA? Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you, Chair. I think I have the experience for the role. I have been on the Fire Authority for the past four years, three of which I have been Vice-Chair and leader of the Labour Group on the Authority. I also have management experience, including strategic management experience, from before I was elected to the London Assembly. I have a good understanding of how the Fire Service operates, as well as taking an active role in meetings at the Authority. I have spent a lot of time talking to firefighters and officers of the Fire Brigade about their work, going to stations, looking at the control centre, going out on the riverboat and talking to people about the nitty-gritty of what the job involves. I am able to work collaboratively and I want to work with all groups on the Authority to ensure that when we meet the challenges of the coming year, as we look at the Mayor’s review of fire, we look at the London Safety Plan 6 (LSP6) as an Authority, we take a joint approach to commissioning recruitment, as we have done in the past with senior appointments in the Fire Brigade. I feel that I do have the experience to make sure that I can be Chair and lead the Authority and make sure that all Members take an active part in these last nine months of the Authority. Andrew Boff AM (Chair): Thank you for that. Joanne McCartney AM: Over the last few years there have been a few confrontations and Directions issued by the Mayor. How would you seek to operate on a cross-party consensus? Fiona Twycross AM: I think one of the main points of tension we have had over the past few years is that it has been a hung Authority, where the majority of the members were not of the party of the Mayor and so we have had that direct conflict between it. I think we recognise - and I think all parties recognise - that that was quite a negative way of operating and that is why we came up with the cross-party consensus on moving to the new governance arrangements. I would like to adopt the approach that we take here at the London Assembly, where we are much more able to work on a cross-party basis. It would be quite easy for us to come in as a Labour Group - we have a pretty good majority on the Fire Authority now - and sort of ride roughshod over the other groups, but actually I want to use the experience of other Members. They will still be Members of the Authority, they still have the duties, as members of the Authority, to carry out. We have pretty major projects that we are looking at, particularly around the LSP6 and around the Commissioner [London Fire Commissioner] recruitment. I alluded to the fact that we had had cross-party consensus on quite a lot of those things in the past and obviously somebody like Gareth [Bacon AM] has professional experience of recruitment, and we would want to use his experience in that. [Councillor] Oonagh [Moulton], one of the members of the Conservative Group, has taken an active role in the Equalities Working Group, so I want to build on those points of where we have had consensus to try to build consensus over some of the big issues over the coming nine months or so. Gareth Bacon AM: You touched on some of them, but you might like to explore in more detail what you see as some of the key issues that will be facing you as the final Chair of the London Fire Authority over the next year or so. Would you like to elaborate on some of those? Fiona Twycross AM: LSP6 is probably the biggest piece of work we will be completing over the year, so looking at where we are now - particularly following any outcome of the Mayor’s review - looking at how we can collaborate more closely with other blue light services, building on the work we have already done, looking at the outcome of the pilot over co-responding, which I think will form part of LSP6, and I think we will also be looking at how we can develop community health more widely as part of the community safety that firefighters already undertake. I know there is a piece of work going on at the Fire Brigade at the moment, so I think that is one of the biggest pieces of work that we do. We have obviously got the recruitment of the Commissioner and the transition to the new governance arrangements, and I do have experience of governance changes before in a different context. When I was Head of Governance at Diabetes UK, I led both the process of a governance review and then oversaw the implementation, so I feel I am quite well-placed with colleagues on the Authority to lead that transition. Gareth Bacon AM: On LSP6 - unsurprisingly, I agree with you, I think that is going to be the biggest strategic thing that is going to be facing you, certainly over the next 12 months - what do you see as the essential components of LSP6 and is there anything that you will rule out at this stage? Fiona Twycross AM: I think the essential component has to be keeping Londoners safe. We need to look at what the core purpose of the Fire Brigade is at the heart of the next London Safety Plan, so how we respond to and how we prevent fire, but the Fire Brigade has a wider responsibility around resilience. We are seeing an increasing responsibility towards flooding, for example. There were the major floods in South London previously. We have obviously got to play our part in preparing for major terrorist attacks in London. All these elements, we need to look at what the risks are, who is most at risk and where the resources may need to be. Gareth Bacon AM: Yes, I would not disagree with any of that. There are certain component parts of that, such as things like alternate crewing and things like that, which is something that has been kicked around often, as you are well aware. What is your view on things like that? That is one of the things that was talked about, certainly when we had the debate over the 13 appliances, that was put forward as an alternative to that, and the response at the time was that actually that is something that should be considered under LSP6. I think everybody agrees that that is something that should be considered under LSP6. Do you have a view now as to whether or not alternate crewing is a good way forward, and if so, in what shape, and would it be across the Brigade or would it be in certain areas? Fiona Twycross AM: We felt very strongly that alternate crewing was a good alternative to the cuts to the 13 appliances. I think we should look at whether it is part of the picture for the Brigade going forward. Obviously the Commissioner [Ron Dobson CBE QFSM, London Fire Commissioner] had different views about which vehicles might be most appropriate to be alternately crewed, and so we would need to work with him and with other members of staff to look at where alternative crewing is most effective, where it should be, because clearly we also have the situation that the fire and rescue units, which we were recommending to be alternate-crewed, the Commissioner suggested should be where the response for terrorist incidents was. I think we need to make decisions about that before we decide exactly where we would want to put alternate crewing, but as an alternative to cutting the front line, I think the review and the consultation process demonstrated that that was more popular with the public and with firefighters than with staff, and I think that we do need to take into account people’s concerns over further cuts to front-line appliances. Gareth Bacon AM: What is your approach going to be to industrial relations? Fiona Twycross AM: With industrial relations, we had this discussion at the Fire Authority previously, that there has been an awful lot of strain within the industrial relations at the Brigade. Both the Fire Brigades Union, which is obviously the largest representative body at the Fire Brigade, and senior officers seem to feel that there have been considerable improvements over the past few months in industrial relations, and I am hoping they can build on this and actually get this to a place where there is an ongoing dialogue.

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