Law in England and Wales and How the Law Operates Internationally as it Applies to the Fire Service - Case Study Example

Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : xxxxxxxxxxxx Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx @2010 Law in England and Wales and how law operates internationally as it applies to the fire service England and Wales have gone through amazing developments of diverse public, private, governmental in addition to non-governmental, methods of determining disputes as well as providing redress. Ever since the 1950s, various ombudsmen, tribunals, and industry-directed schemes began materializing, with a predominantly fruitful period in the 1990s and beyond. Without a doubt, the creation process as well as redevelopment of the various schemes is in no way over (Kokkala, 1996). Fire Services in England and Wales are not created nationally. As a general rule, emergency cover is offered by the fire and rescue service (FRS) which is directly managed as well as being financed by the fire authority. Many fire and rescue services were in the past well-known as brigades, until the legislative and the administrative changes along with modifications in boundaries which resulted in universal integration of the fire rescue services. The fire rescue service acts as the functional fire fighting body and much more separate from the fire and rescue authority which acts as the legislative, public as well as the administrative body consisting of civilians and councilors who run the fire rescue service. Currently there exist various governance layers consisting of the central, local as well as the devolved government; fire brigades, fire and rescue services; and additional administrative agencies (Hughes, 2010). All these have some operational, legislative as well as administrative level involvement in the fire service within the UK. Legislation on the provision for firefighting in Wales and England goes back to 1865 at the time the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act was accepted, taking away the firefighting task from the many insurance companies. The legal requirement with regards to the local authority fire task force however came out prior to the passing of the Fire Brigades Act of 1938.An independent fire service review was made available in December 2002 which came out with essential proposals on how the fire service ought to be managed as well as being organized. This resulted into an amendment of laws with regards to firefighting. The fire and rescue services act of 2004 was mainly functional in England and Wales. In 2006 came the regulatory fire safety reform (Order 2005) which was a section of a secondary legislation that substituted many other acts on fire precautions as well as safety within the premises. This included the presently non-operational issuing of fire certificates process. This was obliged on 1 October, 2006.Overall fire safety in England and Wales is provided with conformity to the regulatory fire safety reform (Hughes, 2010). The legislation here applies a risk-based approach towards safety in the community, industrial as well as the business premises. This calls for all responsible persons more often than not the employer, holder or occupier to conduct an assessment with regards to fire safety risk as well as apply proper precautionary measures in addition to maintaining the fire management plans. There is therefore a responsibility to conduct assessments on fire risks considering both the safety of employees as well as the non-employees. Fire rescue authorities acts as the major enforcers and are endowed with a legal task of putting into effect the legislation requirements. The building regulations 2000 are concerned with construction controls in both new as well as altered buildings (Fire Service Manual, 2008). They therefore define the kinds of building works subject to regulations and determine building as well as the construction designs with regards to various aspects such as the health and safety of house users, energy conservation, facilities meant for the disabled and fire safety (comprising of warning means, escape routes as well as internal and external fire spread (Kokkala, 1996). Case Study-Haiti Haiti is ranked as one of the most vulnerable countries to disasters according to the World Bank. It is also ranked as one of the nations with the greatest exposure to multiple disasters with 96% of its population living at risk. Haiti’s development gains have always been highly hit by such unexpected disasters. The UK rescue team deployed an urgent search and rescue team to Haiti subsequent to the earthquake. The team was deployed working hand in hand with the emergency services as a result of the intense snow, ice in addition to the cold weather. The rescue team was able to provide various logistic services including 4x4 vehicles that carried winterized kits, medical and emergency response gears. The UK rescue teams had also communications, technical rescue, and road traffic, command support in addition to navigation and access gears on board. The UK search and rescue team were put into use and this had achieved significant results towards the disaster response action in the event of earthquake. They gave a key priority to the Haiti government. Over the years they have also been able to assist the Haiti national disaster risk management to update its data collection for risk management. Haiti however relies on limited disaster data collection and still lacks a well structured warning system for such unexpected disasters. Majority of the data collected as well as the monitoring systems work but they fail to give out the required coverage in the event of such disasters. They have on the other hand successfully managed to reduce the death rates in the events of such unpredictable calamities due to the little spread of warning messages in such events. Though not adequately applied in Haiti, they have however been of great significance towards disaster preparedness, planning as well as the final response action in such events. Role of globalization in affecting the legislative and substantive work of those in the fire and rescue service. The fire and life safety business has grown tremendously within the globe. In the present day, the fire as well as the safety business globalization has become more than just a murmur word, but a life reality. Motivated by mechanisms that have developed a widespread flow of commerce within the other industries smooth information movement, monies as well as goods, manufacturers along with consultants are accepting new markets and new ways of conducting business (Earls, 2001). The international market for fire equipments has enormously expanded. In the United States, for instance, American LaFrance, United States fire equipment manufacturer and owned by Freightliner LLC collaborates with well-known global sales networks as well as complimentary suppliers in order to bring in its custom equipments globally. The company is at present marketing its traditional listing of fire equipments within the United States and other places. This implies that the ever rising complications of technological solutions with regards to fire safety design matters and fire safety policies calls for intensive training and consistent education for protection engineers. Historical patterns on dealing with fire risks in new design or extraordinary buildings are rarely available. New performance-related building codes mostly need mathematical or else computer fire representation. Globalization has therefore resulted in the development of the technological support structure enhancing technological standards with regards to the fire industry, offering essential information within the fire industry as well as supporting upcoming technology and fire products development (Earls, 2001). This has also been able to support the distribution of suitable fire equipments and development within the fire industry. The globalization of international trade has also led to an increased international cooperation with regards to fire safety. And because research of fire is in most cases conducted to maintain various international standards and regulations, the outcomes of limited cooperation are obvious. With shared efforts, universal methods regarding fire safety have been created with existing barriers to trade being eliminated. With the information exchange, the fire research field has been vastly enhanced. In Europe, for instance, there have been successful transnational research projects on fire matters including industrial fires, offshore structures fire safety, forest risk fires and cable risk fires (Kokkala, 1996). Globalization has also been able to enhance research potentials with regards to fire safety research. Even though the building regulations in various nations treat fire safety differently, the ordinary laws controlling issues on fire are similar everywhere. Many of these problems are therefore familiar in the whole world with solutions only possible through global co-operation. A number of the major issues on fire safety are of given magnitudes that even an individual institute or institutes in a given nation cannot successfully complete. For instance, the authentication for the fire growth as well as smoke movement calculation methods calls for broad series of heavily instrumented major tests to be operated. This is probably clear of outside of any nation. Additionally, verification of the test methods employed by the inter-laboratory calibration call for multinational co-operation(Kokkala, 1996). How ethical considerations are dealt with in the fire and rescue services. The fire rescue service of England and Wales express their ethical concerns through their values in addition to their leadership vision through a simplified model. The model entails key values of their service provisions with emphasis on diversity, the people, enhancement and service delivery to the general community. Their ethnic values are often intrinsic in everything they work on to achieve in cases of operational incidents. This implies they routinely serve all the communities equally as well as professionally, with safety and welfare of their team at the front position of their mind and a reflection on how well they are doing so as to make better the next time (Fire Service Manual, 2008). Their key values enlighten as well as underpin their personal qualities in addition to their attributes at their every role level to the community. They put in efficient policies that set in a comprehensible direction to be followed thus contributing to all the aspect of their routines. The fire and rescue policies are embark on the move towards delivering efficient incident command. The models applied in their approaches are consistent and are able to ensure reliability throughout Wales and England. This is also critical to their traditional cross border routine operations as well as for extensive incidents relating to national assets deployment. This can be key emergencies that call for urban search, rescue as well as mass sanitization (Winfield et.al. 2010). They also gauge their routine performance in accordance to the agreed standards to make known when or where improvement is required. An active self-scrutinizing shows how efficiently the management is doing gauging by the equipment, processes in addition to individual behavior or performance. In cases where the incident response becomes unsuccessful or safety controls do not succeed reactive monitoring is able to come up with the reason why, by coming up with the instant reasons of the sub-standard routine and also identifying the underlying reasons, with the implications of the design as well as the management system’s operation (Fire Service Manual, 2008). They also have an efficient management structure as well as arrangements in place with regards to delivering their policies. Their arrangements are supported by an efficient staff involvement and sustained by efficient communication through competence promotion. All involved in their operations understand the fire rescue service’s approach as well as their objectives with regards to their command function and more in particular the various procedures related to their area of responsibility. The fire and rescue services have an organized as well as a systematic approach towards executing their policies through an efficient management system. Their aims in achieving ethical considerations lie on delivering effective response which lowers down risks. Risk assessment methods are employed to settle on their key priorities and come up with well stated objectives towards the incident response. In general, they have a hierarchy of control measures with much emphasis given to controlling risks rather depending upon work systems. They also review as well as audit their performances through an organized assessment of incident command performance. This is based on the data as well as the management system’s independent audits. They have both internal references to their major performance indicators as well as external comparison with appropriate best practice. The fire and rescue services have therefore a strong obligation to a consistent enhancement in their service delivery. Role of practitioners in the changing world environment As a compliance-motivated business function created globally, the diversity role of the practitioners is swiftly developing into a significant part of various organizational business strategies. On the other hand, limited clarity concerning the new diversity role of the practitioners may interfere with both the prospective and the way in which companies value this business occupation. Speedy technological changes, globalization and a great demand for high -level proficiency as well as education are a driving force to this new trend. This explains further the reasons why corporate diversity as well as inclusion practioners is under increasing pressure as major players within their respective organizations or companies’ business expansion (Higgs et.al.,2004). They are therefore facing rising demands to accomplish higher corporate anticipations than in the past. The emphasis with regards to various practitioners has advanced from merely valuing gender as well as racial disparities, which was mostly realized through responsiveness training, multi-cultural revels and employee group, to deliberate and mostly international business planning in addition to growth. The focus role currently is basically on how various practitioners can help develop their respective organizations or companies acquire new markets, develop efficient global teams as well as manage well their organizations’ brand reputations (Rising,2009). Presently, a number of companies are progressively more in search of proficiency of their diversity practitioners as they get into new markets, developing profitable relationships and reliability across diverse cultures. Lack of a well stated definition with regards the functions as well as responsibility of multiplicity of practitioners is resulting to many companies under-valuing their executives. There exist major trends behind the shifting expectations of the practitioners’ positions. These include globalization, demographic changes, technology advancements, the legal environment as well as the socio-political environment. These offer a number of measurable practitioner competencies organizations can employ to capitalize on the outcomes of this significant business task in general corporate development strategies. The task of practitioners in the current transforming globe covers major extensive areas consisting: change management, multiplicity, global perspective, business insight, planned external relations, strategic leadership, human resource disciplines as well as integrity. The twenty-first century roles role of practitioners therefore entails taking up an extended public, strategic role which calls for a more complex demanding competencies. The competencies are integrated into an organization or companies’ business metrics for their efficiencies (Rising, 2009).   References Earls, A.R, 2001, Globalization: Reshaping the Fire and Safety Business: Healthcare Industry, Retrieved on September 21 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3737/is_200107/ai_n8970289/ Fire Service Manual, 2008, Fire Services Operations: Incident Command, Stationery Office. Hughes, P, 2009, Introduction to Health and Safety at Work, Edition4, Butterworth-Heinemann. Higgs, J, Richardson, B and Dahlgren, 2004, Developing practice knowledge for health professionals, Elsevier Health Sciences. Kokkala, M, 1996, Fire Safety of Buildings, Trends and the role of CIB W14, Retrieved on September 21 from http://www.bfrl.nist.gov/866/CIB_W14/W14TREND.htm Rising, J, 2009, The General Practitioner in a Changing World, Retrieved on September 21 from Winfield, P.W, Bishop, R & Porter, 2010, Core management for HR students and practitioners, Edition 2, Elsevier. Read More