Managing Resources - Policy, Strategy, and Planning of Cornwall Fire Brigade - Case Study Example

Cornwall County Fire Brigade Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name (16, 05, 2009) Table of Contents 1. Introduction...................................................................................................................... 2. Policy Strategy and Planning............................................................................................ 3. Strategic Management...................................................................................................... 4. Finance............................................................................................................................. 5. Operations......................................................................................................................... 6. Performance – Fire Safety................................................................................................ 7. Vehicle Maintenance........................................................................................................ 8. Human Resources............................................................................................................. 9. Recommendations............................................................................................................ 10. Conclusion....................................................................................................................... Cornwall County Fire Brigade Introduction Cornwall County Fire Brigade is the legal fire and rescue service for the area of Cornwall in England. As of August 2008, the brigade employed 428 retained fire fighters, 201 fulltime fire fighters and more than 120 support and managerial employees1. It was following the 1947 Fire Services Act that Cornwall County Fire Brigade was formed in 1948. There are just three fire services that have the term “Fire Brigade” in their name, and one of them is Cornwall County Fire Brigade. The brigade has three sections; those are Eastern, Central and Western. The divisions have been due to organisational reasons. The administrator of the brigade is Cornwall Council, headquartered in Truro. The Chief Fire Officer is the responsible leader of Cornwall County Fire Brigade. The service plays a major part in community life in Cornwall. It is responsible for raising the standards of the life of the people and to lessen the inequity that exists in the area it serves. Policy, Strategy and Planning The Brigade has an appropriately built twelve monthly approach to business scheduling and it is backed up by target setting and supervising of the performance. However, the Fire Authority does not as yet have a tactical agenda for directing the procedure2. The Cornwall County Council faces problematic situations in offering each of its services in a huge but thinly populated state. In this case it is crucial for the Fire Authority to become capable of providing an apparent focal point for the Fire Brigade against which there can be the establishment of the strategies and a monitoring of the performance. Strategic Management Although there is no general strategic plan, the Brigade’s management does assume a strategic style for tackling with new operations, whether it stems from state directions or the proposals by the County Council. There is a requirement of reinforcing that responsive approach for the provision of full contemplation over the situation of the Brigade regarding its overall organisation duties across the whole range of its operations. It is vital to involve the associates of the Fire Authority in tactical planning, in terms of guaranteeing Best Value and for informing the budget setting procedure. In addition this would turn out to be of a lot of help to the administration of the Brigade for the determination of main concerns. The administration procedure of the Brigade’s yearly business agenda recognises the goals, distributes duties and monitors progress against the objectives. This permits reflection of success by the Brigade Strategy Team and the capability of monitoring activity levels from a general view. Nevertheless, this encouraging style is adversely affected by the lack of a completely incorporated management information capacity, as a result of the extremely restricted information systems capability of the Brigade. The Brigade has carried out investment of a significant quantity of time as well as endeavour for the development of a Brigade Information System (BIS), which establishes its strategies and processes3. Such a wide ranging mechanism attains its plan target by offering information in easily usable manner with the main part provided at the initial section of the document which is then followed by completely explained data. Together with other fire and police services throughout England and Wales, the Brigade is investigating into its choices of tackling with the requirement of charging out its radio mechanism in the future, in the time scales which had been established by the Radio Communications Agency. The comparative expenses and affordability of such resolution for the Cornwall Fire Brigade has not been set up and thus the Fire Authority had provided with income payments for the years 2001 and 2002, for the funding of maintenance and persistence of the vital factors of the present radio mechanism infrastructure when the Constabulary undertake alteration. Finance Under the overview of the County Treasurer, the Brigade’s Principal Officer (Management Services) has the responsibility of managing the income budget each day. The officer has to carry out his functions along with a Group Accountant at the County Hall. The procedure of setting the budget that had been undertaken over several years has been mainly concentrated on the past expense with alteration for pay and prices raises with inevitable extra charges being balances through the general budget deductions. Because of such an approach since some time there has been succeeding deductions across each area of the Brigade, apart from the ones in the lead functional service delivery, to such a degree that the Brigade is no more able to sufficiently fulfil each of its administrative duties. The obligation to sustenance of the functional service is certainly very much promoted and the overview shows that expansion in the County and rising functional challenges will in fact need strengthening of that section of the Brigade. The continuous and improving reductions that are being made in administration and support employees have come across such a level where there cannot be any more deductions. The Brigade would require some external help and support in those sections if it is to tackle with the inevitable challenges faced by it. Operations In the lead up to the Eclipse at the time of the summer in 1999 the Brigade had been completely occupied by multi-agency planning4. Consequently, the Brigade has formed an effectual planning draft that can be applicable to other situations, for instance the Brigade’s Major Incident Plan. Such work is commendable and the suggestion is that this would turn out to be advantageous to the other brigades or agencies that are undertaking development of a tactical level, multiagency, planning group to take in to account the experiences of the Cornwall Coordinating Group. “Aquarius” software which is a GIS-based incident planning and resource management system had been pondered over to be used for the expansion of those agendas and maps. Several of the brigades have initiated using it and the suggestion is that the creation of a users group should be pondered over so that the experience can be shared and the probable replication of the endeavours can be prevented. One of the crucial factors in fire fighting happens to be the accessibility to risk data. An examination of the brigade’s plans for exchanging and offering the data indicated that the data was accessible and could be obtained promptly. Nevertheless, the processes that could be utilised for an exchange of data are not very much strong like they should and could be. In this case the Brigade has to be reviewing its processes for exchanging risk data. The brigade has been employing part time workers in its control room for some time. These associates were trained properly and completely and they are responsible for taking over the duties in case any full time control employee is absent. The part time associates of the workforce are engaged for a certain amount of time and they are salaried for this on the basis of pro-rata. The Grey Book has established their situations of service. Because of such engagements the direct wage expenses have risen. However, the extra is offset through the savings that are made in the ultimate expense in control. Through this proposal there is also the acknowledgement of the health and safety insinuations of operating in the control rooms through the removal of load of taking place of the absent workers from the full time employee group. The brigade and the employee group deserve applause for such a proposal. The documentation of the Brigade reveals that while the evaluations of the risks were complete and thorough they were inclined to include the minor risks too in much detail. The direction that covers the creation of exercise danger evaluations has to be examined to make sure whether the concentration is suitable or not. The exercise itself can be termed as determined having five demanding and broad ranging situations consisting of RTA situations, live fire rigs, and the fire progression entity. While the exercise was time consuming it can be said that this was due to its complicated nature. Cooperation planning linked with the set up of bronze, silver and gold commands operated efficiently. The agencies were involved with the incident planning processes and they were content with their relation with the brigade regarding this matter. Additionally, the representative from West Country Ambulance Trust was specifically corresponding to the part and talents exhibited by the Brigade’s Co-responders. Performance – Fire Safety The employees who work in the fire safety department are responsible for performing double part. They have to undertake fire safety operations and functional administration and command responsibilities. Utilised in such a manner, the legal institution offers a speculative 19,964 hours for taking on the fire safety function. The number of fire safety examinations conducted, plus the number of hours noted by fire safety employees, had both decreased between 1997 and 2000. Several of the officers feel that they face difficulty in performing their fire safety responsibilities plus the administration and command duty before the deadline. There has been a using of other associates of the employees for the covering of short term posts at fire stations. The Brigade is active in its promotion of safety for the society and the endeavours it is undertaking are leading to good consequences. There had been a decrease in the total number of fires and good intent false alarms between 1997 and 2000. The number of nasty calls received was at 300 annually in 2000. In every section the performance is one of the best in the whole of the state. There has also been undertaken a programme for the reduction of the false alarms received and this is turning out to be quite successful. Brigade works in partnership along with other administrations and institutions and this is a vital factor in its approach toward security for the society. The Brigade is functioning together with 33 other associations in six important proposals. Successful affiliations can lead to a major influence on the safety of the society and the Brigade is attaining continuous success in it with the viewpoint articulated in the government task force report, Safe as Houses. Vehicle Maintenance The maintenance of the fleet of Cornwall Fire Brigade takes place at a single workshop that is situation at the Camborne Fire Station. There is one main facility that is utilised for all full services and it is backed up by vehicle examination plan. The mobile mechanics are responsible for carrying out the plan. The workshop consists of the Brigade’s supply department as well. Even though it can be called quite a modest construct, the performance seems to be quite high as can be concluded after examining the records and schedules. Also, the vehicle accessibility is good and is attained at a reasonable charge. Even though there has not been a formal market testing for the function, the expenses of it are routinely kept against those of the County Council’s vehicle maintenance function and the conclusion turns out to be favourable. Human Resources The Human Resource development at the Brigade was not given the due notice previously and now the Brigade seeks to develop it for the improvement of the condition. The state driving force for the training of attired associates of the Service is toward Competency Based Training and has connections with National Vocational Qualifications. Taking into account the various concerns and challenges, the Brigade does not seem to be progressing considerably in the implementation of its new style, on which main directions had been given gradually ever since 19975. In the borders of such restrictions, and forming on the functions of others, a competency based training command for retained associates of the Service was initiated, called the Fire fighters’ Development Programme, and training of various evaluators was undertaken. Apart from this there is just one more committed training facility present for the Brigade and it is situated at the Bodmin fire station, made up of one sole room. Once more, the Brigade has managed to make the best use of a minimal resource, but there is not much to be predicted about the training requirements of the future keeping in mind the scarce resources. Recommendations Certain recommendations that could be put forward to Cornwall County Fire Brigade include: The Fire Authority should set up a planned agenda for the Fire Brigade. The County Council should get together with the board of Brigade and collectively they should assess the overall information technology that is required by the Brigade. Also, they should build up on an agenda for the up gradation of the present equipment and facilities. There should be a reconsideration of the base that is used for determining the contributions made to the County Council’s fire fighters’ pension possibility. There should be a review of the Brigade budget on the basis of a “zero base” strategy. This is required for enabling the Authority to verify the essentiality for spending over each of the budget headings and for making suitable supplies later on. There should be an introduction of processes for the recording and monitoring of the accessibility of whole time human resource at the beginning of the shift and retained pump accessibility at the stations. There should be a communication of its policy by the Brigade for the mobilisation of pumping equipments with a small staff of less than four and offer a risk evaluation as well as guidelines in the Brigade Information Systems. There should be a review conducted of the Brigade’s appointments regarding the monitoring and auditing the execution of its plans and processes. A recommendation is that the insinuations regarding suitable resourcing of the educational operations should be set up and brought in front of the Fire Authority as a tactical matter. Conclusion The Cornwall Fire Brigade comes across major confrontations in providing functional as well as fire safety services across a huge and geologically challenging rural county region that can be counted among the most thinly populated in the whole country. Although the Cornwall Fire Brigade has a new and dynamic organisational team and strives to improve itself, it also has certain major weaknesses in several crucial areas, and each of those failing is a consequence of removal of resourcing and capability. The Fire Authority now recognises the fact that they have come across the phase wherein they require a new obligation for tying in their resources to the requirements of the Brigade and this is a crucial matter. Provided that there are such resources no justification is available for the positive features reported upon not being duplicated over each of the section of Brigade activity. Nevertheless, there are a considerable number of issues which require a planned guide from the Fire Authority and also the paramount attempts of the workers. Even though there are some problems coming across, the employees of each level keep on supporting the delivery of lead service as best as they can possibly do. References Cornwall, “Facts and Figures”, Cornwall Council, 2008 [Accessed 16 May 2009]. Cornwall County Fire Brigade, “1999 Principal Inspection”, The National Archives 1999 [Accessed 16 May 2009]. Read More