Message from the Assistant Chief Fire Officer
January 17th 2014
Firstly wishing you all a very happy New Year.
Service Support teams have been busy over the Christmas period and I’d like to take
the opportunity to update you on some of the work that is taking place.
Customer Service Excellence Award 2014
The Service has been working hard over the last six months preparing our
submission for the above award, which is a nationally recognised award confirming
our commitment to doing our best for each other and our communities. Many of you
will have already helped in preparing evidence or agreeing to arrange activity for the
assessment process.
We are now moving into the final phase of assessment, which will involve an
assessor working through a programme of activity with us on 4th and 5th February
2014. This is only a couple of weeks away, but I'd ask that all teams on duty across
those dates ensure they can make themselves available for any request to attend
focus groups or other activities to confirm our submission statements reflect what's
happening on the ground.
Over the next few days we will be preparing a full programme of activity for our
assessment and I hope you can do all you can to make this a success for our
Service. In the meantime, please maintain your flexibility over this period, as the
assessor may change her mind and decide to visit you and your team at short notice.
I am confident she'll see what others have seen, that we're providing a first class
service for our communities.
If you need any information regarding this award, please feel free to contact Area
Commander Greg Pace at Service HQ, extension 3272.
Technical Team
The team have been incredibly busy over the Autumn and Winter, preparing for the
go live of the Equipment Management System. You will have seen members of the
Technical team out on stations at all hours of the day, going through the appliances
inventories, marking up thousands of pieces of equipment. The bar code readers
have been trialled and these provide an easy means for crews, to not only check
inventories, but to immediately establish whether a piece of equipment is in test or
not. This is a tremendous step forward for our effectiveness and safety and we
thank the team for their hard work.
Training Team - FPOS
First Person on Scene (FPOS) training is designed to give crews the ability to
provide immediate life support to a casualty pending the arrival of definitive
(Paramedic) pre-hospital care. The course is delivered and assessed on station by
Paramedics from West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS). The initial pilot
course run at Coleshill received excellent feedback.
Once training has been undertaken by all watches on a station, a new Trauma pack
will be issued with the most up-to-date trauma equipment, which personnel will have
been trained on. This will give uniformity of equipment and training across the
Service. An agreement with WMAS also includes the ability for crews to replace
used equipment at an incident with equipment from WMAS ambulances e.g. collars,
oxygen therapy, bag and mask.
FPOS is a BTEC level 2 qualification in intermediate pre-hospital trauma care,
governed by the Royal College of Surgeons and gives a dual qualification with the
H&SAW First Aid Certificate.
Courses have now started on WDS stations and all watches will be qualified by mid
May 2014. The FPOS programme for RDS staff will follow later in the year.
Operational Support and Fire Safety
The Service operates two databases of information for commercial premises. Fire
Safety use the Farynor system to store information and inspection details of
premises that Fire Safety Officers and Fire Crews inspect under the Regulatory
Reform (Fire Safety) Order (2005). We also have the Premises Risk Information
System (PRIS) which contains our risk information gathered from 7(2)d inspections.
Each database carries information on thousands of premises and in many cases
both systems will contain separate information about the same premises. We are
introducing a new system, the Fire Job Management System (FJMS), which will
contain a single reference point where all fire safety and operational risk information
for each premise will be held.
Fire Safety Officers undertaking risk assessments will identify risks and information
that is of interest to operational crews and likewise operational crews will observe fire
safety issues when visiting premises on 7(2)d inspections. When implemented there
will be clear advantages in being able to maintain up-to-date records on our risks
within the County. I will provide more updates on our work in this area in my future
‘Messages from the ACFO’.
Equalities
Who was Alan Turing? See page 4.
Health and Safety - Team Sports
I receive requests from stations regarding the return of some forms of team sports on
fire stations, for example tennis or football using sponge balls.
I have tabled these requests to the Service’s Health Safety and Welfare Committee,
where we discussed the matter with the group. On balance it was the Committee’s
view that team/contact sports should not be re-introduced. The rationale behind this
decision was:
1. After a very high peak of sports injuries in the Service, we have, as a result of
the ban, driven these injuries to virtually zero.
2. These activities do not form part of the Service’s fitness policy.
3. The Service does not provide footwear suitable for such activities.
4. That although a softball may be used, it is the potential twisting motion of
joints, particularly knees and ankles that remains as a risk of injury.
Celebrating Success
Congratulations to Nuneaton’s crews for their response to a house on fire in
Laburnum Drive, Camp Hill in December. A neighbour heard smoke alarms
actuating and then seeing smoke, called 999 and rescued the lady from the ground
floor. The smoke alarms were fitted by the Nuneaton crews in November. Well
done to all.
Congratulations to Rachel Streeting for her nomination of Firefighter of the Year, part
of the Firefighters Charity, Spirit of Fire Awards. This is the second year in a row
that a Warwickshire firefighter has made the finals – last year Michele Rulli (Fire
Control) made the top five. Rachel has been nominated because of her many years
of service to the Trauma Support Team and through the tens of thousands of pounds
that she has raised for the Firefighters Charity. She will attend the awards ceremony
in London in May. Well done Rachel.
Congratulations to Les Moore (Arson Task Force) and Jennifer Cox (Occupational
Health), who have been nominated to attend a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham
Palace this Summer. Both Les and Jennifer have been nominated for their many
years of loyal service, in Les’s case for his sterling work in the field of arson
reduction and for Jennifer’s work with occupational health and trauma support.
Equalities, Fairness and Diversity
Warwickshire has a well advanced process for Equalities and Diversity, we have a
coordinating group that is chaired by Judith Coote and as a Service we recognise
and celebrate key dates in the equalities calendar. I am the Principal Officer lead for
equalities and I represent the Service on the WCC Strategic Equality and Diversity
Group. As part of my ‘message from’ communications I would like to explore
equalities issues with you.
So did you know who Alan Turing was?
Over the Christmas period there were a number of news reports that reported
different accounts of homosexuality. Olympic diver Tom Daley announced that he
was having a relationship with a man. Tom in the main was congratulated for his
courage in being open about this and he received many comments of support.
How very different to the story of Alan Turing whose own story was reported at the
same time.
I don’t think that it be too dramatic to suggest that we may have lost the Second
World War if it weren’t for Alan Turing. Alan was born in 1912 and at an early age
showed signs of his genius, particularly with science and mathematics. He
graduated from Cambridge with a first-class honours degree in mathematics. He
went on to develop the ‘Turing Machine’ a system using algorithms to undertake
mathematical equations – effectively the first computer.
During the Second World War his genius was recognised and he became a
legendary code breaker of German signals at Bletchley Park. He developed the
‘bombe’ the electromechanical machine that determined the settings for the Enigma
machine. The work of Bletchley Park and of the Enigma project are well
documented, as are the effect that they had in shortening the war and reducing the
number of lives lost.
Alan was gay and was having a relationship with another man at a time (1952) when
it was illegal to do so. (Homosexuality was not legalised in the UK until 1967.) Alan
was arrested although his ‘crime’ was recorded as indecency rather than that he was
having a gay relationship. Following the trial he was convicted and given the choice
of imprisonment or probation. He accepted probation, which was conditional upon
him undertaking hormonal therapy (chemical castration) which left him with terrible
side effects. He was also removed from his position within the British Intelligence
Services. Alan Turing took his own life in 1954, he was 41 years old.
It is bizarre that the nation, having so recently experienced the injustices, inequalities
and violence of the Second World War, should treat anyone like this, let alone
someone so instrumental in winning the war. We of course will never know what
brilliance Alan still had to offer.
In 2009, a British Programmer John Graham Cumming, started a petition to seek an
apology and Royal pardon for Alan. On 24th December 2013 Queen Elizabeth II
signed a pardon for Alan Turing.
Alan’s memorial in Manchester includes the following inscription, ‘Alan Mathison
Turing 1912 – 1954. Father of Computer Science, Mathematician, Logician,
Wartime Code Breaker, Victim of Prejudice’.
Only in the last few days, former Aston Villa star Thomas Hitzlsperger has received
overwhelming support for his courage in announcing that he is gay. It was however
only really possible for him to do so after the conclusion of his footballing career and
he is the only Premier League footballer ever to make this announcement. The
example of Tom Daley and Thomas Hitzlsperger are positive ones and perhaps they
do owe a lot to Alan Turing, but we also still seem to have a long way to go.
On one of many Blue Plaques
around the country dedicated
to Alan Turing
ACFO Jim Onions
January 2014