TFS, EVER so many years ago, when very newly qualified, I was employed as a relief manager for a firm of "chemists". I was told that a) the customer must be looked after and b) that Head Office was the first and indeed second choice for supplies. One day the District Manager came into the shop I was relief managing to hear me berating someone on the phone. I had a customer who wanted something and I was damned if I was going to let them down. I ended the conversation with something about "my customer needs (whatever it was) and remember I make the profit, you don't"" The DM looked at me" Were you talking to the warehouse?" "Yes!"
"You have" he said, "got more courage than I would have! I hope you never meet the Distribution Manager. He'll have you for breakfast"
That new HQ needs filling up, it's only just opened!
It's gonna be front line staff who take the hit. On any day there are about 65 whole time staff on duty in the county, plus (hopefully!) enough retained on call to turn their pumps out, with 7 or 8 control staff coordinating our response. Up in the big house, we've got Corporate Communications, IT, Estates Management, HR, Equality and Diversity staff, Legal, Finance, Plus umpteen other departments. Then you have the departments filled with officers who count as operational, but in fact drive desks- Community Fire Safety, Ops planning, Training, Inspection and others. Then you have the Senior Management Team. We're a small, semi rural county, but we run our HQ like we're a Met brigade.
The sad fact is that in many ways, actually turning Fire Engines out of the doors almost seems secondary to running the Service. I had the argument with our previous deputy Chief that HQ didn't put any fires out- he responded that HQ facilitated us in putting out fires, and that it wasn't all about the red lorries. We can't do anything for ourselves anymore. We're not even allowed to put a shelf up around the station, we have to put a requisition into Estates, who'll pay a contractor to put it up. We have a cleaner, an admin assistant, we pay a company to mow the grass in front of our station, we pay a window cleaning company, we have a station cook. I work with practical guys and girls, qualified fire fighters who have had jobs before joining, trained plumbers, sparkies, brickies, mechanics, painters, a chef, welders, lots of ex forces people, we even have an ex Marine Sniper, who's done "things" in Bosnia and Sierra Leone ( to be fair, we keep him in a dark room, playing chill out New Age music, soothes him). Surely we could be allowed to run the station?
The cuts will mostly fall on us.
Very sorry to hear about your predicament (although you are still employed, and I don't want this to sound like an obituary or fatal diagnosis!!).
But the interesting thing is that you seem to be aware of the issue or part of it, inflated head office, admin, other non-core costs - but what power do you have to act to ensure that it is, for example, the diversity unit that is cut rather than you guys who put out the fires?
You mention a fear that the cuts will come to get you over the course of the next 1-5 years but it seems that it is not the cuts that you should be objecting to but the specific cuts that are made presumably on some kind of local level. Is that Central Govt's fault?
It's the same with the "save our libraries" critique of the Coalition. Central govt may reduce the grant but often it is the local council that allocates specific targets.
That new HQ needs filling up, it's only just opened!
It's gonna be front line staff who take the hit. On any day there are about 65 whole time staff on duty in the county, plus (hopefully!) enough retained on call to turn their pumps out, with 7 or 8 control staff coordinating our response. Up in the big house, we've got Corporate Communications, IT, Estates Management, HR, Equality and Diversity staff, Legal, Finance, Plus umpteen other departments. Then you have the departments filled with officers who count as operational, but in fact drive desks- Community Fire Safety, Ops planning, Training, Inspection and others. Then you have the Senior Management Team. We're a small, semi rural county, but we run our HQ like we're a Met brigade.
The sad fact is that in many ways, actually turning Fire Engines out of the doors almost seems secondary to running the Service. I had the argument with our previous deputy Chief that HQ didn't put any fires out- he responded that HQ facilitated us in putting out fires, and that it wasn't all about the red lorries. We can't do anything for ourselves anymore. We're not even allowed to put a shelf up around the station, we have to put a requisition into Estates, who'll pay a contractor to put it up. We have a cleaner, an admin assistant, we pay a company to mow the grass in front of our station, we pay a window cleaning company, we have a station cook. I work with practical guys and girls, qualified fire fighters who have had jobs before joining, trained plumbers, sparkies, brickies, mechanics, painters, a chef, welders, lots of ex forces people, we even have an ex Marine Sniper, who's done "things" in Bosnia and Sierra Leone ( to be fair, we keep him in a dark room, playing chill out New Age music, soothes him). Surely we could be allowed to run the station?
The cuts will mostly fall on us.
Mr. Stopper, what you have is replicated, I suspect, in every brigade in the country and in every police force too. The amount of waste is staggering, and so easy to cut if there was the will at the top to do it.
A year or two back I suffered, and I use the word advisedly, a half-hour lecture from a member of a local brigade's senior management team on how actually putting out fires and rescuing people was a small and declining part of her "service's" (I was rebuked for using the word brigade) business.
The problem is that there seems to be nobody who has the power, or at least the will, to make fire and police chiefs get a grip and pay attention to what matters to the people who pay for the service they are supposed to be providing. As a result the actual service providers, like you, and the public get the shitty end of the stick, whilst the HQ wallahs, such as the lady I referred to above, carry on and prosper.
Comments
One day the District Manager came into the shop I was relief managing to hear me berating someone on the phone. I had a customer who wanted something and I was damned if I was going to let them down.
I ended the conversation with something about "my customer needs (whatever it was) and remember I make the profit, you don't""
The DM looked at me" Were you talking to the warehouse?" "Yes!"
"You have" he said, "got more courage than I would have! I hope you never meet the Distribution Manager. He'll have you for breakfast"
I still think he was wrong and I was right!
But the interesting thing is that you seem to be aware of the issue or part of it, inflated head office, admin, other non-core costs - but what power do you have to act to ensure that it is, for example, the diversity unit that is cut rather than you guys who put out the fires?
You mention a fear that the cuts will come to get you over the course of the next 1-5 years but it seems that it is not the cuts that you should be objecting to but the specific cuts that are made presumably on some kind of local level. Is that Central Govt's fault?
It's the same with the "save our libraries" critique of the Coalition. Central govt may reduce the grant but often it is the local council that allocates specific targets.
A year or two back I suffered, and I use the word advisedly, a half-hour lecture from a member of a local brigade's senior management team on how actually putting out fires and rescuing people was a small and declining part of her "service's" (I was rebuked for using the word brigade) business.
The problem is that there seems to be nobody who has the power, or at least the will, to make fire and police chiefs get a grip and pay attention to what matters to the people who pay for the service they are supposed to be providing. As a result the actual service providers, like you, and the public get the shitty end of the stick, whilst the HQ wallahs, such as the lady I referred to above, carry on and prosper.