 I welcome everyone to the Justice Committee's 13th meeting in 2015. I ask everyone in the public area as well to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices as they interfere with broadcasting even when they are switched to silent. Apologies from Jane Baxter. I move to item 1 on the agenda, taking business and private decisions. The committee has invited me to consider our work programme under item 3 in private. Are you agreed? Item 2, fire and rescue service reform. It is our first item of business today and it is our latest evidence session on reform in the fire and rescue service. We hold these sessions right later to allow us to keep an eye on how fire reform is working in practice. I welcome the meeting of Pat Waters, chair of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Board, Alasdair Hayes, chief officer of the SFRS, Steve Torrey, emergency chief inspector of the SFRS and Stephen Thomson, Scottish secretary of the FBU Scotland. I thank you all for your written submissions. I will go straight to questions from members. Christian, Margaret, Alison and John. Off we go, and then Roddy. That is a list. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning. I just want to go straight to the most important part of the three-form programme, which is in fact the funding aspect of it and how much is going to be a challenge to meet the funding that we need to address in the next few years. A really new one of the other things is the submission from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Some details on the reduction, which we need to have, which is a reduction by 31.5% and 7% in cash terms in 2012-2013. It says that it is primarily due to VAT and pay inflation. I think pay inflation, we all agree that in Wednesdays it is not a bad thing. Regarding VAT, we do not have the details of how much the VAT has affected the funding, and if that decision was to be reversed by a next Westminster Government, will that sort out the problem of funding that we have, the challenges that we have, in the next few years to come? Yes, by the way, I meant to say that if you just indicate that you want to answer, and I will call you. Pat Waters, please. The chair, if I could maybe initially cover the VAT point and then hand off to the chief officer who will cover the other points there. VAT has been a burden on the organisation. I think it's fair to say that we are the only fire and rescue service in the whole of the UK that's actually burdened by having to pay VAT. Every other fire and rescue service in the UK gets the VAT return to them or they don't pay that as a part of the service that they're actually providing. People have said to me, but you knew that when you started and I did. But there's been certainly subtle changes in the two years that we have been a fire and rescue service. For instance, the Transport Agency, which was formed very recently down south to a national agency, is very similar to the formation of a national service in Scotland for the fire and rescue service, is exempt from VAT. There was a change in the regulations to allow them to be exempt. There are other organisations that have recently formed national organisations that are also exempt and the Government has made an exemption. It's a matter very much for the Westminster Government and certainly if we look at it, last year it cost us £10 million in VAT, that's £10 million that we wouldn't have had to look for savings within the service and it would have protected part of the service on-going. It is important to our own going financial situation. Will it cover all the gap? No, it won't, but it certainly would go a long way to help us. At that particular point, did you ask for a modification on the VAT act 1994 on section 33 that the fire service in Scotland will be added to it? I have noted that the BBC is on it. The Metropolitan Police is on it as well. Have you asked specifically for what modification to be made? I wrote to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of Exchequer and every Scottish MP with a copy to my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament for their information. The reply that I got was that there are regulations, there are organisations that are exempt but we were not one of them. No reason was given. Have we seen that letter of response that you had? Probably not, Christine. I'm quite happy to listen to that. Could we? The other thing that I'd like to exemplify, and you've mentioned Christian Oedder organisations, the BBC and the Met. You said that other recently formed organisations but you didn't elaborate. Do you know them? Yes, the London Legacy Organisation was formed into a national organisation. The Olympics Legacy Organisation was formed into a national organisation to see the benefits of Olympics spread right throughout. That was a local body that was formed into a national body but it was made VAT exam. That's very useful. I think that Mr Hew wanted to. Perhaps just to highlight a couple of things. First and foremost, what I and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service are concerned about is ensuring the safety and improving safety outcomes for the people of Scotland. In terms of the funding gap that is mentioned here, we have reduced the cost base of the organisation by £48.2 million in the first three years of the service. That's including this financial year of the service. The reduction that we anticipated when we formed the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, we've been able to deliver against that but it has been made more difficult because it's not just the cash cut in the organisation, it's also the increase in the cost base, which has been exacerbated by the fact that we have not been VAT exempt. I would absolutely support the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. As the chair just said, we are the only Fire and Rescue Service in the UK that is paying VAT on goods and services and it certainly would have helped us over the past three years. However, as we look to the future and we are not anticipating that we will see any significant increase in our funding, that exemption would be a very useful and powerful thing to help to improve safety outcomes for the people of Scotland. We have been set six key targets by the Scottish Government, but if I could just highlight two to you. One is around reducing the number of casualties, including fatalities in fires. Another one is around reducing the number of casualties, including fatalities in special services and both of those key safety targets. Despite the fact that we have successfully reduced the cost base by £48.2 million, both of those key targets have been met by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and that is absolutely our focus, the safety of our communities. Does any other panel member on the VAT issue wish to comment, which I haven't indicated? Can you maybe quantify, because it says that it makes VAT and paying for it together, could you try to quantify a little bit what difference it would make in the figures? We are paying about £10 million per annum on VAT for goods and services procured by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. To make what kind of saving pay here for the next year to come. Over the first three years of the service and we don't know what a budget would be beyond this financial year, we have had to reduce the cost base by £48.2 million, so if you took that £10 million off, you would be saying £38.2 million, which would free up an additional £10 million to invest in a vital public service. You wouldn't make a big difference. Thank you very much for this. Roger, on the supplementary question, Chief Constable House was before us in November, he said that the failure to recover £23 million was the equivalent of, I think, he said, 680 police officers. What's that £10 million equivalent of in terms of fire officers? About 350 firefighter posts, a firefighter with one cost is earning around about £30 per annum. Is it still on the same, it's a supplementary, all right? Yeah, it's just a simple question. I mean, I hear what you're saying about writing to the Government, but I just looked up the criteria with regards to registration and in there it says you must register if you're with a turnover more than £82,000 per annum. Has anyone actually tried to register because my understanding is that it may be by law that HMS customs might need to ask to take a different view because there is law state laid down. That might sound like a silly laddie question, but has anyone ever tried to register rather than ask the questions? The short answer is no, we have not because we were told we would not be covered for it. Right. In any event, we're going to see who was the response from the Treasury or... It was from the Treasury. Right, so we are happy to see the response that you had. Thank you very much. I will make sure that's forward. Margaret, please. Both the joint submission, the submission from the chief inspector state, there has been a reduction in emergency response demand for the SFRS and a reduction in the traditional firing, firefighting and intervention roles. I think legally that covered prevention of fires and to save people from fires and road accidents. Is the new unitary fire force able now to cover incidents such as the tragic case of Alison Hume where, because of health and safety reasons, then there was a delay of six hours in rescuing her from a mineshaft? And is it clear if the fire brigade would have a role in, say, the collapse of a building or in a mineshaft collapsing or in flood prevention, but specifically the kind of scenario that we saw in that tragic case? Yes. When the Fire Scotland Act came in, it actually replaced the 1947 Fire Services Act and recognised that we no longer just fight fires, put an increased emphasis on the preventative work. I would commend the preventative work that has been undertaken by the Fire and Rescue Service because that has played a significant part in that 40% reduction in the number of emergency incidents that we attend. What it also recognised was that the Fire Service had developed expertise, the skills that have procured much of the equipment to enable it to respond to other types of emergency incidents, such as collapsed buildings that she specifically mentioned there. We would call that urban search and rescue and you may well be aware that there is a terrible tragedy unfolding in Nepal at this moment in time and there are six members of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service who have those very skills supporting the UK's response to that. We have those types of skills within the service. They are enshrined within the new Fire Scotland Act 2006, so we are equipping our people, we are upskilling our people so that they can respond to these types of incidents. We have recently undertaken a review of all our specialist capabilities because one of the benefits of reform was to make sure that across Scotland, based on risk, people had the more equitable access to those specialist skills so that they would not see undue delay. That was approved by a board in January and we are working through an implementation plan to make sure that, based on risk, people have equitable access to all those types of specialist skills. Specifically, in relation to something like a collapsed mine shaft, that would also apply to many other incidents. It would not just be a single response from the Fire and Rescue Service, but a multi-agency response to that. We have other people who have complementary skillsets that would form an effective team to undertake such a rescue. For example, I can point to mine rescue, because we are based in Fife Crosskeys and Fife Crossgates. We have colleagues and other emergency services that would form teams with us, but one of the things that we are doing and asking the Fire and Rescue Service is that we are acting as the champion of specialist rescue. Within our control rooms, we are keeping registers of all the people who have additional complementary skills that could work alongside us in those unique and unusual circumstances so that we can deliver an effective response as we possibly can in those circumstances. Another significant change that we have made within our control rooms is that, traditionally, if I was an incident commander at an emergency incident, the control would give me the predetermined attendance for the type of incident and any additional resources that I would ask for them from the incident ground. That can still happen, but to support the incident commanders, the control rooms now come in and say, are you aware that 30 minutes away we have this resource, we have this resource, which may help you? We are trying to make sure that, by working with others and by acting as a co-ordinator in changing some of our operational practices, we can give us an effective response to people who are trapped in whatever circumstances. I suppose that the key thing is that you have mentioned working as a team, and if it was not quite your job to do a specific aspect and there was going to be a delay in time, that was a key to the case that I mentioned. Are you still confident that you could respond appropriately in the common sense manner? It seems to have been the delay in that case, which eventually led to the tragic death. We have been doing lots of work with our colleagues in the Fire Brigade Union, we have been doing lots of work with the health and safety executive, there has been a major review of incident command procedures and the operational doctrine that operates within not just the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, but across the UK to make sure that, when we are at these unusual and very challenging operational incidents, we are able to absolutely respect the health and safety requirements of emergency service workers, they deserve to, although they work in an inherently dangerous environment, they need a safer system of work as we can possibly create from them, but we have to strike the right balance because we are an emergency service, and when people are in difficulty, when their life is threatened, we have a responsibility to respond as safely as we can for our workers, but equally we have to place ourselves into an inherently dangerous environment to try and affect a rescue where that is practicable to do so. It is not an absolute, it is something that is one of the judgment calls that an instant commander has to make, but what we are trying to do is create the correct environment, create the correct operational doctrine and the right guidance to make sure that our firefighters and our instant commanders understand that making risky decisions is part of their job, so that is something that we have been working very hard on within the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. First of all, I reiterate that we are working very closely with the service to make sure that that doesn't happen again as best we can. However, I just wanted to provide a bit more clarity on the introduction and intervention figures that you first mentioned, and the chief officer mentioned a 40 per cent reduction in fire's attendants over the last 10 years. What I will say is that intervention activity has only ever sat at around 5 per cent of fire station fire fire activity, so it is just to put that 40 per cent into context, so it is a 40 per cent reduction of that 5 per cent intervention activity. That is not to say— Do you mean going to fire? Going to fire, yes. You have to. I know that you all know the language, but we make it easy. Yes, going to fires. Although we do carry out a lot more intervention activity over the past few years, including going to flooding, going to special rescues, going to line rescue, going to water rescue, and that also means that there is an increase in activity on fire stations because they are quite specialist skills and you have got to train very intensely for that, so I just wanted to put that 40 per cent reduction in intervention into context. That is fine. Thank you. Margaret, are you finished? Yes. I am not sure that I have got a categorical. Yes, of course there has got to be a risk assessment. There was a risk assessment in this case, which was less inadequate, so I am not altogether sure that all be a very small number of cases that we may be talking about, the effects can be cataclysmic and very serious, so maybe just to reflect on that, but on a more positive note then, there is an opportunity to do other kind of work out of hospital cardiac arrest, a strategy for that. Would you like to comment on perhaps what is being taken forward to do some of that work? Take Mr Torrey first, then I will take Mr Thompson. Thank you very much. So just to be clear that comment in the inspectorate's submission about reduced operational activity, we are presenting as an idea that the service has new capacity and there are opportunities to do different things, so it is much more than the very specific, although it is a very, very pertinent, specific question that you had, then this is much bigger picture stuff. Think about what fire and rescue service can do in the future. Now the chief painted a very good picture of specialist rescue and other services that the fire and rescue service provides. On top of that, what we know is that the Scottish Government is very keen that the public sector breaks down kind of traditional barriers between organisations and people do different things, so one of the ones that we have tried to highlight to the committee today is this idea about corresponding out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, something that we think the fire and rescue service could make a very, very big difference with. It is not the only thing, of course, and the fire and rescue service will evolve and change, I expect, over the years, but it is something that is very, very current on the agenda and something that we have been focused on as an inspector. I will try very strongly to promote it. Can you just explain to me again in simple, sorry to repeat this, but you talk about out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Is that somebody phones the fire and rescue service rather than the ambulance? What happens? Give me a wee example of what you mean by this change in service or flexibility of whatever. This is something where a member of the public walking along the street suffers a cardiac arrest falls down. The Scottish Government has recently announced a strategy to try and improve outcomes with that. We are told that if that happens to you in Scotland, it is one of the worst places in Europe for it to happen in terms of survivability. Most places are fairly dramatically different. All that requires is—I will just take you through very briefly—all that requires to make improvement is three or four steps. Firstly, someone has to recognise that you have suffered a cardiac arrest, then someone needs to know how to do good quality CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, chest compressions, then you need a quick call to specialists to paramedics and finally you need transport to a centre of excellence. If you think about that, all over Scotland, the geography, someone falling down on the street anywhere, then ambulances are highly unlikely to be around. It is much more likely that a member of the public is going to spot you, but you have many thousands of firefighters who are around, trained and can be trained further, who carry hundreds and hundreds of defibrillator devices and who could contribute a big way to that. What is a very straightforward process that could make a big, big difference to Scotland's health? If somebody phoned 999 just now—they are sort on the street and they do not know how to handle it, they are in a remote place—how would that be directed to the ambulance service, but not necessarily to fire and rescue that has been nearby? Is that what exists just now? That would be right. The ambulance control room has expertise to understand these things and to assess what is going on to provide advice. What the fire and rescue service could do is to provide an additional resource that Scottish Arbions could call on. That is part of what you are talking about here. Does somebody else want to comment on the panel about that? It seems to be a very sensible thing to do. It is absolutely sensible. Any of the discussions that we have had and any of the presentations that we have had is very clear. It needs more than one or two people to respond to an incident such as that. I think that the main point that Steve touched on is that people have to recognise it. For people to recognise it, we need to make awareness very much more than it is at the present time. The training opportunities that we would have to use our facilities and our staff to make the public aware of exactly what it was and how to deal with them when it happened. I do not think that people were suggesting that people phoned the fire station as soon as anything happened. However, if the ambulance could not get there, the staff would have phoned us. Nine times out of ten, we will get there first. Mr Thomson, it will come on, it will come on automatically. There are some challenges around that in the fire service and that the FPU members get involved. The first challenge is that, at the moment, there is a national policy that we do not get involved in co-responding schemes. However, our conference in just over two weeks away in May, where the very issue will be being discussed, it is being discussed in the broader sense of emergency medical response and should fire and rescue services across the UK or should FPU members get involved in these schemes, there is currently a national joint council working group set up on all things emergency medical response. In fact, one of our assistant chief officers sits on that working group and is obviously the FPU at a national level sitting on that working group looking at that. Now, that is not to say that we have not been speaking to the service about this, but all we have said is that we can please take cognisance of the fact of this challenge at the moment and have to wait and see if there is a change in policy next month. On the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest issue, that is only one small part of emergency medical response. The Fire Brigade Union did attend, along with service managers at the symposium, sponsored by the Scottish Government a couple of months ago in Edinburgh. And there was a presentation given by a captain from the Seattle Fire and Rescue Service, and because they have taken this on board and their calls have increased dramatically and the firefighters take great pride in being involved in this, and perhaps absolutely right, it seemed very sensible to get involved. However, one of the things that did strike me that the captain Larson spoke about was that the training for the control operators, dispatchers, they call them, was absolutely paramount, and it was touching on the point that you made, how the fire service would be mobilised. That is a key point for us. Another key point is that proper training is given for our firefighters. At the moment, more than occasionally now, we have been turned out to assist the ambulance service, where sometimes the ambulance service is some 30 or 40 minutes away, where firefighters are not paramount, because they do have some basic skills on the whole. One example that I was given anecdotally was that a crew was turned out, and it turned out not to be a cardiac arrest, but it was a diabetic induced coma. Firefighters are not trained. They do not have the expertise to deal with that, and they are left in the position of having to deal with that casually, surrounded by their family, and they just come away from a car fire. They are all stinking of smoke and noxious chemicals. Those are the issues that they need to be looked at, and we are prepared to speak, and we are speaking to the service about, before we roll this out, can we look at all those issues properly and make sure—one of the big issues is resources. How is this going to be resourced? If you roll us out across the whole of the service, the retained duty system will have a cost implication to the service when budgets are already stretched. Every time a retained fire appliance turns out with four, five or six firefighters on it, I would guess that it costs the service between £150 and £200. If that is going to be rolled out across the country, that will have a significant impact on budgets. Again, the resourcing issue needs to be looked at quite clearly. We are touching training and the control issues resourcing, so that needs to be looked at. We will continue to look and have dialogue with the service on it. We are not being obstructive on it, but we are asking the service to take the information off. No, I take your point. Those are quite serious issues, and we need to be looked at appropriately. No, it is a very interesting, but it is a very complex matter. I take your point in behalf of your members. Alison, is this on this point still? That is a very brief one, Christian, on that point. Thank you very much, because it is very important to know what we are defining the role of the firefighters in the 21st century. They have been used to be involved in it, but I just wanted to check on the chief inspector's story on what you said about the example in Europe. I know that a lot of things are saying about the creativity of the Scottish Government on that particular subject. That is a good example in Europe. I think that a lot of first response is done on health. It is done by a fire service across Europe. The trust is about to focus in here, is it? Is France coming in as a question? I just wanted to check if you had that kind of example over Europe, when you say that the fire service is a lot more performant on that particular thing, on the health particularly, if there are maybe some models we can look at. Yes, that is correct, but just one caveat on that. It is still on France. France is a good model in Europe. My argument is that the fire and rescue service can play a very, very big role, but the whole healthcare and improved outcomes are much bigger than the fire service. It is a whole national thing, a whole national system. You are involved with the integration of the health and social care services. Is the fire service involved in that? In Scotland at the moment, no. No, not just now. No, the services in conversation with the Scottish Army and the Scottish Government about doing this work. Very quickly, on this point at hospital, Cardi Cres, the ambition is to save 1,000 lives by 2020. That is 1,000 people returning to their families and being active citizens. There is strong evidence from not just Europe but from all around the world that, again, it is a team approach. It is a co-responding model with professionals within the Scottish Ambulance Service and using the team ethic, the skills that firefighters have, the equipment. We have 400 defibrillators located across Scotland. If you join that together, we will save 1,000 lives a year. I absolutely accept all the points around making sure that the control room staff have the proper training, that our front-line staff respond to those things. Do not just have the technical skills, they also have the soft skills to deal with families and the stressed circumstances. We have to get all those things right. It has been a very constructive dialogue that we have had today with our colleagues within the FBU. As I am speaking, and I have visited more than 200 work locations, as I am speaking to the firefighters, they absolutely understand that they can make a significant difference here. We will pick on the best practice from wherever it exists in Europe or across the world. In Scotland, we have a 4 per cent survival rate at the moment and the best countries in Europe at the moment, which are the Scandinavian countries. I recently visited Finland and it is around 34 per cent. That is an enormous difference. The world leaders are Seattle and they are saving 40 per cent. That is the ambition. If we join this up, and as the chief inspector says, we cannot do it alone, it will absolutely require us working as the public service and incorporating the third sector. There are lots of volunteers doing great work. If we join that up and do it in a co-ordinated way, I see no reason why we cannot be up there amongst the best in the world. That is absolutely something that we need to commit to. Good morning. Last year, John Duffie of the FBU told us that the routine service was on its knees. Mr Torrey, you were a wee bit more circumspect when you said that it was fragile. Can I ask what the service has done over the last year to tackle that problem? Can I come in initially and then hand over to the chief? I think that at that same meeting, there was no disagreement from myself as a chair of service or from the chief officer of the service that we have got a very vulnerable part of the service and that is our retained firefighting unit. It is the large part of the service that we deliver, a very important part of the service that we deliver. Since the meeting that we had last year, we have had a piece of work being done with one of our senior officers in conjunction with the retained service itself and with our representative unions, looking about how we can do it. We do not believe—I think that we said that at that particular point—that there have been many attempts to repair that service. We believe that we need a new approach to how we deliver that service and that was the effort that we are putting into that. We have looked at how it has been delivered in other countries but, for the detail, I will hand over to the chief officer. To recap, 40 per cent of the operational firefighters in Scotland work on the retained duty system and 90 per cent of the land mass in Scotland is protected by retained duty firefighters. They are an integral part of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. They have been magnificent in protecting their local communities but it was a system that was designed for the 1950s when lifestyles were significantly different. We need to refresh that because we know that during the day, because we have the technology that tells us the availability of every appliance in Scotland, we know that between six days and up to 100 retained pumps can be off the run at some point—not available at some point during the day but on Monday to Friday 95. That is a huge challenge for us and we need to address it. The chair just alluded to that this was something that has been growing for probably many decades. It is not unique to Scotland, it is something that the whole of the UK is facing. It is a challenge. Each of the antecedent services is tried in different ways to address it but still the problem remains. It is a stress that it is not down in any way to a lack of commitment from local retained firefighters. They are doing an incredible job but the circumstances make it difficult for them. There are two things that we have done. We have looked at the existing system and we have tried to eradicate any bad practice within it. We heard some horror stories that when people wanted to join the retained service in the local community it could take over 12 months from the point of contact to the point that they are joining a local crew and many people would understand that they would fall away during that journey. One of the things that we have done there is that it is now 16 weeks from the point of initial contact to the point where you would commence your training with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. You will understand that, because of the nature of the role, we have to do background checks on people. There are some delays in that. We have streamlined that. What we have also done is to increase the involvement of the local managers to ensure that they are involved in it and that they involve the local crews in the recruitment process. I will give you an example from only last week when we were up in Shetland and in Orkney. I was not some of my managers and they were running a campaign up in Orkney and Shetland. We are going to train all the firefighters on the islands as opposed to taking them on to the mainland. We have been listening and we have been trying to streamline the processes and we are trying to make it much easier for people who show a willingness to join the service. We are trying to be understanding the difficulties that they have and perhaps detaching themselves away from their local community, their families and their main form of employment. We have streamlined that and we are seeing some improvement there, but that is really a sticking plaster. What we think is more important is the work that is going on to redefine what the retained duty system will look like in the 21st century. Peter Murray, who is one of the assistant chief officers who you heard the last time is leading this project, is about to kick off a couple of pilots around Scotland where what we are going to be looking at is what is the role of the retained firefighter and what other value-adding activity can they bring to their local communities that might encourage them to be part of the public service and specifically the fire and rescue service in Scotland. Those are just pilots that are going to go. They are options for the future. If those things are successful, then what we will try and do is learn from them and roll them out across other parts of Scotland where it might be pertinent. However, I suggest to you that the retained duty system, if that is what we continue to call it, will be extremely significant in the future. However, how it fits into the different parts of Scotland will not be homogenous. The core will be the same, but we need to make it fit the needs of local communities and the demands that are placed upon the people within those local communities. That is the future stuff that we are working on at the moment. That seems to me a long way away from a solution then. Can you put a timescale on that? In terms of the streamline in the existing processes, we have done that now. That first stage is now complete and we are seeing improvements. In terms of those pilots, we hope to kick off— Where are you going to talk to your pilots? We are hoping that we will run those pilots in East Lothian, Scottish Borders and Aberdeenshire. When are you expecting to assess the effectiveness? We are expecting to kick those pilots off in October of this year, but we are still at the stage where we are having the conversations with the chief executives and the leaders within the local authorities. We are speaking to our colleagues in Scottish Ambulance Service, Police Scotland and NHS Scotland, as it covers those particular areas, how we gather all of that together. We are hopeful that we will get some of those pilots going in October. To be fair, you probably need to run them for a period of about 12 months before you can get any meaningful feedback to those things. That is a long-term strategic problem that we have, but we are attempting to re-address it. At the same time, we are attempting to make sure that the existing system works as effectively as it possibly can. I was just going to ask Mr Torrey to come in if you want to come in there first. Mr Torrey? I could just add two comments briefly if I may. The first is to say that the inspector has obviously a very strong interest in this area. The chief officer has described how heavily reliant Scotland is on retaining volunteer firefighters. It is a fundamentally important issue. We have reported on it. We will continue to take an interest. It is one of those things that we want to take an interest in the form of being supportive of the service, trying to drive change and make a difference and bring about a difference. The other comment that I wanted to make was when I chose the word fragile last year to describe the service. That was a very deliberate thing. Although there is long-term pressure and changes in the way that the service operates, the service is not broken. I could go around Scotland and to view many members of staff who will describe the pressure that they are under, but they are delivering a quality service in their local communities. That is really important. It is important to the service's staff that the retaining volunteer system is not painted as a failing part of the organisation, because it is most certainly not. My intention is to suggest that it was failing. It is precisely because I value what they do that I am keen that they are given that support that they need in order to operate. There has been a cluster of recent fatalities in rural areas, in Dumfries, in the Highlands and in the north-east. Are you confident that you have adequate cover across the whole country? The emergency response side is extremely important and is part of ensuring the safety of Scotland's communities. Every time we have a fatality, what we do is look at the entire circumstances around it. The last financial year, the one before, was the lowest number of fire fatalities ever in Scotland. That is testament to the work that has been done. It is testament not only to emergency response but prevention. We look at the rural communities and the circumstances in which, unfortunately, people have died. What we see is two things. We see that we have an age in population. It is a fantastic thing that people are living independent lives longer, but that comes with vulnerability. How do we work with colleagues in the health and social care reform that is going on to make sure that we recognise those vulnerabilities and stop people getting into the circumstance where, tragically, their lives are ended through a fire? That prevention part is extremely important. The other thing that we have seen, and we are looking into it, is that around a quarter of our fire deaths last year were suicides. We have never experienced that previously. Again, there are questions that we are asking in its early stages around mental health issues and how we can play a part in understanding what is behind all of this. When we look at these rural areas, immense response does play a part, but the most important part and clearness is preventing a fire from happening in the first place and understanding why and preventing those circumstances from arising in the first place. We are all quite taken aback by suicides and fires. It is not something that one would think about. Sadly, people can be in such a distressed state that they decide to end their lives and there are many ways to do that. We always had a few people, unfortunately, who would self-immolation, because the term would set themselves on fire. Last year, we saw a significant increase in that. It may be just one of the anomalies that occasionally occurs, but we are having conversations now with colleagues in wider health and social care, with our colleagues in Police Scotland to see if that is a pattern. Who is committing suicide in this way? Is that a specific group in society? We need to understand those things so that as a collective, we can improve the safety outcomes of the people of Scotland. Those are the two things that we have noticed. Suicides have increased, and the thing is that the profile beyond the suicides is elderly people living alone. There are many benefits to that, but we need to recognise what is within the system in terms of the vulnerabilities that can arise from that. Thank you for your submissions, but they are very helpful. Mr Hayes, it is a question for you, and it is about that you no longer just fight fires. There is a broader range of work that you do in the preventative work. I am particularly interested in the tackling inequalities. I note that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is leading in phase 2 of the Scottish Government's building safer communities programme. I commend the Christy commission approach that has been taken by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. I think that that is very positive. I absolutely understand Mr Thomson's representations on behalf of his members about expanding roles and perhaps the expectation that can be built in the public eye. Can you comment on some of that preventative work? Particularly at the bit that jumped out at me was when you talked about ensuring that there is robust intelligence data sharing protocols. Your preventative work might identify vulnerable people. Who do you share it with and how do you share it, please? I will give you an example from our colleagues south of the border. The chief fire officers association has just agreed a protocol with the whole of the NHS in England where they will be sharing appropriately some of the data held by GPs. They call it the Exeter data. It is not the same name up in Scotland. However, what that helps people to do is identify people that have various vulnerabilities. When the piloted this in Cheshire, they did 30,000 home safety visits in Cheshire and it was intelligence-based, predominantly from information that they got from the NHS. We have done a huge amount of work in terms of home fire safety visits across Scotland. I think that what we have done is not just targeted those that are vulnerable. We have also targeted anybody that wanted a home fire safety visit. In my view, as evidence to support that, we have increased the people who will evangelise for safety because we share it with everybody that we know. However, what we are seeing is that we are getting to a plateau again. The evidence from the work that Cheshire has done is that they did that mass and now they have gone to the targeted very much using data that they get from the health service. They are targeting people who may be vulnerable in the way that I just described earlier. What that is doing is making sure that the fire and rescue service, because we have this footprint everywhere, is getting into people's homes because we have that trust. We are able to engage with people very effectively, but we are trying to engage with the people that are most vulnerable. That is an intelligence-led approach that has been supported by our colleagues in the NHS. As we speak here in Scotland, there are conversations going on with the chief medical officer—I understand that there is a new chief medical officer that is about to come into post—that will finalise that so that, with the right protections and protocols in place, we will get comprehensive sharing of the right data from colleagues in the NHS to enable us to focus and target on the vulnerable people. When you say intelligence-led, are you recommended to visit places, your officers, and if so, who buy? In turn, if you are doing a blanket approach to an area and you encounter someone that is vulnerable, who do you share that information with? We are working with colleagues, the exact protocols about how you will share. We are absolutely to get those right. People have rights to privacy, etc. You have to respect all of that. We are still at the stage at this moment in time, and we will learn lessons from our colleagues south of the border about the green state. Can you ask us that mean-time information that you would retain yourselves? We will get those protocols right. We are working with the people that are leading at a local level in terms of health and social care integration. There are all the existing systems in place, so that we get the right levels there. If we pick up through our visits, people that are vulnerable, we can have conversations with that individual, but we would also contact our colleagues within health and social care to say that, for example, there is a person who is very frail. The tellers in the home far safety visit have tripped over several times. They have a gas cooker in their house. Perhaps an induction hob might be something that might be helpful. There are technologies there now where remotely, using an app on your mobile phone, you can get an alert saying that somebody's cooker is overheating and it can be switched off remotely. We have conversations within that wider team of people that support people that are vulnerable within their homes. Did somebody switch off my cooker? They could do that. It is having the right conversations with the local social and healthcare providers. It has to be a team approach. I can ask you, John. You have not asked us, but before you get to that, you talk about protocols. Where is the individual in this? How much consent have they given to the sharing of this data? I mean, your aims are worthy, but I just wondered, John, if you were… I am sorry, it is maybe me, Mr Hay. I am not clear. If this is something that has been developed, that is fine. I appreciate that there are a lot of initiatives that are literally just kicking off with health and social care, but you also used the word trust, and I think that the Scottish Farm and Rescue Service enjoys quite appropriately a high level of trust. There are a number of vulnerable people in our communities with challenging mental health conditions, for instance, and I wonder what impact that might have. Is there a system in place just now? Is it relatively informal? Is it formal? Are there data protocol sharing challenges that we are all aware of? Before you even get to data protocol sharing, what consent has to be given by the individual? It is very, very specific, not just the protocols. For instance, can you share my information with who can it be shared with through the NHS? I think that we kind of like to know that. You clearly have protections under the law to protect your privacy, but what we understand is the power of intelligence in terms of driving down risk, but equally what we understand is that, when we are designing services, they have to be designed in many ways from the bottom up. It is one of the challenges of Christy, in that public services should not be done on two people, they need to be developed with people, that co-production model. When we are developing these protocols, one of the key questions that will absolutely need to be addressed and answered is how do we get the consent and the support of people and we do not impose it upon them. That is why I am saying that we are in the process at this moment of time developing these protocols. I would absolutely accept that it is with that individual at the heart of it that we have to get their support, we have to get their permission within those things and it is understanding how that happens, that it will make that a success and not destroy that absolute trust that our communities have in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, because that is one of our key strengths. Again, I am sorry to labour the point, but there is a challenge within that because some people are perhaps not in a position necessarily to give an informed consent, so there will be a requirement sometime when there is a superseding issue of public safety, I am sure, where? Again, you have to make sure that you understand the legislation that gives people the protections and you understand the legislation that gives people, as a community and a society, wider protections and you make sure that the protocols and the practices that you have in place address both of those things. It is not a simple answer but, as I am saying, we have examples to draw upon from other parts of the United Kingdom that will assist us in developing this as we go forward. However, if we can get that right, get that balance right across Scotland, it will see another significant step forward in ensuring the safety of communities across Scotland. It certainly applaud the collaborative work with the health and social care and the other agencies, and perhaps it is something that you could keep the committee advised of progress with that, please, Mr Hayden. Absolutely. For permissions being in there as well, I think that protocols practice, but permissions was the bit that was... I will note that. I do not want my cooker switched on by some app or other, unless necessary. You are upset the cat. Do you wonder what was happening? I just thought I would help the committee to understand that this is not a theoretical discussion, but it is something that is really, really significant. The example that I have comes from just prior to reform, a time when Mr Hayden still worked with Tayside Fire and Rescue Service. In that year, there was a series of five fatalities that happened quite quickly. Tayside Fire and Rescue Service that year explained that each one of those five people was classified as a vulnerable person by health and social care. Some had just been released from hospital, others were in the system, but none of those were known to Tayside Fire and Rescue. So, if there had been protocols in place with all the controls that you are concerned about and understandably, then there was at least opportunity for Tayside Fire and Rescue to go along and visit and try to prevent that fatality happening. In the submission from the Farbrough Gates Union Scotland, you drew attention to the fact that the numbers of paid firefighting staff had decreased by 4 per cent to 31 March 2014, and that was about 290 members. Sport staff had also decreased by 12 per cent over that period. You state that the FBU believes that the reduction in the number of front-line posts is now having an impact on front-line delivery, with either appliances being put off the run due to insufficient personnel being on duty, or an alliance on overtime to crew the appliances, which has a knock-on effect on other areas of the SFRS budget. We know that Police Scotland has a minimum number of police officers of 17,234. Is there a case for a specified minimum number of firefighting staff, or does the service benefit from having flexibility around that? You are absolutely correct, that is one of the major differences that the fire services in the reform process, unlike the police without a fixed establishment number. There were different delivery models for delivering the service, different crewing arrangements across all of the eight. We have done some work that you alluded to in my submission on resource-based crewing arrangements now. That was quite a difficult piece of work for us to get involved in, because we were wanting to see an increase in posts and the best standards from across Scotland adopted, however. We were quite pragmatic and realistic and realised that we were probably not going to achieve that, because I think that there were only about three of the legacy services that had dedicated crewing remaining most, had some sort of dual crewing, or jump crewing, or various nomenclatures for it. The resource-based crewing model was an attempt to standardise across Scotland the crew arrangement for specialist appliances. We did that by taking the pragmatic approach. However, we do believe that, in terms of rescue appliances, they should still be dedicated crewed, and that is a stated aim for us and the service are well aware of that. However, we believe that, even with the reduced crewing model in which you have specialist appliances, rescue appliances, with the exception of height appliances, who are no longer crewed 24-7, there are other arrangements put in place to do that. Even if you fully implement that resource-based crewing model, we believe that there are now still insufficient firefighter numbers to crew to the preferred options and delivery options. I think that there is only one service that would have, when you adopt that model, an over-provision. That is in the former loading and borders. Every other service, I believe, had less than what they need, even with that reduced crewing model. That is why I wanted to highlight the reduction in numbers. One of the Scottish Government's aims, I believe, was to protect the front-line delivery outcomes. We believe now that, on any given day, there will be appliances not available, whole-time appliances available, because they are insufficient personnel, and overtime budgets are way over budget. We believe that the overtime budget, we are trying to work with the service to mitigate this at the overtime, because we realise that if the overtime budget overspend, that means that I cut somewhere else because of the fixed budget arrangements. However, we do believe that money would be better spent in employing and recruiting more firefighters. Mr Hayes. At the moment, there are 3,890 whole-time firefighters in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. That obviously moves as people retire and transfer into other parts of the country or move into other jobs. The target operating model that we have is moving towards 3,709 whole-time firefighters in Scotland. That is what we are working towards. We have worked very closely with the Fire Brigades Union to agree on the resource-based crewing model. Really, what that means is that our standard pumping appliances, the fire engines that the public would understand, the whole-time ones, are crewed all the time. However, on stations, we have a number of specialist appliances and specialist resources that are infrequently needed, but they are specialist and they are needed. The model that we have is that, if that is required, the crews that are crewing those pumping appliances would take the special appliance to the incident alongside the pumping appliance and the crew would then be able to use all the specialist equipment on. That is a model that we have agreed with the Fire Brigades Union, but I would like to give the reassurance that that is something that has been in place throughout Scotland for many decades in different parts of the country. There is nothing that we have agreed that has not got a proven record of being effective and providing a safe system of work. Now, there are challenges in relation to getting the crews that we require for our target operating model into the right places. You will remember from previous evidence that staff do have mobility protections, so we cannot move them from one part of the country where we might have a surplus to other parts of the country. We are also working through our supporting structures, our uniform supporting structures, how many uniform staff have to do training, how many uniform staff have to provide our specialist fire safety advice, but, at the moment, we have got 3,890, taken all that into account. We need 3,709, and we will work towards putting that model in place. The way that we are working towards that and respecting our staff is by a judicious use of overtime, and we have also done some recruitment specifically in the north-east of Scotland so that what we made sure was where we had specific shortages and overtime was not really a sustainable option, we did some local recruitment. However, as we work through and look at our projections in terms of our workforce planning, it will be financial year 1617 before we get to the target operating model. That is what we are trying to do at the moment, but the reassurance that I would give is that all the practices that we have put in place have been used in Scotland somewhere, and we have agreed with the Fire Brigade Union that that is a safe system of work. That is a further reduction of 181. If we are already seeing those sorts of pressures with the loss of staff that has occurred already, the figure of 3,709 is that budget driven rather than driven on the needs of the service? What we have looked at is what would be a safe and effective crewing model across Scotland. It would be disingenuous of me not to say that we have to live within our budget. We had the opening question around budgets. We have reduced the cost base by £48.2 million. Nearly 80 per cent of our budget goes on staff, so we need to do those things. I, as an individual, am absolutely focused on the safety of my communities across Scotland and my staff. The model is a model that will be effective and it is also efficient. I made the point earlier about the key targets that we have about reducing casualties. We are hitting those targets. We are being more effective, but we are also being more efficient because we are doing it for less money. One of the key targets, and quite rightly, is that we reduce the number of firefighter injuries because it is an inherently dangerous occupation. Again, we are hitting that target. We have an eye on the budget, but we also have an eye on the fact that we are here to deliver a service for communities. I am confident that the model that we have put in place will do that, and it also respects the staff who are absolutely fundamental in delivering it. Of course, if you had that £10 million, you would be able, if you wished, to have an other £350 million. I am always an advocate for a fire and rescue service. It is a wonderful public service that does incredible stuff for communities. We do much, and we could always do more, because it is not just the emergency response where we add value, but across many other things. If you want to give me £10 million— The VAT issue is a huge issue for you. The VAT issue is a huge issue. For the life of me, I cannot understand why you and Police Scotland are still having it levied, given the examples you have given. Everyone's politics seems just unjust. If the VAT situation was resolved, would you be recruiting more firefighters? Would you actually see an increase in the minimum amount? That model that I have said to you is a model that will be safe. I do not know what the budget will be next financial year or if financial year is beyond that £10 million. We would have to put whether we use it to recruit additional firefighters above that model. I cannot answer that question, because I do not know what the totality of the budget will be. The safe model is the best model. If there were more resources, I believe that there should be more firefighters to produce the best practice—not just the minimum practice—to ensure safety, which is really where we are right now and why we have been involved and closely with the service to mitigate some of the effects. That is all we are doing—we are mitigating the effects of the cuts. That is all. It is not necessarily the best practice that has been put in place. I take Alasdair's point, and I believe him that he does want to say system work for every firefighter, but it is not to say that it is the best system that could be in place. He is nodding with you. It is nice to see you agreeing a bit. Hold on. A couple of years ago, there were a lot of issues around firefighters' pensions, which caused a lot of concern in the newly-formed SFRS and the Fire Brigades Union. Has that been resolved? Are there still issues around pensions that are causing concern? We are still in dispute with both the Scottish Government and the Westminster Government. However, the Scottish Government has put a set of proposals in place, which did avert strike action in Scotland, as I am sure you are all aware. There was strike action taken south of the border, because Westminster Government was intrangent. In fact, the Fire Minister, we believe politely, had misled the House when I am sure he was aware of the emergency motion that was put in place in the debate that was had in Westminster, in which the Fire Minister said that the same safeguards for firefighters south of the border were in place, as in they would not be left at 55 without a job and without a pension. That is one of the improvements that the Scottish Government did give us, and the police say that it did avert the strike action. It did not answer all of the parts of the trade dispute, so we are still there. However, it has not been resolved as yet in Scotland, but it is better. I absolutely agree with Stephen Watt in many other matters. It is still a major issue for firefighters, and we have worked with the Government and its trade union colleagues to ensure that the impact has been mitigated. Stephen Watt is absolutely right to say that there is still a dispute between the union and its employers on the matter. There is a recognition that the fact that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service cannot solve it. There is also a recognition that the Scottish Government has done everything in its power to alleviate the worst of it, but there are still some issues that are not that the Scottish Government can solve. That is a discussion for Westminster. We still pursue it at national level through the National Council, but it is still a major issue for firefighters. Alice, do you have a supplementary question? I do, chief officer. You mentioned mobility restrictions. I presume that that is on a permanent basis, so you cannot move officers on a permanent basis. Are you having to rely on moving officers around on a piecemeal fashion in any way to cover shortages? We are actively involved in a discussion with the Fire and Rescue Union about amending that mobility protection that staff have. I use a little example for you. If you were employed by the former loading and borders, I can move you to any station in the loading and borders. However, you might live in Fife in Dunfermell and Larkirkody. If I was short of a firefighter in Dunfermell and Larkirkody, I could not push you to that station because that is the mobility protection that you have. Everybody would see common sense that you are not causing any difficulty to the individual, the same employer or the same job that you are asking them to do. That is a sensible discussion that we are having with the FBU at this moment in time to try to get a better mobility situation for people. I do not want to post somebody from Edinburgh to Inverness. I understand that that is unfair or vice versa if that is how their lifestyle is, but I would want to be able to post people to stations that are closer to their homes because it makes sense for the organisation, and I do not see that as causing too much disruption for them as individuals. I do not want to go too much further than what the chief has said. I do not want to compromise or prejudice any of the negotiations and discussions that are going on. What I will say is that the bigger piece of work that needs to happen is the harmonisation of terms and conditions, which you might think is quite an easy fix because we have a national set of conditions. However, there were eight local arrangements on just about everything, so it is quite a big piece of work. If the terms and conditions were harmonised, the local agreements were harmonised, then it would make it an awful lot easier to discuss a mobility clause. Where we are at at the moment is that we are looking at protection arrangements if there is an interim mobility clause put in, but further than that, I would rather not vote at the moment. No, you need to start negotiating here, because you are all getting on so well. I would like to see anything happening that would disrupt that. Roddie, followed by Gil, please. Thirty-two local plans, including one from five. Can you provide the committee with a bit more detail in terms of the local input towards those plans? Are they making a meaningful contribution? I think that they are. I mean, it is done through our local senior officer, our LSOs, who are in constant touch with the individual local authorities in drawing up the plans. The plans, as you know, have to be agreed individually by the local authorities. Today, we have, at the present time, 31 out of 32 authorities have agreed their local plan. One authority has not. That was Dumfries and Galloway. That was an issue probably round about the closure of the control, where they felt aggrieved that the control was closing and did not agree the local plan. That is still outstanding at this particular point. An on-going discussions will take place between the service and Dumfries and Galloway to try and make sure that the next iteration of the local plan is agreed. However, there is involvement at a local level and there is input, but it is done through the local senior officer. It might be others that would like to comment further. Well, Mr Torr, you wanted to come in first, but who wants to go first? Whichever music you want. I will just add briefly, then, that the inspector at him has local plans very much on our agenda just now. You might have seen in our submission that we have embarked on a series of local area inspections. Those are council-based inspections last month when we were up in Aberdeen. There are two reference documents that we are interested in, fundamentally. One is the fire and rescue framework, which is the Scottish Government's way of describing its expectations on the service, and the other is the local plan. In the next few weeks, you will see a publication from the inspectorate on the city of Aberdeen, which makes explicit comment on the local plan. We will be assessing those as we go round the country this year. Towards the end of the year, we will compile a national overview report, which we are likely to make comment on, and which we hope we will be able to discuss with the committee in due course. The local senior officer is a statutory appointment. We have to appoint a local senior officer, and their role is absolutely to work in partnership with predominant local authority, but also other local partners to produce an agreed local plan that is focused on driving down risk in an appropriate way for that local community. That is the whole purpose behind the local plan. We have got the advantage, being a large national service, that we can draw great economies of scale and great economies of scope, the resources that we have available. However, we have to remember that where we operate day in and day out is at the local fascitation level. It is the difference that we make at a local level that we will really be judged on. Those are extremely important documents for us. We support the local senior officers with the resources that they have in the area, but if there are specific things that they need to address or get involved in, we can flex the organisation that the resources can move in and move out, so that local senior officers understand that. We are coming to the end of the first three years of the service, so we will be looking at this moment in time to revise those documents. All the feedback that we have had today is that they have been valued and useful, but we will not rest on the laurels with them. We need to make sure that they are meaningful at a local level. We have agreed as a Scottish Fire and Rescue Service an engagement framework on how we will engage at all levels, and part of that effective engagement, I will absolutely focus on ensuring that that makes those local plans meaningful and that those local plans make a difference. They have to connect up from us into the wider community planning partnership and that wider single outcome agreement. If we get all those bits right, I think that that is an extremely valuable local guide to how we will deliver services, but it needs to be informed by what the local need is and what the local peoples wants are of their fire and rescue service. It is moving on more generally, two years after the institution of the national fire service for Scotland. If you were asked to sum up where we are now, how would you sum that up briefly? I think that that is a good question for a round-up question at the very end, so I will leave that one for you to do at the very end. If we will just part that and come back with it and let Gillan with a different one. I need to declare an interest here because I am going to talk about my business in not in any detail, but I have got 30 years of experience seeing the aftermath of accidents in garages because we live off somebody else's misery. Unfortunately, we supply into the accident damage industry and we supply the materials to repair the cars and mainly the paint. My question is about training. I know how skilled the rescue service is. It is fantastic. It is miracles that you see, although we have never came in contact with fatalities. We just see what happens. All the cars where people are rescued. I wanted to take you back to the actual impact of the reform and if there were any benefits with regard to the reform in terms of training for those highly skilled people who are involved. Or, indeed, if there is any negative impact in that type of work. If I could open it up and invite the chief officer to come in. One of the benefits of bringing the services together, including the training college, so that there was nine organisations coming together, is that the prior service of Charles Clyde had just opened a state-of-the-art world-class training facility in Canvass line, which is an organisation that we inherited. I would like to make the offer chair if it is not too cheeky, but if the committee at any point wanted to visit our training facility, can I say that you would not feel to be impressed by the type of equipment, the level of training and the quality of the facility that we have in offer. Not only for the fire and rescue services, but we work in partnership with many other emergency services, including police and ambulance. After that, I will pass you over to the chief officer. No, we would like to take up your offer. We are just so much legislation, we would have to squeeze it in a weekend or something, but we will certainly consider it. There is no doubt about that. The quality of the training is one of the key elements in what ensures that firefighters are effective and deliverant to members of the public. If I can just step back slightly, there are 46 different generic types of incidents that firefighters would attend. That is an assessment that has taken place. We have a comprehensive training programme in place here within Scotland, which many colleagues in other parts of the UK are envious often. We are willing to share with them that ensures that firefighters to a national occupational standard are trained to deal effectively with these 46 different types of risk. All those risks are not present in every stations area. Some of the remote rural parts of the country, there is no point in training them in how to deal with trains, high-rise buildings, tunnels, etc. We focus on the needs of the individual firefighters within their station areas and what type of incidents they are likely to attend. We have a comprehensive training programme that ensures that everybody gets that training. On top of that, what we are developing in large parts of the country have this in place, but we will roll it out across the whole of the country, so this is a benefit of reform. There are four key things. One is road traffic collision training. The other is breathing apparatus training. The other one is fire behaviour training. The other one is first person on the scene type first aid. The four key areas, unless you have the right level of training and your refresher training is up to date, you should not be crewing a front-line fire appliance, so we are working very hard to put that into place. That comprehensive, the 46 genetic assessments plus the key areas, the ticket-to-ride things, are extremely important in ensuring the effectiveness of our firefighters. On top of that, and this is another advantage of being a national service, is that we have mapped where all the training facilities are across Scotland. We have mapped them against these generic risks. Within an hour's travel, we will provide facilities so that firefighters can train safely and in a realistic way against each of these generic risks within Scotland. On top of all that, as Pat has just mentioned, we genuinely have a world-class facility here within Scotland at Cambus Lang, and that is a centre of excellence. Firefighters can access this, can use this in various courses, but, more importantly, the staff that support them, the instructors, the trainers, they can go there and they are trained to a levelly excellence that they can then cascade at these local facilities around the country. First of all, thanks for your comments about our firefighters, my members, who are all very professional and very highly motivated, and they like to be professional, and they really like to do a good job and take great pride in that. One of the challenges that we face as a single service is that there were eight different delivery models for delivering training, and I think the challenges still lie and are still trying to be addressed in particularly the more rural areas, particularly H&I, etc. The further rural you go, the more difficult it is to train, particularly our DS staff. Again, we are working with the service to try and address that. However, I think it would be duty-bound to let you know that there are still challenges there, despite some of the best efforts and some of them are again budgetary driven. One of the things that I was involved in was the training structures, the training department, how that was going to be structured, and I think that that will be kept under review, and it will really depend on how well those challenges are met. I think that we will inform that review process, so it is just to keep you sighted on that. There is still a challenge, despite the good work that has been done. I take that on board, but there are challenges there as well. I can bear witness to your members' expertise. It is 30 years of seeing it, but I am interested that we are driving it into local areas. I understand what you are saying. Money is money, and resources are resources. I will give you a practical example of that. We are now working in partnership with Highlands and Islands airports Ltd. We have recently built a realistic fire training facility, so you will see that, if a firefighter opens a door and the air rushes in, the whole thing explodes. How fire behaves in a compartment is one of the most risk-critical parts of a understanding. That is one of the most risk-critical parts of a firefighter's job. We have recently opened a new facility in Dundee, but within this financial year, we will open a new facility in Kirkwall, in Stornoway and in Inverness. You can see by that description that firefighters have been able to access facilities that they have never had before while we are focusing on that. That goes back to the question about the retained firefighters. In areas such as Kirkwall and Stornoway, previously, they would have had to come back on to the mainland, to Inverness or Invergordon to do some of that training. Now they can do it at a local facility, which means that we are not taking them off the islands. It reduces costs, improves firefighter safety and makes the whole proposition more attractive. Name of my question is a wee bit subjective, but do you think that that would have happened without the reform that you have just described? I think that what reform has done has enabled us to take a more strategic view across Scotland. There are no boundaries, so we now have firefighters using facilities that would have been in another services area before. There was no reason why they could not have used them previously, but they did not, and now they do. I think that that is a distinct advantage of reform. Do you want to discuss time-spressing margaret to you? Yes, very briefly. The panel will be aware that there is a lot of anxiety and concern about the closure of some control rooms. Has there ever been an occasion where a control room has been left without 24-hour cover? I am certainly not aware of margaret being there. The only closure that we have had up to now, although we have had more closure plans for later this year, has been the Dumfries and Galloway closure. I was absolutely seamless to the closure. We spoke to not only the personnel in Dumfries and Galloway, but also the personnel in Johnson, where it has been transferred to. We put options down to personally, both myself and the chief and the trade union colleagues. We went down to speak to every individual member of staff when we were leading up to that closure to see what was offered and if they wanted to remain within the service, how we could achieve that. We achieved that in every single case. Some people took the opportunity to take early retirement or voluntary service, but that transfer went absolutely seamless. We ran the tune in conjunction for a period so that we were sure that the thing would work. It was a process that was looked at by Dumfries and Galloway itself probably four years before reform. Dumfries and Galloway looked at marrying the two control rooms through the needs of the service that we have done. There will be other closures and amalgamations later on in the year. The reason for the delay is that we need to upskill and update some of the other control rooms to allow that to happen. That will not happen till after the summer and then we will have a period of absolute test that is to destruction before we make the transfer. No one in the panel is aware of the Johnson control room being without 24-hour care emergency cover or cover for a period of seven days. That was never the case. That is it. Thank you very much for your evidence. Oh, I beg your pardon. I am so sorry the grand finale. Your question. You can all remember my question. Basically, two years along the line, if you were summing up where we are with the national fire service, I would just sum it up briefly. All right. I will start with Mr Hay. I don't want to break the harmony. There have been teething troubles. That goes without saying. It has been quite a challenging process for us, especially when you are talking about closing control rooms. That is our members' jobs who have been, despite the voluntary service at the time, etc. That has been probably one of the biggest challenges for us. Another big challenge is the restructure of the officers, the flexi duty system. That has been quite problematic for our officers, changing workloads, increasing workloads. Again, that has been another pinch point. I will give you the bad news, as the chief can give you the good news. That has been another challenge for us. I will give you some good news. I think that there are benefits to come. I think that some of them are still some way off, but I will finish on the note that I started in my submission that we are extremely concerned about the cut to the fire service budget. We believe that, if that continues, you will not have the front-line service and there will be reduction in the front-line, not only numbers but outcomes, as is described. I did say in my submission that the first aim of reform is to protect and improve local services despite financial cuts by stopping duplication and not cutting front-line outcomes. The duplication has stopped and yet the cuts keep coming. That means that, at some point, I believe that there will be a reduction in front-line outcomes. On that note, I will leave it, but I think that that is important for you to hear. Of course. I would be remiss if I may not have to say that. No, absolutely. You are speaking for your members and that is absolutely appropriate. Mr Torrey. I had a conversation with a colleague this morning, which really gets to the heart of that question. I will give you that. We were reflecting on the last two years of reform, the reduction in money that is available to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Mr Hayes said, I think, £48.1 million has been taken out of the system. Of course, the committee knows that that is the reality for the public sector in general, so the service has been experiencing reduced budgets in line with the whole of the Scottish public sector. The conversation this morning was if reform hadn't happened, what would the position have been? So, if we were in a position where there were eight fire and rescue services in a college, trying to find nearly £50 million of savings over the last two years, what would the situation have been? My judgment is that we would have been in a far, far worse position than we are now in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has done. It is a pretty remarkable job actually in bringing that in, maintaining business as usual, and making progress. Mr Waters. I mean, certainly echoing some of the points that the inspector has made there, I think the opportunity to look at the service as a whole right throughout Scotland has been a valuable lesson for us in how we take it forward. I think probably working with, even with the caveats that was laid down, the opportunity to work with colleagues in the trade union to ensure that what we are doing, the working partnership, to actually deliver an improvement to the outcomes for the people of Scotland has been an example of how it can be done. I think that that is something that we can learn from going forward. However, the really short answer to your question is that, yes, we still have work to do. Yes, there are still going to be challenges, but right now we are in a good place. Mr Hay. I think that the challenge that was set for us by the Scottish Government in this reform process, first and foremost, was to protect front line and to continue to improve front line outcomes. There were 356 far stations in Scotland prior to reform. There are still 356 far stations in Scotland, and it will be at the end of this financial year, that sort of reform period. In terms of the outcomes improving every single target that the Government has set us, we are either hitting it or we are moving in a positive direction towards it. The second thing that they asked us to do was to make sure that across Scotland we gave people more equitable access to some of the specialist resources that were asked about here today. We have delivered a plan to do that and we have already started implementing that plan. That is something that we are delivering in terms of the benefits of reform. The final thing is that connection with local communities, making sure that it is a national service. Yes, we deliver economies of scale, we deliver economies of scope, but we are meaningful at a local level. I think that through that network of far stations, articulated within those local plans, we have strong evidence that we are doing that. We are being more effective and more efficient because we have reduced our cost base by nearly £50 million. There are challenges ahead, and our staff are the key, but I would certainly say that that has been a success. You do not have a supplementary. I do not want to upset you. I thank you very much for your evidence. You have also reminded us and the public of the diversity of the rescue part of the fire and rescue service. I also see that we very much recognise the work of front-line services in fire and rescue road traffic and all the work that you do in the rescue service throughout Scotland. Thank you very much for your evidence.