Avon fire boss vows to improve diversity

The man in charge of Avon Fire and Rescue Service has vowed to boost the number of women, black people and ethnic minorities (BME) in its ranks following a damning government inspection.

Chief fire officer Mick Crennell made the pledge as the service is finalising exactly how it will address “serious critical failings” highlighted in the report in December, which found employees were “humiliated” and “undervalued”.

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services said Avon was inadequate — the worst rating — at “promoting the right values and culture” and an “unprecedented number of staff” wanted to speak privately about how they were treated.

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Personnel were “humiliated by their peers” and “made to feel excluded if they spoke up about problems”, while women were “inappropriately treated”, the inspection found.

Its report added: “The service’s diversity does not match that of its communities. We found evidence that staff do not understand diversity.

“The service does not have support networks in place for staff from minority groups.”

The inspectorate gave the fire service 56 days to submit a full action plan detailing what it will do to tackle the failings, setting a March 12 deadline.

Chief fire officer Mick Crennell has pledged to improve representation in the service

Crennell told a meeting of Avon Fire Authority on February 13 they had a lot of work to do to change the service’s culture but that, while it would not happen overnight, fire chiefs had been “on the case” long before December’s shocking findings.

He said: “The wellbeing of our staff is paramount to us moving forward.

“It is an issue that we need to clearly deal with and we’re on the case with that.

“We’re under no illusion as to the size of what we need to achieve. We started this journey a long time ago.

“For each of the areas in the report identified for improvement, we will detail what we’re going to do, when we’re going to do it, how we’re going to do it, why we’re going to do it and who’s going to be responsible.”

Crennell said after a decade-long recruitment freeze of wholetime firefighters, 30 had been taken on in the past two years, with three of the 14 new recruits in the 2017 “cohort” being women and three black and minority ethnic.

Of the 16 new crew members employed in 2018, four were women and three BME.

“We’ve had good inclusion of diversity within those two cohorts and we will continue to do so,” he said.

Assistant chief fire officer Simon Shilton said 54 of the original 900 applicants to join the service on the frontline in 2019 currently remained in the selection process, of which 16 would be successful and begin work in May.

Twelve of those are female and six are of BME backgrounds, he said.

Shilton told members: “That’s been constant through at every single stage.

“We have put a lot of efforts into increasing our diversity, with lots of engagement.

“We haven’t seen a huge increase in the numbers of people but the percentage is relatively stable.

“But we’re getting better equality of applicants through which is giving us a better opportunity, at the end result, to have increased diversity, so we’re seeing some benefits there.

“It’s not the finished article and we’ve got more work to do.”

He said the next crop of full time firefighters would be recruited in early 2020/21.

“So that gives us this year and some of next year to really start engaging with the different communities in raising the profile of the fire service,” Shilton said.

He added 95 per cent of staff had completed the existing diversity training, which was now being improved to address the inspectorate’s concerns.

“We are revising that training package and relaunching it as it hasn’t been revised for quite a period of time.

“Our realistic time frame is within a 12-month period to get everyone through that training.”

But authority member Councillor Ian Scott said: “That’s 95 per cent of staff who have done the existing training.

“If that training was sufficient, we wouldn’t be in this position.”

The full action plan will be presented to members for approval before the March 12 deadline.

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