New Dimension – enhancing the Fire and Rescue Services’ capacity to respond to terrorist and other large-scale incidents

Executive Summary

National Audit Office Value for Money Report

1. The New Dimension programme (“the Programme”) was established following the terrorist attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001. The programme now aims to enhance the capacity of Fire and Rescue Services in England to rapidly, effectively and flexibly tackle the consequences of terrorist and other large-scale catastrophic incidents, such as flooding, by: providing appropriate specialist vehicles and equipment; funding training for firefighters to use the new equipment; and supporting planning for deployment of the equipment in the case of an emergency. The Department for Communities and Local Government (the Department) has committed £330 million to the programme. A timeline of significant events can be found on Figure 2 in Recommendations.
   
2. This report examines how efficiently and effectively the Department has enhanced the Fire and Rescue Services’ capacity through programme management and procurement of specialist equipment; training of firefighters; and supporting Fire and Rescue Services’ preparedness to tackle major terrorist or other large-scale incidents.
3. Our methods include: a census of all Fire and Rescue Services in England; visits to Fire and Rescue Services; Departmental interviews and document review; individual procurement case studies; financial management review and use of consultants to examine emergency planning. Further details can be found at Appendix 1.
   
   

   Key findings

   
   On procurement of the equipment

   
   
4. The Department has procured and rolled out high specification equipment which has proved useful and popular with firefighters. This has been achieved despite some early firefighter misgivings about the programme. Capacity to respond to major emergencies has been much enhanced as a result. The High Volume Pumps enabled the fire at the Buncefield oil depot in December 2005 to be put out more quickly, and their use during the summer 2007 floods reduced the amount of damage, allowed a major power station to maintain electricity supply, and eased the burden on other emergency services. New vehicles which aid in the Detection, Identification and Monitoring of dangerous substances have resolved contamination alarms quickly and effectively saving time and resources. Figure 1 summarises capacity before and after the New Dimension programme.
   
   Figure 1 ("Fire and Rescue Services' capacity before and after the programme") is unavailable in this version of the executive summary.
   
   
5. The decision to purchase New Dimension equipment centrally was novel. Until then the Department itself had not procured equipment for all the Fire and Rescue Services: indeed central Government had no role – and no statutory power – to purchase equipment on behalf of Fire and Rescue Services. The Department involved the user community to provide expertise throughout the programme in order that the new equipment should meet the user requirement and be well embedded.
6. Funding uncertainty delayed the programme. The original proposal to enhance Fire and Rescue Services capabilities was made in December 2001, with a completion date of early 2003. But securing funding for all key elements took at least 18 months, and most of the new vehicles and equipment were not rolled out until 2005 and beyond.
7. The programme, which comprised 14 projects by 2003, had no clear plan of deliverables or milestones and progress relied more on the enthusiasm, commitment and hard work of the project teams than coherent programme management. In 2004 the Department brought in Serco consultancy to strengthen the programme’s management. Serco helped the Department streamline the projects into six work streams, establish clearer governance arrangements, and introduce better risk management and project management. By early 2005 a coherent overarching implementation plan was in place.
8. Early delays and weak management impacted on delivery, and value for money has been difficult to demonstrate in some individual procurements. Support functions such as Logistics and Command and Control were only properly developed after most equipment had been rolled out, and fire stations were not ready to receive vehicles and equipment. Some important equipment and vehicle procurements were also affected. For example Prime Movers, which are the trucks that transport New Dimension equipment to the scene of incidents, were delivered late with unnecessary costs of between £3.2 and £7.78 million, or over 20 per cent, due to over-ordering and poor record keeping and contracting. 
9. The Department relied more on consultants than it originally envisaged. The original contract provided that consultants would set up the programme office and work on a ‘call off’ basis mostly to train internal staff. In practice many consultants have worked full time for over four years. This dependence on consultants was costly however, with many charging on average over £1,000 a day, compared to the average cost stated in the contract of £500 a day. The Department did not conduct any systematic evaluation to measure the value for money of the consultants’ performance, but instead appraised consultants individually.
10. Financial management was weak, although it did improve after 2005. Financial controls, reporting and use of financial information have all been poor, especially in the early years of the programme. Between January and June 2004, one employee working as a management accountant defrauded the programme of £867,200. There has been improvement since 2005, although more could have been done after this date to use accurate financial information to inform programme and project decision making.
    
    

    On training

    
    
11. Sufficient firefighters have been trained for all equipment types except the Detection, Identification and Monitoring capability. Many firefighters have had to learn new skills, fire stations have been adapted physically to accommodate the new vehicles, and senior managers have made organisational changes to adopt the enhanced role. The Department has provided funding for training and some crewing, to build training rigs, and has organised an extended range of courses at the Fire Service College and elsewhere.
12. Some risks remain, however, in terms of quality and maintenance of sufficient skills. There is limited assessment of skills levels both during training courses and afterwards at Fire and Rescue Services, where regular monitoring of skill levels varies. Maintaining skills is expensive, especially where retained firefighters are used. Lessons learnt at the few exercises at regional and national level could be more systematically disseminated. Fire Service College capability to provide the training necessary to reduce these risks could be enhanced.
    
    

    On use of the equipment

    
    
13. New Dimension equipment has improved the quality of Fire and Rescue Services’ response to recent major incidents. High Volume Pumps enabled the fire at the Buncefield oil depot in December 2005 to be put out more quickly, and their use during the summer 2007 floods reduced the amount of damage and eased the burden on other emergency services. New vehicles which aid in the Detection, Identification and Monitoring of dangerous substances have resolved contamination alarms quickly and effectively, saving time and resources. Actual events and major exercises amongst other evidence have shown that in most cases response requirements can be met. But the Department has not undertaken a comprehensive modelling exercise to test this responsiveness. For example if in the 2007 summer floods, Yorkshire and the West Country had flooded simultaneously rather than in successive months, 76 High Volume Pumps might have been needed, 26 more than are currently available in England and Wales. 
14. The Department has enhanced national command and control for New Dimension equipment deployment, by setting up a National Coordination Centre in West Yorkshire, developing the role of the new Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser to manage emergencies, and procuring enhanced communication vehicles for use at incidents. Some Fire and Rescue Service staff are not convinced, however, of the usefulness of the new Coordination Centre, and are unclear about the role of the Adviser. The procurement of Enhanced Command Support vehicles is running late and the vehicles are yet to be deployed. 
15. Major emergency response capacity varies across Fire and Rescue Services. The Department does not expect to anticipate and fund all needs assessed locally, and New Dimension is primarily for major national incidents. Fire and Rescue Services commit different levels of resources to local major emergency needs, thus leading to some differences in capacity across the country. Mutual aid agreements between Fire and Rescue Services aim to mitigate these differences. 
16. Emergency planning, especially on a regional scale, is undeveloped with New Dimension equipment not yet reflected in Fire and Rescue Services’ major incident and site specific plans. The Department can do more in providing technical upgrades and guidance to enable better planning at the regional level within Fire and Rescue Services. National scale multi-agency exercises are few and far between (between one and two per year) and many Fire and Rescue Services find such exercises both too expensive and time consuming.
    
    

    Conclusion on Value for Money

     
    
17. The New Dimension programme has enhanced the Fire and Rescue Services’ capacity to respond to terrorist and other large-scale emergency events, and has already contributed significantly to the handling of a number of major incidents. On the whole sufficient firefighters are fully trained to operate the equipment, although there are some concerns about maintaining skill levels. There is sufficient equipment, allocated to appropriate locations, to tackle effectively the majority of major incidents the programme was designed to tackle. Some weaknesses remain however, for example in Command and Control arrangements and major emergency planning, which currently prevent even greater effectiveness being achieved. And the Department could do more to quantify the extent of any gaps in response that still exist. 
18. Procuring a wide range of complicated equipment and vehicles despite having little prior procurement experience is an achievement for the Department. However a combination of funding uncertainty, a lack of programme and project management in the early days, and generally poor financial management has led to late and, in some cases, unnecessarily costly procurement. The Department did address many of its management weaknesses by bringing in consultants and other trained staff, although at greater cost than originally planned, and some weaknesses have remained.

Recommendations 

1. The Department needs to learn lessons from the procurement of New Dimension equipment:
   1. There has been significant risk to value for money from some poor programme, project and financial management with a consequent lack of financial discipline. Both avoidable costs and delays have been incurred.
      
      • Programme management techniques should be embedded from the outset, including: clear objectives, a detailed implementation plan, proper whole life cost budgets, the use of milestones and sound monitoring arrangements.
      • Project managers should be trained and well supported by suitably qualified financial staff. They should also carry out competitive tendering unless there are exceptional reasons not to do so. Both appropriate indicators for assessing performance in contracts and penalties for inadequate performance should also be specified.
        
      • Strong financial control, such as supervision, authorisation and separation of duties controls, should be installed.
   2. Consultants have been more costly than expected and there is a lack of benchmarks for judging whether spending on their services has been good value for money.
      
      • When employing consultants to work in programme and project management, evaluative mechanisms, such as Service Level Agreements and Key Performance Indicators, should be established from the outset to assess performance and value for money.

   Figure 2 ("New Dimension Timeline") is unavailable in this version of the executive summary.
    

2. The Department needs to maximise the operational effectiveness of the New Dimension programme:
   
   1. With Fire and Rescue Services facing increasing costs and competing demands for funding priorities, firefighters’ New Dimension skills may not be maintained to adequate standards.
      
      • In carrying out its assurance work, the New Dimension National Team should assess training and crewing against the Department’s model requirements regularly, and also work with the Fire Service College to better utilise New Dimension facilities, for example by providing more flexibility in scheduling of courses.
      • The paucity of large scale exercising should be addressed by developing a strategy for national and regional scale multi-agency practice exercises.
        
      • To make the most of existing knowledge, the Department should consider ways, for example by developing an interactive online portal, for sharing of lessons learned from exercises, use of equipment and other good practice.
      
      
   2. There are some weaknesses in operational arrangements which hamper the maximisation of New Dimension effectiveness. The main areas of concern are Command and Control and major emergency planning.
      
      • Local commanders need to know what to deploy, how to deploy it and to understand their powers. The Department should address any uncertainties with regard to National Coordination arrangements, by setting out clear frameworks with respective roles and responsibilities of the Fire and Rescue Service National Coordination Centre and the Communities and Local Government (CLG) Emergency Room, and make this widely available.
      
      
      
   3. The Department should ensure response documents are fit for purpose.
      
      • The Department should systematically identify the gaps between actual and their desired Fire and Rescue Service capability. They should update agreed response documents in the light of the most recent assessments of risk and the experience of responding to actual incidents. Data available nationally regarding major incident risks should be translated into a practical form to inform Fire and Rescue Services’ planning.
        
      • The Department should also develop and promulgate standard operating procedures for Urban Search and Rescue, High Volume Pumps and Detection, Identification and Monitoring vehicles where these are not already in place.