Managing Risks in Northern Ireland's Fire and Rescue Service
Author:
Daisy Downes
In 2002, the Government began a Review of Public Administration in Northern Ireland. The RPA was wide-ranging and in March 2006 final decisions were set out in a document entitled ‘Better Government for Northern Ireland’. Tthe existing 26 local councils will be amalgamated into 7 ‘super’ councils, 18 Trusts are to be amalgamated into 5, 1 Health Authority will replace 4 Health boards, and 1 Education Authority will replace the 5 Education boards, the remaining 81 public bodies are to be reduced to 54. Change on this scale inevitably brings anxiety as well as opportunity. In a wide ranging interview with Accountancy Ireland, John McVeigh discussed some key issues.
John McVeigh is Head of Internal Audit with Northern Ireland’s Fire and Rescue Service. A Chartered Accountant, he says that while most people in business, and in the community, are in favour of the devolution of power from ‘the mainland’ to local government, there are none the less concerns about the potential impact of rationalisation.
“Changes on the way in relation to funding would probably be the major concern for most people. Another worry would be about the potential outsourcing of functions like accounting and HR to the private sector because powers are being transferred to the new super councils”, John explained.
The flip side of that is that the bigger councils will have bigger budgets and will be quite high profile and that is likely to mean more jobs for qualified accountants. These super councils will have responsibility for roads, fire, housing and so on.
“There are opportunities as well as challenges there for those of us who work in the public sector. In the recent past there were some examples of unqualified personnel having accounting responsibility for large budgets.We only moved to accruals based accounting in the public sector in the last three to five years. While central government would traditionally have been well managed, there were problems at the local level with fairly widespread lack of awareness of the importance of good audit and good governance.
“Today there is a growing realisation that senior roles - especially financial roles require financial expertise. There is also more guidance from central government so that we now have codes of governance and so on. That has resulted in a growth in opportunities for qualified accountants,” John explained.
A graduate of Queens University, John McVeigh took the Diploma in Accounting in 1994 and trained with Deloitte & Touche in Belfast. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1997 and then spent a year in London where he was seconded to the Personal Investment Authority (PIA) which, at that time, was investigating the mis-selling of pensions. On his return to Belfast, he was seconded to the Department of Health where, at that time, under the Belfast Agreement, a Public Safety Unit had been created. In 1999 he was appointed to head up Internal Audit with the Fire Authority. He set up the Internal Audit Department from scratch and now has a team of three.
The Fire & Rescue Service is a non-departmental public body that comes under the Department of Health. Its funding is drawn from central government. Currently, about Stg£60m of public money funds the fire service in Northern Ireland.
John describes his role as varied and says that since he joined the Authority he has never seriously considered working anywhere else.
“Increasingly as you move up in the organisation you are involved in decision making. That makes the role a lot more interesting,” he says.
Day to day, his concerns, in common with internal auditors throughout the public sector, focus on performance indicators, verification, project assurance, corporate governance and risk management.
Having set up the internal audit function from scratch, I asked him about the kind of framework he has created.
“We have a robust corporate governance structure already in place with Audit Committee that is chaired by an ex-accountancy firm partner. There is also a remuneration committee. We have compiled a risk register and have put in place management assurance statements. Now, we produce monthly management reports of the top 10 risks,” John explained.
“We have benefited from good support from the Department of Health in training and risk management and so on. We get substantial guidance from the Department and we are keen to make sure that we hit the ground running.”
In the Republic of Ireland, anecdotal evidence suggests that it is difficult to attract good candidates to public sector roles where salary levels do not compare favourably with the private sector. I asked John if Northern Ireland experiences the same problem.
“It is true that there is a disparity between salaries in the public and private sector but you have to look at other factors. Pensions, for example, are very attractive in the public sector where generous defined benefit schemes are still the norm. That is an issue that is coming into focus. In my experience, we are seeing more and more qualified people joining the public service here. In fact, the profession has recently set up a public sector focus group that grew out of the Chartered Accountants in Business group. The first public sector seminar that we held was packed. We have a series of lunch time briefings where we look at topics like corporate governance and risk management and those are very popular too. People are glad to have an opportunity to network and discuss common issues and concerns. It is very useful for people working in internal audit functions like ourselves.”
In common with most Internal Auditors, John McVeigh spends a lot of his time these days thinking about risk management. He says that the events of September 11th have resulted in a change in the way emergency services like the Northern Ireland fire authority plan to manage major incidents.
“9/11 was a good example of how old ideas about risk planning can be changed in an instant by unforeseen events. Prior to 9/11 standard operating procedure would have been to place Command and Control as near as possible to the incident location. Tragically this led to many New York fire department personnel being caught up in the collapsed World Trade Centre. Now a risk management analysis must be carried out prior to location of the command post.”
“Today, we prioritise life over property. Services are being planned for where people are rather than where the buildings are. On a practical level that means that we are looking at deploying more resources in suburban areas at night rather than concentrating everything in the city centres,” John explained.
More than most places, Northern Ireland has had to develop expertise in the management of major incidents. In fact, one of Mr McVeigh’s colleagues from the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue was in the United States at the time of 9/11 and was able to provide some expertise in the search for survivors trapped under debris.
In the wake of 9/11 “new dimensions” is the term used to describe, amongst others, the threats from terrorism.
Fire authorities throughout the UK are very much focused on integrated risk management planning (IRMP). Essentially IRMP is about improving public safety, reducing the number of fire incidents and saving lives. In the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service, responsibility for IRMP falls partly within John’s remit in that Internal Audit is responsible for testing response planning for new dimension threats and for quality assuring the processes.
“In our own Authority, ‘new dimensions’ is about managing the new risks being faced by the fire service. It affects how many personnel we deploy, where we deploy them, how we respond to incidents. It is not so much the risk of a major terrorist attack - although of course that is something that we have to plan for - it is a major road incidents that are at the top of our list. Under the IRMP framework we link the management of risk to key performance indicators. In the fire authority response time would be one of those KPIs. Generally we respond faster than the ambulance service which means we are the ‘first responder’. IRMP identifies the risks and plans the appropriate response actions. For example, if an airliner crashed, or toxic substances were deployed in the Odyssey stadium, we have to make sure that we have the best strategies in place to manage our response to the incident,” he explained. In light of recent reports of fire fighters coming under attack when they go out to deal with incidents, I asked John how his organisation responds to that kind of threat.
“Working with local communities is a key part of our strategy. We are making strong outreach efforts to take the heat out of the situation. At the high level, for example, we ran a media campaign recently that showed the impact of an attack on a fire officer. At the local level community fire safety officers visit schools in areas where there have been attacks. We even had a program that involved input from young offenders who had been involved in arson attacks. Essentially it is about breaking down barriers,” John said .
Cross border cooperation
The week that this interview took place, Northern firefighters joined firefighters from the Republic of Ireland to tackle a major fire at a crossborder farm near Dundalk. Asked how such cooperation operates, John said: “Northern Ireland has an agreement with the border counties and turns out for fires in Donegal, for example. It is a pragmatic thing where we would be the quickest responder. But cross border co-operation can give rise to control
issues. One of the key issues for emergency services like ours is command and control.”
“We are very keen to share our expertise where we can and have done so, for example, at the Command and Control school for Senior Officers. We are sharing our expertise with our colleagues in the Republic of Ireland.”
At the higher level, in terms of the formal structures, the Northern Ireland Fire Authority has historically been treated differently to other regions in the UK where most fire services are regulated through local rather than central government. In Northern Ireland, the fire authority was centrally controlled.
“Central government is looking to roll out regionalisation and is trying to rationalise the service with more regional focus. For obvious geographic reasons - Northern Ireland has to be treated as a region on its own because unlike other regions in the UK, we can’t draw on a neighbouring region for assistance or back up. We have to be equipped to deal, on our own, with a major incident. In practical terms, partly because we are a separate region, and partly because of the history of this part of the world where we have had to have the capacity to deal with major incidents we are in a position to offer substantial support. So if a major fire breaks out in Donegal, for example, that’s what we do.”
For John and his colleagues, one of the benefits of devolving management of the Fire & Rescue Service will be greater community involvement. If there are challenges ahead, John is eager to meet them and in his own words, he’ll be making sure to “hit the ground running”.