Evaluation of police and fire reform year 4: international perspectives

11 Fire: Learning from international perspectives

Key findings: Learning from international perspectives

• Communicate honestly with both staff and external stakeholders about reform (e.g. the reasons for reform, the outcomes being sought) and meaningfully engage with them from the beginning of, and throughout, the change process.
• To remain relevant the fire service needs to evolve beyond the firefighting role, to include wider activities such as prevention and safety. Culture needs to change to accept this which can begin with new recruits but also needs to embrace existing firefighters.
• Give space and responsibility to local stations and have faith and trust in local personnel.

Keep focused on what you’re trying to achieve with reform for your service and country and do not get distracted, always keep looking to the end outcomes.

This report has explored the role of firefighters internationally and the impact of the changing role of the firefighter, changes in partnership working, the move towards more prevention working and relationships with the local community. 

This chapter draws together the wider lessons learned from the West Midlands in England, the Netherlands, Alberta in Canada and New Zealand, as well as the advice that the interviewees would give to other countries experiencing organisational change. 

It should be noted that the international case studies had differing experiences of organisational change with the Netherlands and New Zealand both undergoing structural reform. However, each of the case studies had experienced a widening of the role of the firefighters. It is these experiences which will be drawn on in this chapter.

11.1 Prioritise communication

The need to communicate effectively with both staff and external stakeholders was a common theme in all four international case studies. 

Become a listening organisation: It was viewed as important to communicate effectively both internally with staff but also with external stakeholders. It was seen as key to engage with stakeholders, including the community, early in the change process. In New Zealand there is a view that they have “often only given lip service to consultation or actual discussion with the community” (Interviewee: New Zealand). 

Have open and honest communication: It is seen as important to have a clear strategy and to communicate this effectively. It is important to be honest with key stakeholders and the community about what you can achieve, particularly when undergoing change, this includes being honest about response times.

Create internal belief in the need for change: Communicating with staff so that they understand the change that is happening and taking them with you on the journey of reform is identified as a key piece of advice. Central to this is ‘creating the internal belief of a need for change’.

Include firefighters in decision-making: In the Netherlands, there is a view that firefighters should be involved in policy decisions. It is identified that there is a distance between management and firefighters. But, it is believed that firefighters should be included in policy decisions and that even when a service has reformed there should be less of a gap between management and staff. 

11.2 Remain relevant 

Think beyond the firefighting role: Due to the nature of the firefighting role widening over the last 10 years, particularly with the decrease in fires, these international case studies have shown that for the fire service to remain relevant there is a need to think beyond the firefighting role, potentially to prevention and safety. In the West Midlands, it is acknowledged that the fire service has much to offer in terms of the wider public service agenda, and the fire service needs to drive this forward and evolve as a service. 

“That is definitely something that I have awoken to certainly in the past 5 years. We will not remain as we are. We’ll not exist as we are in 10 years’ time, so we need to kinda keep up with the times I suppose, and evolve as other services are, and that means evolving outside of what the traditional role of the service and a firefighter is….And we have so much to offer as a Fire Service as well, but no one can see that unless we push it forward.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

Establish the mind-set at recruitment: Fire services have faced challenges in changing the culture of the fire service to embrace the changing role, given that many firefighters join to fight fires. There is a suggestion that this widening role needs to be established during recruitment when potential firefighters need to be made aware of the range of different activities that they will be asked to carry out. In Alberta, they are trying to break some of the cycles by providing community safety training, including diversity and inclusion, during their basic recruitment training.

Accept change: With the widening role of firefighters, there is a view in the West Midlands that reform is necessary and inevitable and that if they do not reform, the service will “go out of existence". As part of this process, people in the fire service must be willing to accept change rather than trying to stop it. 

“I would definitely say that you can’t control the pace of change, that’s one thing we’ve learnt. You have to…be willing to accept that change is happening and try and lead and guide that change rather than stopping it. Reform is coming, it has to come, it is happening.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

11.3 Develop staff skills 

Draw on knowledge within the organisation: In New Zealand it has been identified that specialists have been brought in to help with the change programme, but they believe they have missed some opportunities to learn from existing knowledge and information in the organisation. A view from the Netherlands was that it is important to trust staff at the local level and that it is important to give space and responsibility to local stations and to have faith and trust in local personnel.

Educating leadership: It was suggested that the key to a successful future within the fire service, is providing education to the leadership including up and coming leaders as well as existing leaders.

11.4 Be outcome focused

Focus on end outcomes: Keep focused on what you’re trying to achieve with reform for your service and country and do not get distracted, always keep looking to the end outcomes.

Improve evaluation: A challenge which has been identified is a lack of evaluation on the impact of reform and how to do it. In the West Midlands, case studies in partnership working and prevention have been collated, however, very few of them have had a “robust evaluation methodology attached to them”. It is viewed that the evaluations are descriptive when they need to be more analytical to better understand impact and outcomes.