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The Beginning of the End of DCP


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Apologies keith, i meant H&Ws FBU. Like i said there was token resistance when Bromsgrove was introduced. Soon after Worcester and Hereford were introduced and there wasnt even a murmur because the year before those second trucks were at risk of going retained, it was more of a scrabble for firefighters to get onto the shift system

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On 10/02/2019 at 10:46, Messyshaw said:

It is voluntary at present and individuals  can earn extra cash whilst the taxpayer saves cash as it's cheaper than whole time.

It looks like a win/win situation but I have two concerns;

1. Is a simple H&S and welfare one. The WTRs are there to protect workers wellbeing and rights. Opting out doesn't seem very forward thinking to me, in fact it seems a retrograde step.

2. Whilst it voluntary now, officially opt out and you may see a tsunami of DCP be introduced by cash strapped fire authorities. In time, the Govt will  want to know why station 99 is not DCP despite it not reaching a threshold of annual calls. Compulsory DCP postings would surely follow. That is not great news.

There's too much grab it while you can mentality. While some will love this extra hours and extra cash, it's worth looking at where it could go. IMHO, it could undo decades of improved conditions of service.

Am I the peddler of project fear, or just pragmatically cynical and forward facing? Only time will tell

 

Messy - in order to work OT by rights everyone needs to sign an ‘opt out’ of the WTR.

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Maybe needs to be a separate thread, but where does this leave the future of Day Crewing?

If the glut of retirements happen as forecast, it's going to be quite hard to recruit for people to fill day crewing spots on our service. 

How many Brigades still provide housing for their DC?

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We don’t provide housing for day crewing as it’s not required for pure day crewing, are you talking where the pump is crewed outside daytime hours ?

To get recruitment for day crewed it’s becoming more wide spread for any new joiners to go to those stations(normally specified in job advert as they will serve on whatever crewing pattern the service needs ) 

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I was thinking more the set up where crews are on station during the day and then delayed response from home at night (as opposed to just doing the days and retained covering the rest like Walton and Haslemere in Surrey) 

Kent, Sussex and Essex have that system and I think it's pretty common in other county services. But it's predicated on people being able to live nearby, and with the brigade housing being sold off it's become a recruitment pickle. 

Day Crewing was supposed to be cheaper due to the smaller establishment, but if you can't get the housing, some might be forced to become shift. 

 

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H&W went that route as well with three stations, only one had a problem with people living in the area so an office in the yard was converted into accomodation, no housing for the other stations. Problem is that some of the day crewed firefighters were on the original contract so would have to turn in after hours. But the stations were made retained at night so when a single pump shout comes in you might have 15 people coming in which starts to mount up as two of the stations are still quite busy

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10 hours ago, OscarTango said:

Kent, Sussex and Essex have that system and I think it's pretty common in other county services. But it's predicated on people being able to live nearby, and with the brigade housing being sold off it's become a recruitment pickle. 

Essex are converting all 5 of their day-crewed stations to RDS.  The housing has been / is being sold off.  The process is running behind schedule and possibly hasn’t run as smoothly as the powers that be had hoped.  Recruitment of RDS has proved challenging and there have been other issues too.  Several of the stations are now RDS officially but are still supported with additional resources.  The process hasn’t been universally popular with other RDS stations either as the converting stations appear to be getting an awful lot of recruitment support that isn’t available elsewhere.

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How do you start up a RDS station? 

With everyone living local and having other jobs, unless you have full time or retired FFs living nearby, wouldn't it mean everyone is brand new - so trainee- on their first day, including the officers?

Sorry if it's a naive question but I haven't had any experience working with RDS other than operationally during over the border shouts 

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TandA is the man in the know as he mentioned summat on the old forum from Essex but the timescales are roughly 2 years plus to start up a station from scratch with no crew. You could possibly second operational staff for daytime cover in a JO/driver role though

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6 hours ago, Messyshaw said:

How do you start up a RDS station? 

With everyone living local and having other jobs, unless you have full time or retired FFs living nearby, wouldn't it mean everyone is brand new - so trainee- on their first day, including the officers?

Sorry if it's a naive question but I haven't had any experience working with RDS other than operationally during over the border shouts 

That was the way it was originally done in the late 1940s early 1950s when numerous whole stations were set up from scratch. Our station watch room logs go back to day 1 of the crew being trained with two drill sessions most weeks and it took exactly 9 months in 1952/3 before the station went live.  From what I can tell they were then backed up on every call they attended for the next couple of years until an officer had been identified and trained.

More recently, Essex have converted a number of WT and DC stations to RDS in the last 15 years. They have all relied on some level of help from existing staff. When Ongar went from WT to RDS, they offered relocation packages to two experienced RDS officers on other stations who wanted to move to the area.   With the current conversion of day-crewed stations to RDS they have relied, and still do, on the existing day crew to support the transition, a reducing number being offered packages to drive / ride oic for the RDS pump until the new RDS crew gain the necessary experience and skill set.  In both cases, as with any RDS stations, they will recruit WT who live in the area to ride RDS if they apply.  We also use a small number of day duty staff who maintain operational competencies so that they can work out of key RDS stations to provide driver / officer cover when needed.

Experience of about 8 pumps / stations in Essex converting to RDS in my time in the service says that you won’t complete the process in anything like 2 years, more realistically you are looking at nearer 5 to get a fully functioning RDS crew up and running. Let’s face it, it takes an absolute minimum of 30 months to get to a competent phase 3 firefighter now.

None of these examples were truly new stations, all existed in a different duty system prior to becoming RDS.  The only totally new station that I am aware of in recent years was down in the Shropshire or Herefordshire area somewhere.  I think it was across the border from Tenbury Wells,  would it have been Whitchurch?  I have no idea how they went about setting that up from nothing.

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I recall meeting the Station Commander from Fort William in the  mid 1990s (it was Highland and Islands FRS then) on a Fire Investigation Course at Moreton. His patch was bigger than my entire Brigade and included a number of retained and volunteer stations in the Highlands. He was in the fire service but his work was poles apart from my role in London

We has a beer one evening (yes, what a shock!) and he mentioned a Training Sub O (I am not sure if it was him) who was summoned to speak with a Senior Officer. He was given a truck containing basic firefighting equipment and a shed on the back and towing a trailer pump.

His task was to drive to an island where there was no fire cover. Go to the main town, recruit and train a volunteer crew - some of whom must have a tractor or Land Rover with a tow bar -then build the shed for the trailer pump and only when the station was on the run, come home.

OK it could always be a complete load of bullshit, but it was early on in the evening so maybe not. But what a job/project eh?   😳

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Drifting way off topic here, but that Sounds plausible, if slightly exaggerated for effect, for one of the Community Response Units that are unique to Scotland.  There were lots of them in the old HIFB iirc, crewed by volunteers. The equipment was very basic, pretty much a shed, a trailer, standpipe and hose, and very definitely for first aid firefighting only.  If my memory serves me right, when SFRS came into being from the old brigades, it reviewed this provision resulting in some closures, some upgrades to full RDS units and revamps of facilities for others.  There are a few upgraded CRUs left in places like Spean Bridge and Lybster.  

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There have been a few new RDS stations created what has happened some Wholetime staff have been assigned there to help out but for several months the RDS were turned out to shadow other other stations to gain experience but never on their own.

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Getting back on topic, as this thread is nearly two years old, have any services still got DCP in any kind of form? In H&W its long gone but i think its still in play over in Warwickshire in some form

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21 hours ago, Messyshaw said:

 He was given a truck containing basic firefighting equipment and a shed on the back and towing a trailer pump.

OK it could always be a complete load of bullshit, but it was early on in the evening so maybe not. But what a job/project eh?   😳

In the 1970s/80s the small north Wales village of Caerwys had a unofficial volunteer fire brigade and may still have. Created by a "big smoke" Stn.O. who had retired to Wales and then could not cope with a 15 minute attendance time from the nearest RDS stations.

All their crew had pirate radio recievers set to the brigade frequency and if the brigade turned out to their area, they would operate the Home Office air raid siren that was on the pub roof. 

The trailer pump was towed by one Landrover and cars were loaded with the rest of the gear and followed on.    For many fires their 15 minute lead was enough for them to deal with the incident before the brigade arrived.

While I was the D.C., there was much talk of converting it to a proper RDS station, although just one may have been affordable the idea was soon abandoned because 12 or more new stations would be needed for other villages that had even worse cover than Caerwys.

The official answer was to ignore them and hope they would fade away.

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Yes there are still a few, not sure on the South Yorkshire situation as that was going through union last I knew.

The problem is there is that many different names for it as such not 100% sure how many now.  Lincolnshire run it, house/accommodation block in station yard or houses close by, some still got original station houses close by.   No plans to get rid, they have spent quite a bit of money recently developing some of the accommodation at some sites.

Lancashire were in talks late last year with regards to their DCP and I think the plans were to get rid of it.  

Don't know of any others off the top of my head but it seems to vary by are how its accepted.

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18 hours ago, Luminoki said:

Getting back on topic, as this thread is nearly two years old, have any services still got DCP in any kind of form? In H&W its long gone but i think its still in play over in Warwickshire in some form

Warks have three WT stations on DCP

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