This Chapter at a Glance:

• LCFB – A Record of Good Governance;

• LFRS – The Nemesis of Decency;

• The Growth of fraudulent expense claims;self-awarded bogus ‘bonuses’; and the wholesale plundering of the Public purse;

• The deliberate corrupting of greedy Councillors;

• A bloated bureaucracy  masquerading as political management;

• The Thieving Magpies;

• The salary scam of self enrichment under the guise of ‘efficiency’;

• Pure unapologetic corruption  in all its forms in public office by local Civil Servants, abetted by politicians.

In the early 1970’s the County of Lancashire was well governed by the Lancashire County Council(LCC) with approximately 100 County Councillors of various political affiliations, or none, of which  35 were delegated to be Members of the Fire Service & Public Protection committee responsible for a Brigade of 61 stations.

Later, reformed in 1974, Lancashire County Fire Brigade with 40 stations was, until the late 1990’s, always at the forefront of Fire Service national initiatives and was without question the leading progressive Fire Authority in the UK referred to by the Audit Commission as ‘notably well managed’.

It had a complement of approximately 1500+/- ‘uniforms’ and 2-300 non uniformed support staff including a part time pensions admin ‘officer’ who was supported by the LCC Pensions Services(LCC PS), a department of the LCC.

With the creation of the Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service in 1998, which was an ‘independent’ and largely unaccountable Combined Fire Authority removed from local authority control, the sleazy product of Jack Straw MP’s frantic election gerrymandering, matters changed dramatically for the worse.

Administrative devolution from the LCC, when it occurred, included pension management, though final political control and accountability(when it rarely happens) still rests to the present day with the LCC.

Presently devolved political control appears to rest with the Lancashire Combined Fire Authority but in reality the current ruling party at the LCC pulls its puppet strings by holding the voting majority on the CFA but when put to the test of accountability even the current Leaders of the LCC Coalition, CC J.Mein(Lab)  and CC W.Winlow(LibDem)  are coy and reluctant to engage with the CFA’s litany of venality. One wonders why? Perhaps they may wish to clear out this midden after the May 2014 local elections or just before the next General Election in May 2015?  

History and events record the beginning of the fall from grace of the exemplary reputation of the former Lancashire County Fire Brigade as the new Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service got into its self-serving stride.

A continuum during which dishonesty at LFRS board level ‘grow’d like Topsy’, involving politicians and senior ranks alike, and which has now become the accepted and institutionalised face of self-serving corruption.

Little wonder no one can report the collapse of morale in currently serving personnel in the LFRS because none exists to collapse.

It is fair to say looking at the published annual audit statements, press reports, and internal LFRS service correspondence for that time, that a scandalous unbridled self-perpetuating feeding frenzy was created and developed in all matters financial when it became evident to those in key power posts that they had found themselves in the Aladdin’s Cave of the public purse where its intrinsic thief’s charter prevailed.

A gold mine of shady opportunity where ‘no one is looking’; ‘we have no need to account for ourselves’; ‘let’s help ourselves’; ‘it is mine, mine, mine !’.

The first clever move by a few power broker County Councillors was to ‘persuade’ Elected members, with no difficulty, to give themselves a 42% pay rise at a time of austerity and pay cuts which then irrevocably tied them into the sleaze which was to follow.

Acquiescence by the silence of failing to either question or object to such transparent bribery simply convicts any politician of a failure of public duty, a duty they are elected and paid to carry out.

How then could these politicians possibly criticise obscene salary increases of 78% and 11% ‘efficiency bonuses’ (for doing the job they were paid for?) for senior managers when they had just prostituted and debased their collective integrity for a 42% pay rise ?

All this was simply rampant corruption spearheaded by a few financially perverted County Councillors with their ‘officers’ who rightly now find themselves the subject of Police fraud investigations.

Politicians who did not hesitate to create and promote ‘special responsibility’ self-inflated pay rises for themselves underpinned with a ‘snout in trough’ attitude of rampant ‘creative expenses’ to which they were simply not entitled, and which were in fact simply fraudulent theft of taxpayers monies.

‘Expenses’ claims which were routinely bulldozed past the voice of protesting but subservient bean counters who understandably wished to keep their jobs.

These rogues were simply plunderers of the public purse by any other name.

Before we leave finances the taxpayers may wish to pose a question to these Councillors whilst they are all navel gazing in sleepy hollow…

Why, in a much reduced Lancashire Service in terms of the removal of life saving fire appliance, reductions in manpower, and stations does it still requires the expense of 25 Elected Members on the Combined Fire Authority at an annual cost of £121,000.0 to ‘manage’ 1100 ‘uniforms’?

That is £11,500.0 a year per Councillor to manage 666 ‘uniforms’ each.

A Scottish Councillor charges the taxpayers for ‘managing’ 1 ‘uniform’ in Scotland, just £17.27?

So a Lancashire Councillor personally charges 2.54 times more than his Scottish counterpart for the same service.

Who is providing the best value for money for the taxpayers?

A Lancashire County Councillor(if his expenses claims are honest) who charges the taxpayers for ‘managing’ 1 ‘uniform’ , £44.0.

By contrast in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service it requires only 12 Elected/Co-opted/Members at an annual cost of £138,000.0 to ‘manage’ 8000 ‘uniforms’.

Perhaps a Lancashire Councillor’s extortionate charge rate is required because these CFA Elected Members engage so heavily in personal pastoral care (examples of which we have posted on the Bugler) by those placed under their duty of care both in and retired from service?

The LFRS had, and has, a wide spectrum of individually mendacious corruption in its civil servants ranging from:

• a Labour Chairman, ironically a former Firefighter, who publicly denied he was in receipt of an ill health pension, when in fact he was, and about which he failed to declare a ‘personal interest’ during a pension ‘review’ in which, as Chairman, he skewed his ‘review’ to avoid the scrutiny of his own pension;

• to another Conservative Chairman who for 13+ years fiddled his car mileage and subsistence reimbursements and who acted in sleight-of-hand complicity with the Clerk to the Fire Authority to undemocratically block the circulation of taxpayers’ correspondence to Elected members followed by the manipulation of an ‘Appeal Panel’ whitewash called to deal with a subsequent public complaint on his misconduct in public office;

• to the appointment of civilian post vacancies without recourse to the requirements of Equal Opportunity provisios which required the public advertising of vacant appointments; public short listing; and the panel interviewing of candidates all of whom later proved to be  dubious ‘professionals’ who had left their previous employment under clouds of non-disclosure agreements;

• to the pension scheme manager, the senior civilian administrator, who in covering up his failed pension management conspired with the Conservative Fire Authority Chairman(the expenses fiddler) to author a secret and false document to smear and assassinate the private character and integrity of a pension campaign leading disabled Fire Service Veteran whom they viewed as an opponent of their corruption; a defender of truth; and of the well-being of his fellow disabled Veterans;

• to a Conservative Chairman who made sure this false instrument ‘found its way’ to the then Conservative Leader of the LCC Driver (this Veteran’s initially supportive County Councillor) purporting it to be an honest evaluation of their opponent’s private character and integrity in order to eliminate political support from their Conservative Leader for the Fire Service Veterans’ campaign for honest and decent treatment over their disabled pensions;

• to the senior civilian administrator who conspired  with the Conservative Fire Authority Chairman(the expenses fiddler) to author and implement a secret policy of principles’ which imposed, what he described as the ‘hardship route’ on disabled Veterans who failed to yield to his thuggery;

• to the senior civilian administrator who conspired  with the Conservative Fire Authority Chairman(the expenses fiddler again) to describe in secret LFRS correspondence the Veteran’s campaign leader as a ‘wounded animal’;

• to the head of human resources(the former head of human resources at the North West  Probation Service who was required to leave under a mutual non-disclosure document for the alleged bullying and sexual harassment of female staff) who continued the practice of his black arts at the LFRS an example of which is confirmed here, subsequently earning himself the sobriquet from the ‘troops’ as ‘Brendan the Barbarian’ Go Here ;

• to an in-house solicitor[Harold] who acted illegally contrary to electoral law by serving and getting paid handsomely[£15k] as a ward councillor with another local authority ,Salford,  whilst serving with the LCFA who tried publicly[Manchester Evening News] to sleazily browbeat a parking attendant out of a disabled bay parking ticket which he had issued to him at Salford Town Hall;

• to a Chief Fire Officer who ordered the cover up a complaint lodged in the Public Complaint Book by a member of the public citing his own alleged sexual predatory activities with the wife of a member of staff;

a Chief Fire Officer who has a criminal conviction which he has failed to declare[Lewd act in Public];

• to a Chief Fire Officer, and the present incumbent, who in a continuing cover up ordered direct breaches of the law when deliberately obstructing the release of Personal Record Files which when released by Court Order confirmed the underpayment of pensions to hundreds of his own disabled Fire Service Veterans; a CFO can sink no lower than robbing his own terminally ill Veterans, his former comrades, and their families.

But all this, and much more, must wait for its own exposé Chapter which will of course be supported with independent corroborative written evidence, including the LFRS’s own internal documents, all published on the Bugler.

There are other questions for another day, but that will suffice for the moment, meantime, we must return to the central theme of the current Lancashire pension scandal.