• Are Fire Authorities heading for bankruptcy?

• Have Fire Authorities been defrauding the Taxpayer and H.M. Treasury ?

• The Treasury uses the big stick on Essex FRS, with Staffordshire, Cheshire, and others to follow;

• DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team; the Fire Authorities; and their pension Scheme ‘experts’ fail again;

• Fire Authorities’ self-enrichment. Was it a mistake or criminal fraud?

♦ The Pension Dam Collapses;

♦ A Pension Refresher;

♦ Prescott’s 2005 ‘Improvement’ of Fire Service Pensions;

♦ DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team Points the ‘Guilty’ finger, but not at itself;

♦ Self-enrichment of Fire Authorities;

♦ The Essex Blame game;

♦ The Cover-up game begins;

♦ Pickles and his Motes;

Ø Head of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary of the DCLG responsible for the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team is sacked;

Ø Firefighters’ Pension Team-Root & Branch Revision-Discipline and Replacement;

♦ The Fire Service Pension Iceberg;

♦ A Creative Problem Solver ? The Matelot Cometh…

It was bound to happen and of course the Bugler has long predicted that it would.

The pension dam, which up until now, has held back the flood of incompetence, deceit, and institutionalised fraud in the Fire Service pension ‘industry’ was bound to collapse, but as ever, the moment and the direction in which it would fail has remained a matter for speculation; but fail it would.

On Wednesday the 13^th August 2014 the Essex Gazette headlined an article by one of its reporters which reported that the Essex County Fire & Rescue Service(ECFRS) had ‘discovered’ a black hole in its pension accounts amounting to a deficit of £15mil which had been accumulating unnoticed since 2006. It is not yet confirmed who ‘discovered’ this black hole.

H.M. Treasury has required immediate repayment of this huge deficit(with interest) to them and to us the Taxpayers, or face further commercial compound interest penalties. For the Press articles. Go here.

On Friday 15^th August 2014 the Essex Echo printed a second article on this issue. Go Here.

Later the Essex County FRS website published the following official statements from their Finance ‘manager’ and Acting/CFO. Go Here.

Here are the facts in plain English, or as many of them as

local reporters could glean from a reluctant Mr.Mike Clayton the ECFRS finance director and treasurer. It also remains unclear at this time who the Essex statutory Fire Service Pension Scheme manager is, the person actually responsible in law for this pension debacle at Fire Authority level.

In addition at governmental level there are civil servants in the DCLG Fire & Resilience Directorate, in particular the Firefighters’ Pension Team, who are nationally responsible for Fire Service pension Schemes management who will be equally, if not more responsible.

The extent of this accounting failure within the UK Fire Service has yet to be revealed, but the predominant sounds are of the  raising of drawbridges or simply none – official silences.

It is immediately clear that Staffordshire and Cheshire FRS find themselves in a similar position and it is reasonable speculation to conclude that if this recurring  ‘error’ has afflicted 3 Fire Authorities beginning in 2006, then it is likely to have affected all 49 Fire Authorities over the following 8 year period.

Once more it is out with the vinegar and brown paper to cover up these damning facts of, incompetence, fraud, and deceit, by these Fire pension ‘experts’ at all levels of pension governance in the UK Fire Service.

Readers will recall that earlier the Bugler identified the where and how the ‘money trail’ works which leads to the payment of Fire Service pensions. Go Here.

The Bugler reported that historically every Fire Authority Pension fund was ‘unfunded’. This meant that the 49 Fire Authorities routinely started every financial year with their pension pot empty and concluded the year with, as you might expect, a substantial deficit after having paid the Statutory pensions due to their retired, and in numerous cases disabled by injury, Fire Service Veterans.

At the end of the financial year Fire Authorities would then routinely reclaim all this pension expenditure (in arrears)

as  part of the grant aid which they would receive from central government via the Home Office(The Fire Service Department) by reclaiming 100% of their total pension expenditure the previous financial year.

In 2001 with the creation of the DCLG the transfer of responsibility for Fire Service pensions moved from the Home Office to the DCLG and with its transfer came the creation of the Firefighters’ Pension Team(all 4 civil servants) the Team Leader of which, Mr.Cornelius,chairs the Firefighters’ Pension Committee.

A structure once more reported in the Bugler. Go here.

On the 8^th February 2005 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister J.Prescott M.P. (you will recall he was so successful that Blair did away with his Office) issued a consultation paper FRS Circular 4-2005 in which he had decided to ‘improve’ the financial arrangements for Firefighters’ Pensions for Fire Authorities in England only. Go Here.

In future in addition to the Formula Grant which Fire Authorities receive – an annual government grant based on the per head of population being served – each Fire Authority was required to create a new specific local ‘Firefighters’ Pension Account’ into which would be paid the Employers and Employees’ contributions and out of which future pension payments would be paid.

The underlying principle was that employer and employee contributions together would meet the full future costs of pension payments which are being accrued by those currently in service, whilst central Government would meet the costs of paying the past pensions of retired Fire Service Veterans, with the exception of the injury pension element which would be paid from the Fire Authority’s local taxation revenue.

Such was the vain hope of this bright idea by Prescott and Phil Woolas MP, Minister at the Treasury-another with an extremely colourful exit from politics.

In an exercise of cynicism, and as an ‘incentive’, Fire Authorities were informed that in future injury pensions were to be regarded as ‘operational expenditure’, a deplorable phrase, and any injury pension payments must be funded locally from Fire Authority financial resources. In other words if a Fire Authority ‘accrued’ any personnel who required compulsory discharge with an injury pension then that Fire Authority must pay; equally if no one receives an injury pension then H.M. treasury will at the end of the financial year scoop any residual surpluses.

Heads we win and tails you lose.

The unambiguous  ‘incentive’ was that  in future no Firefighter will be allowed to be killed, maimed, or injured in service which in practice means that the UK Fire Service will over time accumulate a ‘reserve’ of unfit injured Firefighters hobbling along serving on the front line, some of whom are quite incapable of carrying out their critical duties in rescue work and other emergencies because it is more cost effective in pension expenditure terms to keep injured Firefighter in full time ‘employment’. A crippling legacy for the future…

One wonders if a member of the Public would be encouraged to know that the Firefighter attempting the rescue was a crocked 60 year old who in all likelihood will become a casualty himself in the attempt, leading to two deaths rather than none?

And just in case Fire Authorities missed the point this Circular then goes on to makes it clear that this is neither a consultation nor a suggestion, Fire Authorities will contribute to injury funds.

At the financial year end any surplus(more vain hope) would be recouped by the Government and if there was a deficit(surprise) then the government would use a new mechanism called a ‘top-up grant’ to reimburse the Fire Authorities’ new local Firefighters’ Pension Account.

A glance at an example of current statistics of annual top-up grants produced by the DCLG and already published by the Bugler demonstrates how successful this new strategy has been in producing surpluses; in fact it was a complete failure. Go Here.

On the 23rd December 2005( a date no doubt carefully chosen because all the pension bean counters in the Fire Service were away partying) a further FRS Circular 62-2005 was issued. Go Here.

An open letter in this Circular from Woolas expresses his panic about the alarm felt by Fire Authorities after viewing his plans. Woolas uses such words as ‘volatility’; ‘concerns’; ‘welcoming meetings’; ‘arranging meetings’; ‘all representation carefully considered’; almost ending with a political understatement ‘some confusion’ , which he then attempts to address by giving an explanation of what his political machinations are without telling the truth.

Finally, Fire Authorities were invited to send in their hypothetical guesstimates into the DCLG for 2006/07 pension expenditure for Woolas to compare with the Government Actuary Department’s hypothetical figures. A study in hypotheses.

Disregarding any alarm or protests, our Mr. Woolas pressed on with his mass confusion which became the genesis of this present debacle. Simply because, as usual, no consideration was given to the levels of indolence and incompetence to be found in the DCLG Fire & Resilience Directorate, a directorate which was to implement this ‘improvement’, specifically on this occasion, its Fire Service ‘Improvement’ Team, a case of ‘physician first heal thyself’ if ever there was one, which would then hand over its ‘improvement’ to a somnambulant Firefighters’ Pension Team.

Thus in future, commencing in 2006, Fire Authorities were only to receive 80% of their pension expenditure the remaining 20% was to be found and funded locally but even the accounting procedures to be used in achieving this simple changeover were deliberately complex so that no one could actually grasp that this was an exercise in government theft at the local taxpayers expense.

No one at the DCLG, particularly the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team, or in any Fire Authority, or its pension Scheme manager can claim that they were unaware that a major shift in pension accountancy was about to occur.

Yet we now find that the DCLG and Essex FRS claiming that none of this scandal was their responsibility and no one was to blame?

Following the recent discoveries of these pension ‘black holes’, the appearance is that accounting transition errors were not identified by anyone in Fire Service pension governance whilst moving from one injury pension accounting system to another.

DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team points the ‘guilty’ finger (away from itself naturally) at Essex whom it says did not pay it back the injury pension money it was owed. Essex points its finger at the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team and complains that the DCLG failed to carry out its, at a minimum, annual audit checks particularly when a new system was being created.

As a consequence this has effectively generated self-enriching overpayments by the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team to Fire Authorities which are of such magnitude that H.M. Treasury have taken the abrupt step, in the case of Essex, to require an immediate £15mil repayment to its central funds.

At this point there is a veritable litany of questions which should be addressed to all those involved; the DCLG; the Fire Authorities; and the Fire Service pension Scheme managers; all of whom must be held to account corporately and dismissed individually, though it is already to be noted that Essex in a typically fatuous statement say no one is to blame? Why not?

The simple question is whose errors were these and who should bear culpability, leading to dismissal?

As a notoriously indolent, incompetent, and discredited department within the DCLG Fire & Resilience Directorate  the Firefighters’ Pension Team who are directly responsible for this debacle have a well-practiced sloping desks and shoulders laisser faire approach to their duties which the Bugler has reported on before and will highlight later in this Chapter.

It is necessary to remind the Reader of the facts that not a single civil servant of the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team has a basic pension or accountancy qualification between all four of them with a modus operandii of issuing FRS Circulars which are littered with ‘cover their backs’ caveats which they believe excuses their collective incompetent languor and then having done their ‘duty’, as they see it,  they promptly put their feet back up on their desks, put the kettle on, and forget about the whole issue in hand.

This recipe of slothfulness, underpinned with their lack of qualifications and practical experience in all matters of pension management, could only inevitably lead to this latest debacle.

Not for them any vigilant ‘policing’ of their FRS Circulars to ensure that their financial edicts are being read, understood, and implemented by Fire Authorities; nor even a casual glance to ensure that those Fire Authorities which owe the taxpayers money pays us back, or that their department is in error not making self-enriching overpayments to Fire Authorities’ who may have made either incorrect or fraudulent reimbursement claims in advance.

But in spite of all this no one is to blame?

Fire Authorities have, either by incompetence or simple fraud, lawlessly enriched themselves at the Taxpayers and H.M. Treasury’s expense for the last 8 years. Is this why H.M.Treasury have reacted so violently?

Responsibility for this latest debacle must also surely be shared, and rest squarely with the bean counting pension ‘experts’ within Fire Authorities, or their pension service contractors, and most especially with Pension Scheme managers who hold the Statutory responsibility for the management of their Scheme, and are thus accountable in law both civil and criminal if individual and corporate fraud can be confirmed at Fire Authority level.

It seems likely, but still uncertain at this stage before a truly independent  Parliamentary investigation has been concluded, that when the first year of change came around in 2006 Fire Authorities with their usual incompetence, or perhaps some were more cunning than others in making inflated guesstimates, made the usual 100% annual reimbursement claim.

At this point Fire Authorities, in the complex pension accountancy procedures which were required and clearly beyond their capability, were required to pay back 20% of this annual grant by the DCLG/H.M.Treasury after discharging their statutory duty to pay disabled Fire Service Veterans their injury pensions, but they either failed to make this payback to the correct value, or simply failed to pay it back at all.

Fire Authorities simply cannot claim ignorance because they are in daily communication, via their behind the scenes ‘Fire Finance Network’. It is a reasonable assumption that when one Fire Authorities ‘discovered’ that they had failed to reimburse the DCLG/H.M.Treasury properly, and because they were certain that, as usual, the lazy DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team would not ‘police’ their own edicts, and thus not picked up what amounted to false accounting, then they would all know.

Did Fire Authorities simply smirk to themselves with a nod and a wink to their chums over this secret Network and then slope quietly off with an extra 20% grant aid ‘bonus’ in their back pockets, to which of course they knew they were not entitled?

They have questions to answer do they not?

This raises the next question that if  these Fire Authorities were aware of this handy 20% bonus from the Taxpayers which they unlawfully retained then they were also surely aware that this complicit lawlessness was a scandalous conspiracy to defraud H.M. Treasury and the Taxpayers whilst enriching themselves and from which these accountancy wizards then paid themselves a handsome annual bonus for the next 8 years from their ill gotten gains for their financial ‘management’ acuity?

It was also at this changeover point in 2006/07, bearing in mind that this was a major shift in the government finance policy of reimbursement/grant aid, that it appears that the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team failed to identify incorrect

or no repayments made to them, which they ought to have picked up and corrected as incipient errors and which because of their institutionalised lassitude, they failed to do so.

Fire Authorities who acquiesced in silence after the ‘discovery’ of this ‘bonus’, which they have shared over the Fire Finance Network with other Fire Authorities have placed themselves corporately with their individual Councillors and individual members of staff in the firing line of the criminal law because this ‘acquiescing’ action is tantamount to conspiracy in an act of  criminal fraud which the Bugler has repeatedly pointed out before .

It seems as though central government has yet to learn the lesson that it ought not trust the efficacy or honesty of the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team; its Firefighters Pension Committee; or its Fire Authorities with their ‘know nothing’ Fire pension Scheme managers because true to form they have all failed abjectly again, but then justice has not publicly caught up with them, until now.

All of this was predicted and predictable and comes as no surprise because of the endemic and scandalous state of maladministration by completely unqualified clerks who do not know even the rudiments of pension audit, accountancy, or management of pension Schemes, all underpinned with their stonewalling arrogant deceit and institutionalised fraud when their errors are flagged up and challenged.

Why should all of this, including this latest monumental blunder come as not the slightest surprise to the Bugler and its Readership?

Because this debacle has immediately become a matter of Parliamentary interest and accountability for the H.M. Treasury; the Taxpayers; the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team; and its Firefighters Pension Committee, the DCLG must immediately, in rebuilding public confidence, publish a comprehensive positional statement.

They must confirm; what they knew; when they knew it; what actually has occurred; naming the names of those upon whom responsibility and accountability rests; and outlining the impact this is likely to have on Fire Authorities, and most importantly of all, the financial impact it will most certainly have which will lead to a reduction in fire and rescue services within the affected areas which these Fire Authorities serve.

Specifically the DCLG Fire Pension Team must explain why it took 8 years, no less, to identify these monumental errors and who finally actually identified these circumstances?

If the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team, as an Executive arm of government, has failed to carry out Parliament’s will then those civil servants who were, and remain in office, between the period 2006-2014 must be held to disciplinary account because they have, by their lack of fiduciary duty, allowed Fire Authorities to unlawfully enrich themselves to the detriment of H.M. Treasury and the national Taxpayer.

The early indications in the blame game are that the ECFRS claims exemption from blame but does not hesitate to blame the auditors Price Waterhouse Cooper and Ernst & Young (appointed by the Audit Commission) and the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team, whom they claim have failed in their respective duties. To whit that the DCLG failed to issue the necessary detailed accountancy guidance, or if it did, that they then failed to monitor that this guidance was understood and correctly acted upon and that annual reimbursement claims from Fire Authorities were audited to ensure that the DCLG only ultimately reimbursed the ECFRS and other Fire Authorities in final pension settlement to the value of 80%, not 100%.

Two points ought to be borne in mind in this finger pointing blame game. Firstly, that the one person who seems absent in all this scenario is Essex’s Statutory pension Scheme manager who is responsible in law for running the Scheme and who has the duty annually to present the ‘books’ to the auditors at the end of the financial year. Secondly, it is a long established principle of all accountancy that auditors bear little responsibility for peripheral matters(unless they are forensic auditors) confining themselves to checking that the ‘books’ they have been presented with are a true record which ultimately balance.

So the Essex CFRS; Staffordshire FRS ; and Cheshire FRS along with other Fire Authorities are without doubt facing a situation which could well lead to bankruptcy so they must be prepared  to transparently answer the Public questions and give a full transparent account of themselves.

Did they all actually know, with or without a Nelsonian eye, that they were receiving an extra 20% in pension grant aid to which they knew they were not entitled? If so, then the pension Scheme managers, the Fire Authorities, and the Councillors involved are all guilty of a premeditated conspiracy to defraud the Public purse.

Presumably if the disabled FSVs of Essex, Staffordshire, and Cheshire hold their breaths long enough they will eventually be drawn into the blame game for living too long and drawing their disabled injury pensions.

Already it is clear in the hesitantly mumbled answers given to public interest questions from reporters that the actual facts of what has occurred in this blame game dialogue between the DCLG and the ECFRS and other Fire Authorities remain hidden from Public scrutiny?

Now there is a surprise…

So who actually discovered this latest pension debacle?

It is probable that it was the result of a routine annual audit of Essex from which these ‘anomalies’(some anomaly) were reported to H.M.Treasury who reacted promptly when they identified that it was another government department, the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team which is principally at fault in this fiasco. H.M.Treasury reacted in an exceptionally forceful manner having identified that this Pension Team had as usual failed abysmally in its duty.

What is absolutely clear is that the ECFRS and others yet to be revealed have been placed by H.M.Treasury on the rack of instant payback with compound interest for enriching themselves with the sanction of further interest to follow if they delay.

Is it only the currently named Fire Authorities who find themselves in this ‘restitution with interest’ to H.M. Treasury or does it involve all 49 UK Fire Authorities? If all are involved and are required to make immediate repayments will the UK Fire Service be in technical bankruptcy as a consequence?

Given the Bugler’s comprehensive experience with all four

civil servants of the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team it seems likely that this is not an anomaly affecting just a few Fire Authorities but it is more than likely in the Bugler’s experience that it has affected every single one of the UK 49 Fire Authorities which will lead to, at least, paper bankruptcy.

Perhaps, in the sleepy hollows wherein dwell the expenses grubbing Councillors who laughingly ‘manage’ the UK Fire Service, especially in Lancashire, it is time for them to finally wake up to the fact that if any fraudulent action by their ‘agents’, including their pension Scheme managers, is demonstrated in any pension debacle then the criminal responsibility will rest directly with the individual Councillors responsible(not only their staff) as the Bugler has pointed out regularly.

Councillors have long deluded themselves that they are personally untouchable and that there is some sort of ‘legal shield’ which activates to protect them personally from criminal liability in such matters?

They are going to be sorely deluded and they ought to have paid attention to what happened in Doncaster and the Wirral when in April 2010 Secretary of State John Denham MP announced that the government was intervening in Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council due to its ‘gross’ failures identified by an Audit Commission Corporate Governance Inspection(Yes the same organisation involved in this pension debacle).

The subsequent direction removed the authority’s right to appoint senior posts and imposed Commissioners with the power to overrule council decisions. Since then the council has made significant progress against its improvement plan, but this intervention continues.

Wirral Council has also had a long history of difficulty. There the path followed was very different. Instead of external intervention, and following several months of behind the scenes engagement, the Local Government Association facilitated the creation of an Improvement Board in response to an internally commissioned and highly critical report that highlighted serious shortcomings in the council’s corporate governance.…

If this proves to be true in Essex and the DCLG using them both as failed pension management exemplars then surely a prima facie case exists of failed governance, top to bottom, and heads must roll.

The Public has already seen H.M.Treasury firmly demanding full recovery repayments with compound interest because of enrichment by these first few Fire Authorities then many, if not all, of the 49 UK Fire Authorities with fire pension Schemes may also face a Treasury repayment bill with a total repayment in excess of  £3/4 of a billion pounds levied on the UK Fire Services, which, when using the example of the ECFRS will have to found from local budgets.

So is the UK Fire Service heading for bankruptcy? On the balance sheets this seems probable given the dire straits that the UK Fire Service is already in due to endless financial cut backs.

Where is the money to come from to repay H.M. Treasury immediately?

There is, as ever, only one source, the red front line, and only one consequence, which will inevitably lead to the removal of life saving fire appliances from the streets of the UK leading to unnecessary deaths and injury of its Citizens which are of course the consequences which the Public of the UK will have to bear for employing such scandalously incompetent Fire Service pension management ‘experts’ from the DCLG down to Fire Authority Scheme manager level…

Now we must wait and watch as the deceitful cover ups begin in a modus operandii well known to the Bugler Readers with as usual the DCLG leading the charge and pointing the blame finger in self-protection well away from itself.

When asked by the Bugler H.M. Treasury had no official position on this debacle and were unable to inform the Bugler how they had been informed but they had passed the Bugler’s enquiry to the DCLG. One can hear even at this distance the raising of drawbridges. So it can be concluded that the Treasury knows exactly where the responsibility lies.

On the other hand the ECFRS have already commencing its own cover up, and others will predictably follow, by asking its ‘independent’ chums across the Thames in Kent to bail it out with creative words; in a creative report; the conclusions of a creative ‘investigation’; which will find no specific person to blame and from which no disciplinary action will arise or sackings will flow.

It was ever thus in the corrupt Fire Service management of the 21^st Century.

How, the Bugler asks, by even stretching the already fevered imagination and credibility of an already fevered strike ridden Fire Service can one Fire Authority investigate its neighbour in a palpable case of  bare faced cover up  which must inevitably produce the Fire Service edition of  Plato’s Noble Lie?

Essex in smirking self-satisfaction claims in an utterly misleading commentary on its own debacle that they are in fine shape to meet the future yet in mellifluous words they fail to directly address the black hole in its finances just over the horizon.

Where will the money come from?

In one slick manoeuvre they intend to raid the very pension

fund which was set up by Prescott/Woolas 2005/6 to pay the future pensions of those currently in service leaving serving personnel’s pensions destitute in the years ahead.

It is called robbing Peter to pay Paul and it has never worked before, or since.

For the year 2015/16 their budget gap plans are both woolly and deliberately vague ‘expecting’ to be able to close this ‘gap’ but unable to say “what specific changes will be needed to achieve this position.”.

What it  actually means is the removal of more bums from more Fire Engines but does not have the courage to spell it out.

The Chairman of the FBU in Essex, Riccardo La Torre, knows exactly what all this means to his members when the Essex Gazette correctly stated that the ECFRS has had it entire savings wiped out at a stroke. In a word it is broke.

In his naivety Mr.Clayton states… “There have been “a lot of questions” as to why the authority must settle the debt immediately, Clayton said.”…

Mr. Clayton never appears to have heard of the current DCLG Secretary of State Rt Hon Mr. Pickles M.P. who, in running up to the next General Election with a safe pair of hands, is not going to tolerate a bunch of incompetent Fire Service ‘expert’ pension clerks ‘raining on his parade’.

Nor, most particularly, is he going to tolerate ‘rain’ issuing from one of his own departments directly under his accountability and so, without doubt, these Fire Authorities will repay the overpayments due with compound interest to H.M.Treasury, and they will do so promptly, and Pickles’ Fire and Resilience Directorate civil servants will find out first hand what the actual meaning of ‘resilience’ is as they all play musical chairs at the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team.

Before doing so the Bugler suggests that the Secretary of State removes, as soon as possible, the motes from his own eyes.

Perhaps scrutiny of these motes may go some way to demonstrating to him why the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team is in the deplorable state it is.

It may be that Sir Bob Kerslake’s sacking(disposal-under way) and the replacement of his civil servants at Firefighters’ Pension Team with their collective sleep walking may go some way to demonstrating a semblance of credible authority to the Public and its Fire Service.

A fundamental question arises from this current debacle which also has its roots in the previous ‘form’ the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team has exhibited in all matters fire pension.

The DCLG has an in-house departmental performance monitoring Directorate entitled the ‘Performance and Places Team(PPT)’ was it this department, or was the plethora of ‘Directors’ and their senior civil servants (highlighted by the Bugler) in the DCLG organisational chart who actually share responsibility for this current debacle in Essex? Go Here.

Who failed in this chain of performance accounting and who is personally and professionally accountable for failing to provide the essential supervision and accountability monitoring for the lack of performance in the Firefighters’ Pension Team which has led to the potential for UK Fire Service bankruptcy meltdown?

It can only be an organisational failure which allowed such unsupervised slovenly attitudes to develop in the Fire Pension Team to the point where these civil servants not only failed in salient aspects to comply with their own Civil Service Code of Conduct but developed work-a-day characteristics of disdainful lack of honesty and transparency.

This coupled with arrogant and lazy attitudes allowed them to propagate the self-belief that they were in some way ‘untouchable’ and that Fire pensions had nothing whatsoever to do with them, and thus they were unaccountable to their own Directorate; to Parliament; and more importantly the Taxpayers who pay them? 

In support of this essential action Mr. Pickles would be wise before seeking the ‘truth’ from his own department to read its actual antics of over the last year to say nothing of

the last 8 years in which it denies that it has any responsibility or accountability for pensions in the UK Fire Service, the very raison detre for its existence!

In 2010 Sir Bob Kerslake was appointed as Permanent Secretary of the DCLG(the senior ranking civil servant in the DCLG who daily reports to Secretary of State Pickles) and in the following year 2011(in parallel) as part time Head of the Civil Service(who is responsible for running the Cabinet Office and reporting daily to the Prime Minister).

This is a primary lesson in how to be appointed to two top civil servant appointments at the same time and to fail in both because since 15^th July 2014 Sir Bob Kerslake has been sacked from both appointments by the Prime Minister though to mitigate the political impact Sir Bob will not leave immediately he will simply fade away by early 2015.

The objective reporting of this situation in the national dailys paints a before and after picture. Go Here.

Of particular interest is the reaction of the Civil Servant ‘Mandarins’, and presumably their junior colleagues, to Kerslake’s departure. Clearly they are sad to see him go. Was this because, as the Taypayers’ see it, they have had quite a lackadaisical leaderless period for 4 years when the little they collectively did do was never called to account at the DCLG, if the Public are to use the Firefighters Pension Team as an example?

It is to be hoped that the Secretary of State ‘gets a grip’ on the lower decks of his department perhaps using his new Junior Minister Morduant between now and the rapidly approaching General Election.

But is this extended desk clearing period for Kerslake necessarily helpful to Secretary of State Pickles or the UK Fire Service right now as it faces bankruptcy?

Or in grappling with a strike prone Fire Service arguing about its pension future whilst pointing to this latest DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team debacle as sound reasons not to trust this department, or its completely inexperienced Junior ‘Fire’ Minister with any matters pension?

This department and team, Mr.Pickles will also find out, was entirely privy to the ‘double dipping’ practice which was endemic in principle officer ranks from 2007 forward and once more did absolutely nothing about protecting the Taxpayers from these Treasury Raiders at least Dick Turpin wore a mask…

Least, dear Reader, you may be inclined to conclude that the Morning Bugler has been overly critical, or too harsh on the civil servants of the Firefighters’ Pension Team(DCLG-FPT) at the DCLG then it is best that both you, and Secretary of State Pickles, acquaint yourselves with the circumstances which have led up to this point.

N.B. In that which follows for ease of continuity the Editor’s correspondence and role is referred to as that of the ‘Bugler’.

The Bugler has concluded, with justification, that this DCLG-FPT, which was set up to serve the objectives of Parliament; the Taxpayer; the Fire Service pension Schemes; and retired Fire Service Veterans have repeatedly failed their remit.

The DCLG-FPT have not only failed to do their duty but have dismissively ignored repeated invitations to engage constructively in the resolution a continuing major pension dispute in Lancashire which has national implications.

In fact, in practice, the DCLG-FPT have become a deliberately perverse bureaucratic obstacle of wilful blindness and deliberate obfuscation to those who, not only pay these civil servants, but where in actual practice the ‘Masters’ have become the servants to these disobedient and arrogantly indolent clerks.

There is no doubt whatsoever that it is from these unhealthy attitudes that major pension management errors will spring. Indeed, the current pension crisis in the Essex County Fire & Rescue Service and other Fire Authorities is a direct result of the FPT failure in pension management; a failure which has the potential to drive the entire Service into bankruptcy.

The continuing pension dispute in Lancashire, which commenced in 2007 (the absolute detail of which will be presented to the Reader in due course), has revealed decades of endemic failures of the Fire pension management ‘experts’ (top-to-bottom) within the UK Fire Service and is symptomatic of that which continues today to afflict Essex, Cheshire, Staffordshire, and other Fire Authorities which will follow.

The Audit Commission’s National Fraud Initiative Reports regularly inform the Lancashire and London public and their politicians (to quote just two examples) that they have been(and still are) routinely making overpayments and underpayments for decades to Members (including the deceased) of the Schemes they have a Statutory responsibility for.

Payments which includes those to disabled Fire Service Veterans (the largest Lancashire current overpayment being £64k+ and largest underpayment being £45k+), which, de facto, confirms maladministration on a massive and scandalous scale.

These Pension Schemes, including the Police and Fire Service Schemes, continue to be ‘managed’ by the self-same unqualified ‘experts’, who caused and are responsible for this scandalous maladministration in the first place.

One would have thought that these published Audit Commission facts might have interested Mr.Cornelius, a senior civil servant and current head of this Firefighters’s Pension Team responsible for the good financial husbandry of the public purse in respect of the 49 national Fire Authority pension Schemes under his direct accountability, but it seems not.

In 2007 in Lancashire, responding to a particularly belligerent approach to Fire Service Veterans by the Lancashire Fire Authority, obviously driven by the panic of the Public revelation of its Fire pension management meltdown, the Bugler commenced corresponding with the then Chairman of the Fire Authority Cllr Wilkinson (an ill-health retired Firefighter pensioner who had served under the command of the Bugler on his Watch).

Wilkinson had rather an interesting pension history himself. He was a former Firefighter of dubious distinction, who spent a substantial amount of his time playing football for the Brigade which resulted in a back injury which in time this Councillor claimed, unsuccessfully, was an ‘operational’ service injury acquired in the line of duty which of course would have factored directly into an enhanced injury pension. The Chief Fire Officer of the time, reflecting, stated he … ‘was having none of it’.

In an early attempt at resolution the Bugler wrote to Wilkinson on the incorrect assumption that he was unaware of the detail of what was happening within the Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service in his name, but in fact Wilkinson, far from being unaware, was the deceitful moving force behind a so called pension ‘Review’ which was carried out at his instigation to cover up this pension meltdown, a political embarrassment, which had been revealed on his watch.

This initial letter to Wilkinson was apparently ‘unofficially’ displayed on all LFRS station noticeboards and subsequently removed and banned from circulation. Go Here.

Cllr Wilkinson is currently a Labour Councillor  with Rossendale Borough Council where he is on the Appointments & Appeals Panel (No doubt dispensing his idea of largesse to his chums and bestowing his usual warped version of justice).

When challenged Wilkinson with his usual coterie of dubious hangars-on then went into immediate devious and misleading denial as the subsequent correspondence reflects. Firstly, he attempted entrapment of the Bugler; then he deceitfully denied any knowledge of his own ‘Review’; deceitfully denied he was in receipt of a Fire Brigade ill-health pension himself; deceitfully denied that he had manipulated his ‘Review’ to avoid scrutiny of his own ill-health pension; and even deceitfully denied he even knew his own LFRS Head of Human Resources called Hamilton!

This is the actual correspondence of that time which in fact self-impeaches Wilkinson both in the past and present  for no leopards have yet to be found which can change their spots. Go here.

This next dubious character Hamilton, whom Wilkinson denied even knowing, left his post under a joint non-disclosure agreement (leave or be sacked) as Head of Human Resources of the Greater Manchester Probation Trust for the alleged bullying and sexual harassment of his female staff. Go Here.

After his expulsion from the Trust he reappeared without the ‘benefit’ of Equal Opportunities job application legislation in the LFRS as, once more, the Head of Human Resources; and once more, bullying. Another predator who cannot change its spots.Go Here.

In matters pension a corrupt Hamilton, allied with Lister the head of the LCC Pensions Services his pension contractor, clearly worked for the exclusive advantage of the Lamplighter brethren, but failed when challenged about his blatant corruption, to respond to the Public questions put to him other than curiously to refer the matter to Warren whom it must be assumed is another corrupt Lamplighter. Go Here.

Hamilton, known in Firefighter circles as ‘Brendan the Barbarian’ is, much to their delight, currently hors de combat having apparently fallen from a ladder(of all things) and broken his legs and hip. As one serving Firefighter commented, perhaps it was Karma?

It is beyond credibility that the DCLG-FPT in early 2008 was simply unaware of these emerging series of scandals in Lancashire because the Editor wrote to the then Secretary of State Rt Hon Ms H. Blears M. P. concerning yet another dubious character called Harold the LFRS in-house solicitor no less, who it was reported by the Manchester Evening News, was abusing Electoral and other common laws for his own personal gain. Go Here.

Harold paid his fine and because he was deselected and reselected by his Labour Party for a ‘no hope’ ward he was not re-elected which reduced his personal income by some £15k. Later the Bugler received an unsolicited email from the Chair of the Conservatives in Salford City; it simply read, “Nice one!”

Even though reminded of the 1993 Law Lords ruling on ‘defamation’ and Local Authorities, the CFA continued to huff, puff, and bluster regularly when boxed into corners which demanded from them a display of public integrity and honest transparency.

The day will undoubtedly come when a Ministerial or Independent Inquiry will take place into the endemic corruption within the Lancashire Combined Fire Authority, including its somnambulant Councillors, and most particularly into its public failure of collective and individual lack of integrity.

In his continuing naivety at this early point the Bugler, following this contact with Secretary of State Blears, then drew the attention of this scandalous situation in Lancashire to her Junior Minister Mr.P.Dhanda M.P. Parliamentary Under Secretary of State(Fire Minister) at the DCLG.

It was hoped that his early intervention would lead to a quick mature resolution of an issue of some scandalous magnitude in terms of pension management failure; a failure which may well be afflicting the UK Fire Service as a whole and for which in pension management terms both he and his DCLG-FPT were ultimately responsible to Parliament, and one would assume, ought to have been interested.

In making a significant contribution to the resolution to this dispute the Editor also attached to his initial letter  to

Dhanda a comprehensive 54 page ‘Notional Study’ in a form of briefing note which ultimately found it way for a response to the then head of the DCLG-FPT, Mr. Martin Hill.

One again one would have thought that these facts having been brought to the attention of his immediate superior the ‘Fire Minister’ might have vaguely interested Mr.Hill, but it seemed not. His dismissive and disinterested reply concludes this tranche of contemporaneous correspondence. Go here.

In November 2013 the Bugler’s Barrister, Mr. J.M. Copplestone-Bruce(Inner Temple-Life Member)went off the record and wrote privately to the Home Secretary Rt Hon Mrs Theresa May M.P. flagging up the essential need for governmental attention and intervention in this dispute. Indeed this eminent Barrister offered his pro bono assistance to bring this matter to a long overdue resolution. Go Here.

As usual, it is probable that the Home Secretary’s Permanent Secretary ‘intercepted’ this letter even though it was written in very personal terms to Mrs.May, and in protecting their own, the correspondence was then ‘side footed’ in full circle back to the DCLG-FPT where eventually Mr. J.M. Copplestone-Bruce received a response from a civil servant of no particular note Mr.Mooney the deputy Firefighters’ Pension Team leader.

Go Here.

Once more Mooney’s response simply illustrates and confirms the complete disinterest and failure to engage within the DCLG Fire & Resilience Directorate and the Firefighters’ Pension Team in particular in all matters Fire pension. This, given the current examples of the £15 mil plus pension meltdown in Essex, Cheshire, Staffordshire and other Fire Authorities is without doubt is why the Fire Service is facing bankruptcy because of this lack of engagement by departmental civil servants.

Indeed worse than that, Mr. Mooney in his reply then sets out to deliberately mislead this eminent Barrister by stating that his Team has no direct responsibility in matters of pension dispute resolution. Pardon me?

This was in fact an intentional lie when he well knew, having (on the attendance record) in 2012 received no less than three comprehensive briefing from the Pensions Regulator that, with the enactment of the 2013 Public Service Pensions Act , he and the remainder of this Team would have a Statutorily defined duty in pension dispute resolution within Schedule 3 Para 15 of the Act which is defined thus… 

“The resolution of disputes and appeals (including the referral to a court of law of questions of law which under the scheme fall to be determined by the responsible authority)”

the ‘responsible authority’ is none other than the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team.

One can only comment that it is the height of career folly, or the epitome of well-practised arrogance, when one sets out to deliberately mislead a Barrister of such experience and stature and of course it brought its consequences.

Mr.Mooney’s ill-advised note drew the inevitable letter. Go Here.

And because of the usual indolent and discourteous lack of response a follow up letter also followed. Go Here.

Finally, the head of the Firefighters’ Pension Team Mr. Cornelius was sufficiently moved to reply to these two letters with a single one of his own.

What is of significant in his forced rambling response is his self evident professional  ignorance in all matters Fire pension.

The Reader will decide whether Mr. Cornelius is following Mr. Mooney in direct falsehood; or is being smoother, anodyne, and more disingenuous than Mooney when he seeks to quote irrelevant case law in respect of the Police; or quotes obsolete case law(to a Barrister?) which has already  been superseded by the enactment of the Public Service Pensions Act 2013; or he is simply abysmally ignorant of Fire Pension law which he purports to administer for the Fire Service and Parliament bearing in mind, which he publicly admits, that he has no formal pension management qualifications of any description. One wonders why he holds this appointment? Go Here.

Furthermore, and perhaps of greater significance to him as the ultimate manager of the 49 UK Fire Service Schemes, was his refusal to circulate the Bugler’s formal Complaint to the Pensions Ombudsman for the information of the members of the national Firefighters’ Pension Committee which he chose to ignore. If he had not done so he may well have prevented the next meltdown of pensions within the UK Fire Service following on from his current Essex debacle.

This unwarranted interference and refusal to circulate information is a flagrant disregard of his publicly listed duties as Chair of this national Committee which is to bring forward matters of “national interest” to its  Members. This obstructive act by a senior civil servant acting in ultra vires as ‘judge and jury’ did also by his refusal censor the information which should or should not be placed before individual members of that Committee. At the very least this was the pure obstruction of democracy.

In the event the Bugler simply obtained the email addresses of all those on this Committee and circulated the documentary evidence of the pension Complaint to them; evidence which is currently before the Pension Ombudsman.

The Bugler in this next attempt at engagement with this Pension Team then raised its comprehensive failures including its regular breaches of the Civil Service Code of Conduct with their Permanent Secretary who was also the Head of their Civil Service, none other than Sir Bob Kerslake. Go Here. 

Of particular note to those Readers who are monitoring the continuing issue of the unlawful deduction of Retirement Allowance from their Injury Award is the DCLG-FPT position in its usual ambivalence contained in the attachments to this latter correspondence. This issue is currently the subject of further action by a disabled FSV Mr.R.B in Lancashire as advised by the Bugler’s Barrister.

It was of course inevitable that a reply, if any, would be received from yet another civil servant of little merit who simply passed on another anodyne response drafted by Cornelius no doubt. Go Here.

No one can have the slightest confidence in an organisation that exhibits such wilful blindness and lack of engagement and is so lacking in both corporate and individual integrity.

They bring great disrepute on those civil servants who do conduct themselves with integrity and transparency true to the real traditions of the Civil Service and their Code of Conduct.

Yet we the Taxpayers seem to have been ‘groomed’ by this DCLG-FPT into the acquiescence of accepting their disdainful treatment of us as completely normal when in fact they ought to be subjected to investigation and if the evidence recovered supports the conclusion of their malign ineptitude then these civil servants ought to be disciplined and/or dismissed.

These clerks fail to consider that there is always a door of higher authority to knock on in all matters bureaucratic and they should, whilst they have their posts, reconsider and change their attitudes to their publicly paid duties.

If this is insufficient ‘encouragement’ then the Bugler should also remind them that no one is empowered, particularly civil servants of Parliament, to defy the will of Parliament, which is enshrined in the Bill of Rights of 1689 which states that freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.

This includes proceedings which produces Statute law to which, as both Citizens and particularly as civil servants of Parliament they are bound in law.  Which part of ‘proceedings’; ‘questioned’; and ‘place’ does the DCLG Firefighters Team not understand in their wilful failure to do their duty?

In a recent follow up to all this correspondence the Bugler contacted a senior DCLG Press Officer Mr.Simon Edwards(03034441201) to ask for a positional statement in response to the question… “Why has the DCLG Firefighters’ Pension Team failed to implement the full terms of the 2013 Public Service Pensions Act in respect of pension dispute resolution?”

A rather flustered and belligerent Mr. Edwards, who is the spokesperson for the DCLG-FPT and has only been in this appointment for 4 years clearly has little or no experience in dealing with polite and courteous media enquiries, promised early last month that he would provide a detailed departmental positional response.

Fortunately because of its past experience with this Team the Bugler did not hold its breath.

But it would be fair to speculate in the weeks that lie ahead for Mr.Edwards his ‘experience’ in answering questions on the DCLG-FPT latest debacle from a media, which will include aggressive mainstream national investigative reporters, it is likely that his competency and a reappraisal of his demeanour will grow exponentially…

Nevertheless he remains true to the tradition of institutionalised disengaged sloth which we foolish taxpayers fund.

Like Captain Smith of the Titanic it is not the tip of the iceberg one should worry about but the 9/10 of the ‘berg which lies below the surface.

After reflecting on the Bugler’s Special Report concerning the latest pension faux pas by the DCLG-FTP and  Fire Authorities perhaps these pension ‘experts’ ought to collectively focus on where the additional money is to come from at short notice if yet another faux pas is revealed to critical Public scrutiny.

Shortly the DCLG-FTP and these Fire Authorities will discover(if they have not done so already and are keeping quiet) that they have been underpaying thousands of  disabled Fire Service Veterans, Members of the ’92 Scheme, with incorrectly calculated ill-health pensions, to say nothing of the associated Injury Awards and Gratuities.

Certainly by this time the DCLG-FTP are fully aware of these implications laid out to them clearly in correspondence since 2013.

Correspondence which they have either chosen to avoid replying to or which when pressed have chosen to ignore, stonewall ,or sidestep, ploys which simply puts off the day of final accounting.

In Lancashire’s case their Scheme manager Warren simply initially chose to ignore their scandalous decades long maladministration and when pressed repeatedly by the Bugler’s barrister finally resorted to simple deceit, slight-of-hand with documents, and barefaced self-entrapping falsehood.

This will be reported in full shortly with all the detailed correspondence published so that the Public can judge for themselves.

So what is this next major faux pas and how have all these

 ‘experts’ failed to calculate the correct ill-health/injury pensions of thousands of FSVs since 1992?

The published Opinion on the Bugler lays out in absolute detail what this error is in legal terms easily understood by properly qualified lawyers(especially those current in pension law) and pension Actuaries

However, any attempt by the Bugler to explain this error in plain English carries with it the caveat against  misunderstanding and so that even a simple explanation may well err in parts.

Nevertheless simple questions will arise in the minds of all ’92 Scheme disabled FSVs Members (though it may well also affect those on the ’73 Scheme) e.g., does this error apply to my pensions?; if so, how will I know?; and does my Fire Authority owe me back pay with compound interest?

To the last point, first. If H.M.Treasury insisted that Essex, Cheshire, and Staffordshire pay back, with compound interest, the pension repayments which they had failed to make since 2006 then of course what is good enough for the Treasury is good enough for disabled Fire Service Veterans in respect of underpayments which have occurred to them for decades.

To follow this thread of major pension error to a natural conclusion a Q & A  algorithm will be provided on the Bugler shortly. Meantime interested FSVs would do well to read this section in preparation. Go Here.

If theses idle Councillors thought that this latest pension debacle will be the beginning and end of their pension troubles, then they have another think coming.

Interesting budgetary times, like the Iceberg, lie ahead for them.

A product of the recent Cameron government reshuffle was the appointment of  Ms Penelope Mordaunt M.P. as Junior(Fire) Minister at the DCLG.

One wonders what Cameron and his team were thinking about when they chose to drop Ms. Mordaunt into the middle of Fire Service industrial relations which are at their lowest ebb for at least a generation.

Perhaps the Cameron ‘boys’ have a whimsical sense of humour or perhaps it was in the nature of a poisoned chalice?

Perhaps Ms. Mordaunt has acquired a particular flair and experience with industrial relations over the past 4 years of Westminster life which makes her admirably qualified to heal this suppurating sore which Lewis left for her ?

Perhaps she is particularly competent in Pension law and Rules; the root cause of all this dissension?

As a presenter on ‘how to win wars’ and ‘influence people’ she is about to find out if her hypotheses will stand the test of the Fire Service which goes to ‘war’ 24/7 and daily ‘influences’ people by saving their lives.

Thus far she has made an ignominious start.

How, one wonders, do you win wars and influence people if you fail to meet and talk to them?

One also wonders to whom she will turn for advice and guidance?

Her forbear Lewis colloquially described as a ‘pension mugger’ on the picket line billboards or to her stalwarts on the Firefighters’ Pension Team who just presented her with an example of their latest ‘skills’ in debacles in Essex and other Fire Authorities.

Whilst any improvement is to be welcomed, especially the departure of Lewis, who simply stonewalled the party line and made no attempt to ‘meet’ and understand the deeply held opinions and values within the Fire Service, perhaps Ms. Mordaunt’s brief exposure, albeit as an amateur matelot within the realms of the Royal Navy might give her some insight into understanding comradeship, devotion to duty, and the principles of fair play.

Ms. Mordaunt would be well advised to be her own helmsman and pay little heed to advice from either Lewis or her failed civil servants.

It has always been this Editor’s personal philosophy that, if given a promotional opportunity, one should always follow a failure, and thus currently she has been presented with an opportunity of a political lifetime in succeeding where Lewis failed miserably.

Perhaps this Latin proverb might cause her to reflect and start again… “Aut inveniam viam aut faciam” … “I shall either find a way or make one…I know all decent Firefighters will, in resolution, be prepared to meet her halfway along her way, but not the way made by a moribund and failed coalition government.

Finally the Bugler would like to draw Ms. Mordaunt’s attention to a recent statement from her Firefighters’ Pension Team in respect of the Essex debacle… “Essex has jumped the gun, given absolutely no decision has been made on this issue, and it is something that the department will be discussing with the fire authority in more detail in due course.”.

Anyone with any common-sense reading this in plain English will conclude that Ms.Mordaunt’s Firefighters’ Pension Team is going into its usual knee jerk, job protecting reaction of cover up, allied with a proposed attempt of complicit conspiracy with Essex in which they proposed to do a ‘deal’ behind closed doors keeping themselves and their embarrassing failures from Public scrutiny,culpability, and accountability.

There is a simple question.

Can the Taxpayer afford a  £15mil + ‘fig leaf’ to hide the DCLG-FPT pension management failures and cover their questionable careers and dubious activities?

Here is another question.

How many other Taxpayer fig leafs have this ‘team’ used in the past to cover up their expensive failures?

It would be unwise for Ms. Mordaunt’s to go there because it is with such sleight-of-hand and shady manoeuvres that Junior Minister’s lose their appointments and the political wilderness beckons.

But such civil servants would hardly raise their heads or wave a handkerchief in goodbye, would they?

The facts, in mixing metaphors, are that H.M. Treasury’s horse has bolted and the DCLG-FPT ‘cat is out of the bag’ and a decision has already been made by the Treasury that Essex and others will repay the money with compound interest and as usual a dim-witted DCLG Firefighters Pension Team is behind the flight envelope.

As a flight instructor once intoned…get behind the flight envelope and it is a matter of physics that you are going to crash and burn…

Let us all hope there is a good well maintained Fire Station near Eland House for these ‘pension pilots’ at her base when they bale out and leave Ms. Mordaunt behind?

Essex CFRS in smouldering unrest for quite simply, forever, has finally gone into political and pension meltdown and complete chaos reigns as the CFO David Johnson is re-suspended after 11 months holiday of full pay. Will anarchy follow?

The Conservative Chairman CC ‘Tony Hedley in a fatuous statement says that this suspension is a ‘neutral’ act? Where does he get this strange language from, Planet Essex?

The CFO is under suspension because he is self evidently a complete managerial ‘catastrophe’, to borrow the word from the Essex FBU, pending a disciplinary investigation, and one hopes a truly independent investigation of his complete management chaos, which just happens to involve complete bankruptcy of the Service he commands as well.

The buck stops with him and his Chairman, now that is hardly ‘neutral’  is it?

And whilst they are about it the next government should investigate the failure of ‘management’ by the elected Members on the Essex Fire Authority who have finally woken up in Dingley Dell and put down their abacuses from counting their expenses.

As other cowboys and cowgirls used to say another quiet day back at the ranch…

Essex Firefighters are not alone when it comes to the political failure of Public accountability by their elected ‘leaders’ as the Citizens of Lancashire know only too well.

An expensive consultant at £1250 per diem has been hired in and will state the obvious that the Conservative Chairman CC ‘Tony Hedley and his 24 other Elected Members have as usual been in sleepy hollow snoozing whilst Essex goes up in flames around them…no doubt playing on their liars as well when accounting time comes around…

Here is the smoldering unrest as it unfolded and escalated into catastrophic meltdown since the Morning Bugler revealed the beginning of this debacle on the 1^st  September 2014…

BBC 12^th November 2014.

Essex Fire Service inquiry into ‘intimidation’

An inquiry is being set up into claims of an “intimidatory culture” at Essex Fire Service.

The Essex Fire Authority launched the “root and branch” investigation after recent incidents which “threatened the excellent, professional reputation” of the service.

At an extraordinary meeting, members voted unanimously to commission a wide-ranging inquiry.

It was shown a confidential report by the acting chief fire officer.

Essex Fire Authority chairman Anthony Hedley said: “The authority emphasises the scope of the proposed inquiry will exclude, for as long as they remain sub judice, the events which; and individuals who are the subject of criminal proceedings before the crown court at Basildon, concerning allegations of misconduct at the former Tilbury Fire Station between 1987 and 1998.”

BBC 26^th November 2014.

FBU members ‘bullying’ Essex Fire Service workers

Adam Eckley said victims of intimidation were unwilling to make formal complaints

Fire service employees are being bullied for not being part of the trade union, the acting chief executive of Essex Fire and Rescue Service has said.

In a letter to the Fire Brigades Union Essex, Adam Eckley said members told colleagues their working lives would be “unbearable” if they did not join.

However, the union said the allegations were without evidence and an “attempt to slur the reputation” of the union.

It said it took all allegations of bullying “very seriously”.

In the letter, seen by the BBC, Mr Eckley said allegations had been made that a “minority” of union members were refusing to talk to colleagues who were not part of the FBU.

“Derogatory comments” had been made about non-members, and threats were made while trying to coerce employees to join the union, Mr Eckley said.

He said: “Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, recipients of such alleged acts of intimidation and victimisation, are unwilling to make a formal complaint for fear of reprisals.”

Earlier this month, the Essex Fire Authority announced it was launching an inquiry into claims of an “intimidatory culture” at the fire service.

Alan Chinn-Shaw, Essex FBU brigade secretary, said Mr Eckley’s allegations were an attempt to “intimidate FBU members” during an ongoing dispute about pensions.

“The FBU finds it had to believe that any of the allegations you have made have any foundation,” he said in a letter.”

“The Essex FBU have brought to the attention of the service, on a number of occasions, numerous incidents of bullying, harassment of and provocative behaviour towards FBU members.”

“This includes two incidents involving two of our of officials, all of which the service failed or refused to deal with appropriately.”

“The service’s inconsistent and heavy-handed approach to discipline has done little to dispel the widespread feeling amongst our members that the service continues to seek to manage through a culture of fear and intimidation.”

BBC 22^nd April 2015

Essex chief fire officer David Johnson suspended.

David Johnson has been on long-term leave since June, but had been due to return to work.

The fire service and Essex Fire Authority have both refused to state the grounds for the suspension.

A Fire Brigades Union (FBU) spokesman said he was “not surprised” by the announcement.

Tony Hedley, chairman of the fire authority, said: “At this stage, I can offer no further comment to allow due process to take place.”

“It should be remembered that suspension is a neutral act.”

Mr Johnson has had the top job at the fire service since 2005.

Members of the FBU took strike action in March over call centre shift patterns and in 2012 there was another walkout over crewing of appliances.

‘More uncertainty’

Alan Chin-Shaw, secretary of the Essex branch of the FBU, said he was “not surprised – it’s just another catastrophic event from Essex County Fire & Rescue Service”.

“Over the last few years we’ve had two trade disputes that have been totally avoidable, the complete collapse of a brand new mobilising system, we’ve had the [now retired] deputy chief fire officer [Gordon Hunter] being suspended and it seems to be part of the day-to-day running of the service,” he said.

“It’s just more uncertainty, but it seems no-one is exempt from the disciplinary processes within the brigade.”

“I hope he’s dealt with in the appropriate manner and in line with the service’s policies and the ACAS [Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service] Code, which is something not all my members are afforded.”

The fire service said acting chief fire officer Adam Eckley would continue in his post.

BBC-23^rd April 2015.

Fire Brigades Union ‘concern’ over £1,250-a-day consultant cost

The review was commissioned by Essex Fire Authority in response to a confidential report about a number of incidents that “threatened the excellent, professional reputation” of the service “Major concerns” have been voiced after a fire service hired a £1,250-a-day consultant to review its “culture”.

Essex Fire Authority decided in a private meeting to hire a consultant to lead a review of claims of bullying and “intimidatory culture” at the service.

Minutes from the meeting show although nobody disputed the appointment, there were “some reservations” about “likely costs”.

The fire authority, which scrutinises the fire service, has yet to comment.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said it was concerned at both the cost and handling of the matter.

The review – initially referred to as an investigation late last year – was commissioned in response to a confidential report about a number of incidents which “threatened the excellent, professional reputation” of the service.

Speaking to the BBC, Alan Chinn-Shaw, secretary of the Essex branch of the FBU, accused the authority of spending “a vast amount of money” at a time when the “budget for front line fire fighting is being decimated”.

“We have got major concerns at the amount of money being spent,” he said.

However, he also said the union would “engage” with the review because it was in everybody’s interests that relations within the service were improved.

“We believe if there are benefits to be had from this review then it could be worthwhile in the long run,” he added.