In relation to matters on the agenda, seek declarations of interest from Members, in accordance with the provisions of the Fire Authority’s Code of Conduct for Members.

There were none.

Apologies had been received from Councillors Marlow-Eastwood, Osborne, Shing, Theobald and Ungar.  Councillors Hollidge, Meadows, Tutt and Wright had been appointed to attend as substitutes for this meeting.

Any Members wishing to raise urgent items are asked, wherever possible to notify the Chairman before the start of the meeting.  In so doing they must state the special circumstances which they consider justify the matter being considered urgently

There were none.

The following question was received from a Member of the Public.  The questioner attended the meeting and asked their question in person, they will also receive a written copy of the response.

The question and response are included in these minutes as a matter of public record.

Public Question from Leo Cacciatore, Battle resident & Fire Brigades Union Rep. Battle & Bohemia Road:

“How is the service going to work towards securing the 18 fire engines detailed in the IRMP across the service and secure more resilient fire cover in our rural areas to ensure an effective response and one that meets our overall standard?”

Response:

The agreed Integrated Risk Management Plan, 2020-2025 identified seven areas of change.

Workstream 1, The Operational Resilience Plan, seeks to enhance the 15 appliances provided in the existing Core Station policy to 18 appliances with a further 6 appliances for resilience purposes on a delayed response to support with reliefs.  The current IRMP is not due to complete until 2025/26 but it is envisaged we will move to the finalised Operational Resilience Plan during 2024/25.

The IRMP team continues to update a range of policies to enable a more agile approach to crewing and maximising appliance availability.

As part of the Integrated Risk Management Plan Workstream 1 and wider work, the Service has already implemented a number of key work areas including:

·         A Flexible Resource Pool, which provides the Service with a pool of deployable assets and staff to maximise availability.

·         A logistics management function, bringing together the centralised management of crewing through the Logistics & Control Support team, which is expected to go live in 2024/25.  The function will enable oversight of crewing levels across the Service and move staff to where they can best impact appliance availability.

·         An investment in improving the welfare facilities at a number of stations to facilitate the posting of firefighters to those stations throughout the 24 hour period. This will now include both Rye and Battle fire stations.

·         An On Call review, which recently made a number of recommendations designed to enhance availability and ensure a more sustainable model of delivery.

·         An ‘Availability’ Strategic Position Statement that currently requires a minimum of 50% availability from the On-call stations. Any of the On-call stations that drop below the 50% target will have an improvement plan coordinated by the designated local Station Manager, that outlines plans to maximise appliance availability.

·         An organisational focus on reducing the current levels of sickness and capability related absence. Both short and long-term sickness absence is having a significant effect on staff availability, resulting in excess overtime costs causing pressure on the remaining staff and delays in the integrated risk management plan implementation. Through the People Services Directorate, the Service is exploring a range of measures to ensure an early return to full operational duties of its highly-trained and professional staff.

Despite the above pressures, we continue to meet our on-call appliance service standards for the first arriving appliance in 15 minutes with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 182.

There were none.

To approve the non-confidential Minutes of the last meeting held on 7 December 2024

RESOLVED -  That the minutes of the meeting held on 7 December 2023 be approved and signed by the Chairman.

The Chairman will call the item numbers of the remaining items on the open agenda.  Each item which is called by any Member shall be reserved for debate.  The Chairman will then ask the Fire Authority to adopt without debate the recommendations and resolutions contained in the relevant reports for these items which have not been called.

Members reserved the following items for debate:

249      Fire Authority Service Planning processes for 2024/25 and beyond – Revenue Budget 2024/25 and Capital Asset Strategy 2024/25 to 2028/29

250      Treasury Management Strategy 2024/25

251      Annual Pay Policy Statement 2024/25

Report of the Chief Fire Officer and Assistant Director Resources/Treasurer

The Fire Authority considered the report of the Chief Fire Officer (CFO) and Assistant Director Resources/Treasurer (ADR/T) presenting the Fire Authority’s draft Revenue Budget 2024/25, Capital Strategy 2024/25 – 2028/29 and Medium Term Finance Plan for 2024/25 – 2028/29 for approval.  The ADR/T introduced the report to the meeting, outlining the changes since the initial proposals presented to the Policy & Resources Panel at its meeting in January 2024 and since the publication of the agenda for this meeting.  Funding in the published budget papers had increased by £0.620m compared with the Policy & Resources Panel papers due primarily to a forecast increase in the Minimum Funding Guarantee Grant of £0.516m and income from Council Tax of £0.104m.  Since the Agenda had been published the Final Local Government Finance Settlement had been confirmed, the additional funding guarantee grant was £75,000 lower than anticipated, the new pensions grant was £65,000 less than had been budgeted for, the Protection grant was £63,000 lower than expected, but there had been a one off pensions admin grant of £96,000.  This meant that there was a reduction in funding to that in the published papers of close to £0.102m.  There were some presentational corrections to figures in the published report that make no impact on the recommendations but for transparency would be amended, under delegated powers, and published after the meeting.

The ADR/T reminded the Authority that they were once again working within a one year settlement, standalone Fire Authorities had received the smallest core spending power (CSP) increases, due to the cash flat roll in of the Fire Pensions Grant and lower council tax flexibilities, East Sussex’s increase was 4.9% and it was one of 31 CFAs that needed to receive the Minimum Funding Guarantee grant.  Despite extensive lobbying, no additional precept flexibility had been granted to Fire & Rescue Authorities therefore the highest increase permitted without a referendum was 2.99%, this was disappointing when compared to Police Crime Commissioners (including those that were responsible for Fire too) who were permitted to increase by £13.

The ADR/T welcomed the fact that the existing Pensions Grant had been rolled into the settlement but added that a new Pensions grant totalling £83m across the Fire Sector had been awarded to offset the cost of increased employer contributions from 2024/25.  However, the allocation meant that the Service had received less than had been budgeted for.  In addition, there being a reduction to our allocation for the Protection grant rather than an increase to reflect risk was disappointing and a follow up meeting was being sought with the Home Office. 

The ADR/T presented Members with a balanced budget for 2024/25 which included pressures of £3.5m (£2.3m pay and £0.5m price inflation); growth bids of £0.4m; savings of £1.9m and £0.6m drawdown from reserves.  Council tax was proposed to increase by 2.99% taking Band D to £107.49.

Following the funding changes it was no longer necessary to take Tranche 4 (East of the County) of the savings proposals as approved by the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 186.

Report of the Assistant Director Resources/Treasurer

The Fire Authority considered the report of the Assistant Director Resources/Treasurer (ADR/T) presenting for approval the Treasury Management Strategy, policy statement and the Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP) Statement 2024/25.  The report contained recommendations about the borrowing limits, prudential indicators and limits, the investment strategy and policy as required by Section 3 (1) of the Local Government Act 2003 and the Prudential Code for Capital Finance 2017.  The emphasis continued to be on security and liquidity and the strategy and limits were consistent with the proposed capital programme and revenue budget.  It was impossible in practical terms to eliminate all credit risk and the Fire Authority continued to seek to be prudent in its investments.

The Fire Authority was recommended to approve borrowing limits to give flexibility for any future consideration in undertaking new external long-term/replacement borrowing should the need arise or market conditions prove favourable.  The Fire Authority was recommended to approve the Investment Strategy, noting that there were no changes proposed for 2024/25, any introduction of longer term instruments would result in an increased, but appropriate, level of risk to the investment portfolio.  To the 31 December 2023 the Fire Authority had earned £671,988 in investment interest at an average rate of 4.89%, a level of return broadly consistent with recent available Investment benchmarking.

Members were grateful for the report.  There was some dissatisfaction with the choice of wording by the Service’s Treasury Advisors in Appendix 4 and it would perhaps have been more accurate to describe the cost of living crisis as “continuing” rather than “fading”, but it was understood that this was the professional economic overview of another organisation and therefore not subject to amendment.

The Fire Authority referred to the anticipated need to borrow in the short to medium-term, para. 4.1, in particular regarding borrowing in advance of need and asked how much borrowing had been undertaken so far.  The ADR/T reminded the meeting that the Fire Authority had not taken out any new external borrowing since January 2008, all spending had been financed internally.  This had included use of capital receipts from the disposal of Service housing and the sale of the old Headquarters, which had between them generated c. £10m.  The ADR/T explained that an advantage of borrowing in advance of need was that if the opportunity presented itself the Treasurer could borrow early if the terms were favourable, at this stage, based on the current rates any borrowing was likely to be inter-authority rather than external.

RESOLVED – The Fire Authority agreed to:

      i.        approve the Treasury Management Strategy and policy statement for 2024/25;

     ii.        determine that for 2024/25 the Authorised Limit for borrowing shall be £21.6m;

    iii.        adopt the prudential indicators as set out in Appendix 2;

   iv.        approve the Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP) Statement for 2024/25 as set out in Appendix 3; and

     v.        approve the Annual Investment Strategy for 2024/25 as set out in Section 5.

Report of the Assistant Director People Services

The Fire Authority considered the report of the Assistant Director People Services (ADPS) seeking approval for the Fire Authority’s Annual Pay Policy Statement for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, in line with the requirements of the Localism Act 2011.  The Act imposed a duty on relevant local authorities to prepare pay policy statements for each financial year, the statement must be approved by 31 March 2024.  There were no changes proposed to the Fire Authority’s existing policies on pay or its pay scales.  It reflected the previous Pay Policy updated to include the outcomes of national pay settlements, decisions of the Principal Officer Appointments Panel (in relation to Principal Officer’s pay) and changes to the Firefighters and Local Government pension Schemes.

Members thanked officers for a comprehensive report.  Members asked how many individuals were employed by the Service on the lowest salary scale of Job Family (JF) 1, the ADPS confirmed that although they did not have the numbers available, they would follow this up outside of the meeting.  It was then asked how the representative lowest salary shown in the statement was set and why this was a mean salary and not JF1 and whether there was any plan to reduce the ratio between highest and lowest earners.  The ADPS explained that the Authority was required to publish its own definition of ‘lowest paid’ employees based on how it applied to the Authority’s workforce, the definition used and the statement template had been in place for many years and was felt to be representative.  The Chief Fire Officer (CFO) added that whilst the Pay Policy Statement was very clearly specified as to the information it could contain, the Service also published a separate pay report which included more detail and allowed for more flexibility in what could be included.  The CFO reminded the Authority that the policy was driven by the National Joint Council (NJC) and that the pay scales for the three terms and conditions books (Gold, Grey and Green) represented at the Service were negotiated and agreed at a national level.  Whilst there was some small flexibility in regard to local bonuses and allowances the Authority were beholden to the NJC Pay levels.

RESOLVED – The Fire Authority agreed to approve the Annual Pay Policy Statement as set out in Appendix 1 to the Report.