Report of the Monitoring Officer

The Fire Authority considered the report of the Monitoring Officer (MO) informing Members of the progress of the second stage of the review into the Fire Authority’s constitutional arrangements and setting out proposed amendments.  The Deputy Chief Fire Officer (DCFO) advised Members that Stage 2 of the project to review and update the Authority’s constitutional arrangements was complete and this report presented some substantial amendments and updated sections.  It had not been possible to complete the review of all sections of the Constitution and a further set of proposed changes was anticipated to be brought to the Authority in December 2021.

The DCFO notified those present to a textual error within the membership of the Principal Officers Appointments Panel in the version that had been circulated, this error had been corrected to state that an additional member was appointed from the “majority/largest” party.

Members were content with the proposed changes but had some queries prior to approval of the resolutions.  Some Members felt that the authorisation amount of £1m given to the Chief Fire Officer (CFO) under the Emergency Procedures was too high.  The CFO explained that this authorisation was associated with the exigencies of operational emergencies in particular the enacting of the National Coordination and Advisory Framework (NCAF).  The probability of needing to exercise this authorisation was very low, however in the event of an incident of the nature of Grenfell Tower or the Derbyshire Dam burst, the CFO would not expect to have to come to the Fire Authority Members to enact NCAF during an incident.  The CFO reminded Members that this was not one of the proposed amendments within this report and that it had been in place, as agreed by the Fire Authority, for approximately 15 years.  The Treasurer added that as an Authority appointed Statutory Officer, he was satisfied with this authorisation limit and it was not cause for concern.  The CFO could only act on this authorisation in consultation with the Treasurer, who had a fiduciary duty to the Fire Authority and Council Taxpayers and that an Urgency Panel would always be convened as soon as possible after such an event.  Members thanked officers for their explanation and confirmed that they did not want to make any changes that would inhibit the CFO from doing what was necessary in an emergency and were satisfied with the reasons for the amount set.

Members requested an additional change to the Terms of Reference for the Principal Officer Appointments Panel (POAP) allowing panel members to be involved in the shortlisting of the posts of DCFO and Treasurer as well as the CFO as currently detailed.  The DCFO explained that this had been the situation in the past and it had been changed to remove this requirement some years ago as Members had previously been unable to meet and delegated shortlisting to the CFO.  There were concerns that if a quorum could not be achieved then the recruitment process would be delayed.  Members asked if this shortlisting could be conducted virtually, the Deputy Monitoring Officer (DMO) confirmed that the current law governing Authority meetings would not permit this so any shortlisting would have to take place in person.  The Authority accepted this and still wanted shortlisting to be conducted by the POAP, a resolution to this effect was added prior to the Authority agreeing the report.

RESOLVED – The Fire Authority agreed to:

       i.         approve with immediate effect the changes to the East Sussex Fire Authority’s Constitution outlined in section 2 of this report, and in Appendices A to I inclusive;

     ii.         amend the Terms of Reference for the Principal Officer Appointments Panel to add that the Panel be involved in shortlisting for the posts of Deputy Chief Fire Officer and Treasurer, such change not to come into effect until the conclusion of the current DCFO selection process;

    iii.         authorise the Authority’s Chief Fire Officer & Chief Executive to take all steps necessary or incidental to the implementation of the changes agreed by the Authority, and to amend and re-publish the constitutional documents to reflect those amendments; and

    iv.         note the intention to bring a further report to the Fire Authority in December 2021 proposing additional updates to the Constitution.