Meeting documents

To approve, and sign as a correct record, the Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 19 September 2018 (Item 2)

RESOLVED –

That the Minutes of the meeting of the Executive Committee held on Wednesday 19 September 2018, be approved and signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

To approve, and sign as a correct record, the Exempt Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 19 September 2018

To consider Item 8

RESOLVED –

That the Exempt Minutes of the meeting of the Executive committee held on Wednesday 19 September 2018, be approved and signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

To consider Item 5

The Lead Member for Finance, IT and Procurement advised Members that this report provided a further update regarding the national status of the programme and the impact on regional and local transition.

The Programme Manager advised Members that the decision had been made and approved for the programme to move to an incremental rollout rather than the original proposal of a ‘big bang’ approach. The National Fire Chiefs Council had released a statement in support of this decision and the general feeling was that this was likely to be a more successful approach. Work to update the full business case by the end of the year was underway, although it was unclear whether user organisations would have to formally sign up to this, as they had for the previous version. The projected date for the Airwave Service to be switched off has been extended to December 2022. BFRS would continue to work with the South Central and Thames Valley partners to establish adoption timelines that link in with Thames Valley Fire Control Service.

The Programme Manager advised Members that there was also the question of costs involved in the proposed parallel running of the ESN and Airwave Systems until transition was complete.  This was also highlighted in a joint letter to Sir Philip Rutnam from the NFCC and LGA (Appendix C).

The Programme Manager had attended the annual Airwave Forum last week where the decision to extend the life of the airwave service was discussed.  Attendees had been advised that there would be a great deal of work to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure so that this extension was successful. It would appear that a lot of the work had started and would continue through to the end of 2020.  Some of the work would impact on services, but it was not known to what extent at this stage.

The Head of Service Development took Members through a copy of a letter to the NFCC and LGA in response to their letter to Sir Philip Rutnam (mentioned above), which had recently been received.

A Member asked if the current system worked, why were services changing to the new proposition and was advised that although the current mobile network was working it was only 2G which was now redundant technology. The benefits the Service had been sold about ESMCP was that it would be able to use a lot more data. At present the ability to use data was limited and expensive.

RESOLVED –

That the report be noted.

To consider Item 6

The Lead Member for Finance, IT and Procurement advised Members that this report presented the provisional revenue and capital outturn position and debt management performance to 30 September 2018.

The Principal Accountant advised Members that with a revenue budget of £28.492m, managers had positively and proactively controlled spend and forecast an underspend of £204k, this represented a 0.72% variance against the budget. Members would note that the forecast underspend at quarter 1 was approximately £600k and this had dropped in quarter 2 to £204k. The main reason for the reduction was due to a decision made to set aside £366k in reserves to cover the cumulative effect of additional 1% pay increases in 2019-20.

A Member asked if the Direct Employee Costs at Table 2 could also include the apprenticeship costs to reflect more accurately the actual year to date and forecast outturn staffing costs and was advised that yes this would be included for the next meeting.

RESOLVED –

That the latest projected outturn forecast for the Authority as at 30 September 2018 be noted.

To note that the next meeting of the Committee will be held on Wednesday 6 February 2019 at 10am

The Committee noted that the next Executive Committee meeting would be held on Wednesday 6 February 2019 at 10.00am.

THE CHAIRMAN CLOSED THE MEETING AT 10.32 AM