Chief fire officer farce continues
Commissioner Stephen Mold’s preferred appointment for the county’s chief fire officer did not turn up to yesterday’s confirmation hearing
By Sarah Ward
A retired senior police officer put forward by Northamptonshire’s police, fire and crime commissioner Stephen Mold to become the county’s new fire chief did not show up for her appointment to be confirmed.
Personal reasons were cited by the commissioner for the no show of Nikki Watson at yesterday’s meeting of the police, fire and crime panel, whose role it is to ratify appointments of senior staff to Northamptonshire police, the county’s fire service and the commissioner’s office. The commissioner said Mrs Watson was looking forward to going before the panel at a later date.
As a former assistant chief constable Mrs Watson’s nomination had been criticised by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), who instead wanted a top boss who had operational fire experience. It also comes after months of scandal in the fire service.
If Mrs Watson had been appointed yesterday she would have been the fourth leader in six months. Former fire chief Mark Jones suddenly left the service in July, and was controversially replaced by Nicci Marzec, who is a close friend of commissioner Mold and had been promoted after running his office as head of service.
Nicci Marzec stood down just ten days after her appointment after intense scrutiny on her position and a backlash from firefighters who were not happy with the appointment of someone without operational fire experience. Deputy fire officer Simon Tuhill was appointed as interim in September, but he was overlooked by the commissioner who preferred police officer Watson as the candidate.
Chair of the panel, Cllr David Smith said Nikki Watson had been ‘called away very late in the day’, said ‘he had no further details’ and the panel would be advised further at a later date.
The FBU had decided to boycott the meeting, and members of the public were not able to submit any questions to the hearing after chair David Smith had decided to change the procedure.
Following Nicci Marzec quitting her role as head of Stephen Mold’s office, there has also been a vacancy in the office for chief executive and yesterday the panel heard from the commissioner’s candidate Jonny Bugg.
Mr Bugg, who has worked in national and local government and has a background in children’s services said the three things he wanted to bring to the role were ‘stability, strength and innovation’.
He said he had been the senior civil servant for fire policy and when asked about challenging authority he said he was used to advising politicians.
He said he would make it his business to get out and about on the patch.
Asked by panel member Labour’s Cllr Zoe McGhee about innovation he said he did not regard the police and fire service as one seamless group but there was more the services could work together and much common ground.
He said:
“I think there is more we can do in supporting the community in health terms. One innovation I am particularly keen to explore is where the capacity lies for police, fire and health to work together in the interest of communities.”
The panel then went into a private session to discuss the appointment and the announcement of whether Mr Bugg will get the job will be made soon.
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New fire chief job up in smoke
Northamptonshire’s police, fire and crime commissioner has admitted his friendship with a colleague he promoted to head of the fire service has meant she cannot . . .
Departed controversial chief fire officer used crime commissioner’s business premises to work from
Northamptonshire’s shortest serving chief fire officer Nicci Marzec used to regularly work from the unrelated business premises of under pressure crime commissioner Stephen Mold. Yesterday Marzec, who was controversially appointed earlier this month as Northants chief fire officer, only to stand down ten days later, resigned working as head of crime commissioner Stephen Mold’s office, quitting the £104,000 role she worked at for several years.
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For some reason the commissioner seems obsessed with appointing a chief fire officer who has no previous experience of the profession. I can only think that he doesn’t want anyone who might have an affinity and empathy with firefighters. This is pettiness of the first order and sends a signal to firefighters that he fails to realise his mistakes of the past and is determined to get his own way. This commissioner has lost his way and deserves to lose his post. Roll on the May elections.
If you look through the archives of the Police, Fire and Crime Panel, you will find that the chairman has exercised the option to go into "secret session" quite a lot. While this a reasonable thing to do while confidential personal information is being discussed, it undermines the essential scrutiny function of the panel. In a circumstance where the Commissioner is legitimately criticisable for the way in which he conducts his job, and we are in exactly that circumstance now and have been for several years, it is highly undesirable, undemocratic and further undermining of public confidence to keep any scrutiny of him behind locked doors. The purpose of the panel is, ultimately, to protect the public, not to protect Mr Mold.
An example of the value of public scrutiny is that it appears, from what is in the public domain, to be likely that Mr Adderley, the now suspended Chief Constable, claimed to the panel and to the Commissioner during his recruitment to have previously been a Royal Navy officer of Commander rank. This would have been easily verifiable, but it seems not to have been done. Now, I notice, Mr Bugg yesterday claimed to the panel to have been, in the past, "the senior civil servant for fire policy" (presumably in the Home Office). Taken at face value, I would expect that holding such an important post meant he was at around Senior Principal grade, and it would be nice to know if that, again, easily verifiable, claim is really true, and why he now is applying for the rather more junior position of being Mr Mold's dogsbody. Public scrutiny of Mr Bugg's claim would provide public confidence in his ability, whereas secret absence of scrutiny merely suggests that he might, in due course, be found to be another overpaid, under-capable, Walter Mitty.
With regard, specifically, to the use of "secret sessions", I would ask the following, carefully worded, questions, and hope that one of the non-Conservative panel members might be willing to give a (possibly equally carefully worded) set of answers.
1., During the "secret session" on Mr Bugg's appointment yesterday, was any genuinely private information about any person revealed?
2., If the answer to (1.) is "no", then was anything else revealed that legitimately should not have been in the public domain?
3., If the answer to (1.) or (2.) is "yes", then was that information actually relevant to the wider discussion, or was it something, perhaps small and discrete, that could have been resolved outside the meeting, and was only introduced into the meeting in the first place to provide a fig-leaf justification for going into "secret session"? In other words, would you reasonably conclude that the big objective all along was to go into "secret session" (for example, to protect the reputation of the Commissioner), and the means to achieve that, without breaking the law, was to introduce some small and specious piece of information that "had" to be protected?