THE WEST MIDLANDS FIRE AUTHORITY THAT RUNS FROM RESPONSIBILITY WHILE ITS FIREFIGHTERS RUN INTO FLAMES
One runs into danger. The other is meant to run the books. Sadly one isn't up to the job...
The West Midlands Fire Service does the dangerous work. The West Midlands Fire Authority does the political work. One runs into danger. The other is meant to run the books, challenge the Fires Service leadership, scrutinise decisions and protect the integrity of the Service. When the Authority collapses, the Fire Service suffers. When the Authority hides, the Service burns alone. And that is exactly what is happening here
.The West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority (WMFRA) has issued a polished apology, declaring that the suspension of a statutory officer in 2024 was “unreasonable” and “unlawful”. Strong words on the surface. But beneath the surface? Silence.
Silence about the multimillion-pound underspend that blindsided the organisation.
Silence about the internal mistrust that had been building for months.
Silence about the leadership collapses that left the Authority wobbling like a folding chair.
Silence about the government intervention now hanging over them like a storm cloud.
Instead, Chair Councillor Cathryn Bayton asked the public to accept an apology and move along quietly. Move along from what, exactly?
As someone who once sat on this Authority, I recognise the signs. It had its quirks and its power plays then, but it was not governed by the somnambulant cast now drifting through its meetings. Scrutiny meant something once. It meant pressing for answers, demanding clarity, holding officers to account. Now? It looks like theatre for people who don’t want to be there.
LEADERSHIP THAT BUCKLED BEFORE THE FLAMES EVEN ARRIVED
The Authority’s instability didn’t start with Bayton.
It didn’t start with the suspension she now apologises for.
It didn’t start with the underspend.
It started when the organisation was hit by a tragedy: the sudden death of Chief Fire Officer Wayne Brown in December 2023. The shock reverberated through the Service, and exposed a culture under strain long before any audit was written or KC appointed.
Then came the political fallout.
Councillor Greg Brackenridge, the Authority’s Chair at the time, resigned after public claims he had made about serving in the Royal Marines turned out not to be accurate. The Authority was already grieving one leader. Now it had lost another, and this time through a scandal of integrity, not tragedy.
The Service needed stability.
What it got was drift.
THE UNDERSEND THEY STILL HOPE NO ONE NOTICES
While the Authority struggled to steady itself, the financial alarms were blaring. Reports emerged showing a significant and unforecasted underspend, with media investigations placing the combined revenue and capital figure near £12 million. Whether the exact total ends up being £10 million or £12 million scarcely matters, the mere existence of such a black hole should have set off every warning light in the building.
An underspend of that size doesn’t slip by unnoticed.
It doesn’t appear by magic.
It reflects one thing: nobody was paying attention.
Training decisions were made on faulty assumptions.
Workforce planning was based on incorrect numbers.
Operational readiness was quietly eroded while councillors nodded through reports without understanding their consequences.
Bayton didn’t mention any of that in her apology.
Not a whisper.
WHEN A KC ARRIVES, SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG
And now comes the part the Authority hopes the public doesn’t understand.
The government has sent in Fenella Morris KC, a senior barrister with the authority to examine whether WMFRA is even capable of governing itself. A Best Value Inspection is no routine procedure. It is the last civilised step before commissioners arrive with the power to override local politicians entirely.
Whitehall doesn’t dispatch a KC because things are going well.
They send one when they smell smoke, the kind that usually precedes flames.
If these failures had occurred in a council chamber, we would already see emergency powers in place.
But this is a fire authority, and for reasons that defy logic, the bar for intervention seems higher, even though the stakes are greater.
A council mismanaging bins is one thing.
A fire authority mismanaging itself is another.
Lives depend on the latter.
COLONEL OLIVER LEE OBE: “NO TRUST… NO TEAM… BIZARRE”
As the Authority stumbled from crisis to crisis, Colonel Oliver Lee OBE, the fire service’s senior leader during the turbulence, broke the silence. In a public statement, he laid out what insiders had whispered for months:
“No trust… them and us everywhere… suspicion… dislike… no team.”
He called the Authority’s behaviour “bizarre”.
These are not the words of a disgruntled outsider.
They are the words of the person trying to hold the Service together while the Authority lost control of the basics.
Bayton’s apology did not mention Lee’s assessment.
Naturally.
It is hard to talk about progress when the man who led your Service is publicly calling your Authority a circus.
THE COUNCILLORS WHO WOULD RATHER LOOK AWAY
A governance review into WMFRA described councillors who preferred to be “reassured rather than assured”.
That’s governance code for:
They don’t want to know the truth in case they’d have to act on it.
They are not steering the ship.
They are sitting in the lounge waiting for the captain to tell them everything is fine.
But everything is not fine.
It hasn’t been fine for months.
And the reason a KC is now circling overhead is because too many councillors were content to drift until someone else picked up the mess.
THE PRESS OFFICE JOINS THE SILENCE
WMFRA was asked for comment.
Clear questions.
A firm deadline.
No reply.
This wasn’t the first time.
Emails go unanswered.
Queries are ignored.
Silence has become the default response, not the exception.
A public body that stops answering questions is a public body that has something to hide, or worse, one that no longer knows how to explain itself.
THIS IS NOT AN HR STORY. THIS IS A SYSTEM FAILURE.
Bayton’s apology centres on one suspension.
But the suspension is not the scandal.
The scandal is:
the leadership collapse,
the financial mismanagement,
the governance failures,
the culture of mistrust,
the unanswered questions,
and the chronic absence of political backbone.
Firefighters run into danger.
Their Authority runs from responsibility.
Until that changes, the West Midlands will not be protected by leadership equal to the bravery of the people who actually do the job.
And that is the real threat burning here.
I’m afraid that the days of the Fire Authority are long past, there is too much of a political and personal agenda being played by those in power within the Authority. It is time to save money, disband Fire Authorities Nationally, Regionalise Services which would enable combining generic service elements… and install proven Leaders in a CEO/CFO position with full autonomy to run the Service, but with accountability and oversight from a Lord Mayor or a Commissioning body….. hopefully this will be the findings of the KC and her team.