Welcome to the Fire Authority. Now Ask What You’ve Just Inherited.

New councillors arrive at West Midlands Fire Authority as a live inspection, CV questions and a possible £7m litigation cloud wait in the smoke.

There must have been moments during Monday’s Annual General Meeting of the West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority when some newly appointed councillors wondered exactly what they had walked into. Papers moved, votes were taken, committee places were filled and the municipal machinery produced another set of minutes. Yet behind the ordinary business sat an extraordinary question. If this was one of the final AGMs before governance transfers to the Mayor of the West Midlands and the Combined Authority, were the new members properly told what they are inheriting, or were they simply handed the agenda and shown where to sit?

If I had written the induction pack, it might have opened rather differently. Welcome to the West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority. Before you vote on anything, there are a few matters you should probably understand. The Government has a live Best Value Inspection examining how this Authority has been governed. The Authority’s own documents acknowledge governance failings, constitutional breaches, recruitment weaknesses and external audit concerns. Members have approved £500,000 from reserves to help fund a possible transfer of powers towards the Mayor. Reported civil claims arising from recent events are said to total around £7 million if successful. The former Chief Fire Officer died by suicide after scrutiny of claims about his career and qualifications. A former Chair resigned amid questions about his own record and later stood down as a councillor. Other than that, welcome aboard. Tea and biscuits may be available at the back.

The Wayne Brown affair needs to be explained because it is the dark centre of this story, not an awkward detail to be hidden behind process words. Brown, the former Chief Fire Officer of West Midlands Fire Service, died in January 2024. The coroner later concluded suicide and recorded that he had recently been suffering extreme stress arising from an ongoing harassment case and a work investigation regarding his qualifications which had become public. The controversy included claims about his MBA and his footballing past. Behind the human tragedy sat a basic governance question. How did claims in the career record of the person appointed to lead one of Britain’s largest fire services pass through the recruitment system? Nobody should write about Brown without recognising the tragedy of his death. But tragedy does not cancel accountability. If anything, it makes proper accountability more necessary.

The aftermath was hardly tidy. The then Chair, former Cllr Greg Brackenridge, later resigned after questions were raised about his military service record, leaving another hole where stability was supposed to be. Into that difficult landscape came Cllr Cath Bayton, a Labour councillor for St James ward in Dudley, a former Dudley Council officer of many years and a local government figure with experience across Dudley politics and the West Midlands Combined Authority. It would be unfair to make her the architect of this mess. She was not. By the time Cllr Cath Bayton picked up the gavel, the Authority was already holding a very toxic baby. But leadership is judged by the way it deals with inherited problems. Cllr Cath Bayton did not light this particular fire. She has, however, spent much of her chairmanship standing in the smoke.

That brings us to Simon Tuhill, the current Chief Fire Officer. Midlands GRIT has previously asked Mr Tuhill to explain an apparent discrepancy between an earlier version of his LinkedIn profile and an official London Fire Brigade publication relating to the response to the London bombings of 7 July 2005. The profile appeared to describe him as a Crew Commander during a period when the awards booklet listed Firefighter Simon Tuhill, Soho Fire Station. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. Fire service records can use different language. Online profiles can be clumsy. Since the question was raised, the LinkedIn profile has changed. What has not arrived is an explanation of why the earlier wording appeared as it did. In an organisation still recovering from the Brown CV scandal, that silence matters. Once a chief has died after a career record crisis, no later career record question can be brushed aside as too small to answer.

Then there is Ben Walker. Walker was one of those who publicly questioned Wayne Brown’s claims. He was later arrested at Birmingham Airport after stepping from an aircraft. He says he was intercepted by plain clothed officers, surrounded, handcuffed and escorted through the terminal in full view of passengers, with armed officers nearby. For a man accused of harassment by communication, the scene he describes was extraordinary. Walker has always denied wrongdoing. After almost two years of criminal proceedings, the prosecution came to an end and the charges were quashed. Walker is now reportedly pursuing civil proceedings against the Fire Authority and others valued at around £5 million. That claim has not been determined. But for any new member, the question is obvious. Were they told the full story of how a critic of Brown ended up dragged through the criminal justice system before the case collapsed?

There is also Dan Quinn. He was the other principal candidate for the Chief Fire Officer post eventually given to Wayne Brown. He is reportedly pursuing a claim valued at around £2 million arising from that recruitment process. His reported argument is straightforward enough to understand. He says he had to provide the references and evidence expected of a serious candidate for a very senior public post, while Brown’s claimed record was not properly checked. Again, that is a legal claim, not a concluded finding. But alongside the Walker claim it creates a potential £7 million storm cloud hanging over the Authority, and possibly over the Mayor if governance transfers before these matters are resolved.

The new political make up of the Authority makes this more than internal housekeeping. Labour remains the largest group, but Reform UK now has five members and a real opportunity to ask questions that previous arrangements may have failed to ask loudly enough. Cllr Jex Parkin, now leading Reform’s group on Birmingham City Council and sitting on the Fire Authority, has had a rapid introduction to public life. Many new councillors spend their first few weeks learning where the committee rooms are. Cllr Parkin appears to have skipped straight to regional politics. Good luck to him. If Reform wants to show it can turn electoral momentum into serious scrutiny, this Authority offers the perfect test. Not slogans. Files.

Nor should Cllr Joe Peacock be overlooked, carrying the Green flag alone on the Authority. Being the sole Green member must feel at times like being the first panda released into the conservation programme. Everyone notices him because there is only one. More seriously, a fire service facing climate change, flooding, heat events, ageing buildings and changing community risk needs at least one voice reminding the room that the environment is not an optional extra.

So the question after this AGM is simple. Have the new members been told what happened? Have they been briefed properly on Wayne Brown, recruitment failures, former Cllr Brackenridge, the Best Value Inspection, the Tuhill questions, Walker, Quinn, the possible £7 million litigation cloud and what the Mayor may inherit? If they have, excellent. If they have not, they should ask. Public representatives are not appointed to admire paperwork. They are appointed to challenge it.

For the firefighters and staff of West Midlands Fire Service, this must be exhausting. They do the dangerous work while the governance structure above them struggles to explain itself. Most people in the region do not want a political circus. They want fire engines to arrive when needed, firefighters to be supported and senior leaders to be honest, competent and properly checked. As the Authority moves towards possible mayoral control, the public deserves to know whether lessons have genuinely been learned or merely written into another report. For an organisation whose purpose is to put out fires, there is still a remarkable amount of smoke in the air. The newly appointed councillors deserve to know where it came from. The Mayor deserves to know what may soon land on his desk. And the public deserves something better than another AGM that looks forward while politely stepping around the past.