West Midlands Fire Service, silence and a serious question of competence
The Chief Fire Officer, the Chair of the Authority, the councillors who sit on that Authority, or the media team meant to serve them, the instinct is to sit in the corner and hope the questions stop.
There is a point where silence stops looking like professional caution and starts to resemble hiding. West Midlands Fire Service has reached that point.
In the early hours of Saturday morning I wrote to the WMFS press office. I asked about an online claim by journalist Sanjay Rai. His post described an unnamed officer from West Midlands Fire Service, apparently on flexi duty and allegedly away from their designated area. It went on to allege that a service vehicle had been stolen, containing a National Inter Agency Liaison Officer kit, an encrypted radio, a laptop and other sensitive material connected to counter-terrorism and emergency planning.
If any of that is accurate, it is a very serious incident. If none of it is accurate, it still demands a clear rebuttal. Yet by the deadline I set, Sunday midday, there was nothing from WMFS. No confirmation. No denial. Not even a short holding statement.
For the avoidance of doubt, these allegations remain unverified. They may turn out to be exaggerated or simply wrong. That is exactly why I contacted the service. I wanted to give them a fair chance to set out the facts.
The real story, for now, is not the social-media post. It is the complete absence of any response from an organisation that should be hypersensitive to public trust.
Why NILO equipment matters
A National Inter Agency Liaison Officer, usually known as a NILO, sits at the point where the fire service meets the wider security state. The role exists to share information and co-ordinate between fire, police, ambulance, local resilience forums and the more discreet agencies that protect the country from terrorism and serious organised crime.
A NILO kit is not just a helmet and a pager. It can include secure laptops, encrypted radios, specialist documents, maps of sensitive sites, and contact details for partner agencies and covert teams. Some of that material is operationally sensitive. Some may be classified. All of it is designed to move quickly between local incident grounds and national decision-making.
If a vehicle carrying that kind of equipment is stolen, the questions write themselves. Who has been notified. What has been compromised. What safeguards were in place. What has been done to secure or disable the lost devices. It is exactly the sort of incident that ought to trigger immediate reporting to central government, to the police and to the relevant oversight bodies, along with very swift and very clear communication with the public.
Instead, at the time of writing, the public has nothing at all from WMFS. Not even a polite acknowledgement that an enquiry has been received.
How I remember the Authority
I do not write this as an outsider throwing stones. I was a Birmingham City councillor. More than twenty years ago I served on the West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority.
It was a very different organisation then. It had its secrets, as any political body does, but there was a basic understanding that we were spending public money and serving the public. Openness was not an optional extra. It was part of the job.
Looking at the present organisation, I struggle to recognise the culture. We now have a service and an Authority living under the shadow of a KC-led Best Value inspection, a coroner’s criticism, media scrutiny and union concern. In that environment, you might expect people to have learned that silence is a luxury they can no longer afford.
Wayne Brown, the Chief Fire Officer
The recent history of West Midlands Fire Service cannot be told without Wayne Brown, the Chief Fire Officer whose death in January 2024 triggered a wave of scrutiny.
Brown falsely claimed to hold an MBA. He later admitted that his studies were incomplete and he was under internal investigation when he died. Whistle-blowers and journalists then uncovered further exaggerations about his professional background. These included a claimed senior role in London Fire Brigade that did not match published records and an overstated football career at Charlton Athletic. He had suggested he had played professional football. Club records did not bear that out.
The organisation failed to vet him properly. It failed to pick up early warnings. It failed to handle the internal investigation and aftermath with any sense of care. A coroner went on to criticise both procedural and welfare failings surrounding his death.
That tragedy should have forced a reset. Instead, it seems to have deepened the instinct to hunker down and hope the storm passes.
Councillor Greg Brackenridge and the Royal Marines story
Alongside the professional leadership, the political leadership of the Fire Authority has its own credibility problem.
The key figure here is Councillor Greg Brackenridge of Wolverhampton. He was a Labour councillor and the husband of a Labour Member of Parliament. He also served as Chair of the West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority.
In September 2021, as Mayor of Wolverhampton, he spoke at the annual commemoration at the Saragarhi monument on Wednesfield Road. The monument honours the twenty-one Sikh soldiers of the British Indian Army who died in 1897 at the Battle of Saragarhi, holding their post in the North-West Frontier against overwhelming odds. It is a solemn and proud occasion for Britain’s Sikh community and for those connected to the armed forces.
At that event and elsewhere he was reported as speaking about service in the Royal Marines. Over time questions began to surface. By 2024, local and national media were investigating his military record. A national tabloid reported that he had joined the Royal Marines but left as a recruit and had not completed the full commando training or earned the green beret. Voters and veterans said they had been left with a very different impression of his service.
Emergency Services Times ran a piece on 13 October 2024 reporting that Councillor Brackenridge had resigned as Chair of the Fire Authority with immediate effect after questions about his military record were raised online and in the press. The Telegraph presented it as the husband of a Labour MP quitting after being accused of exaggerating his military service. The Birmingham Dispatch, previously part of the Substack ecosystem, went further and framed it in blunt terms as a stolen-valour story. Another long read, asking whether a supposed hero had become a zero, placed his resignation inside the wider meltdown at West Midlands Fire Service.
The Express and Star then confirmed that the Fire Authority meeting agenda formally recorded the resignation of Chair Councillor Greg Brackenridge. The paper stated plainly that Brackenridge had stood down after online allegations about his military record were picked up by national media.
The timeline is stark. September 2021, the Saragarhi speech and the Royal Marines claims. By 2024, growing scrutiny in local and national outlets. Over 12 and 13 October 2024, he resigns as Fire Authority Chair under intense pressure. Through 2024 and 2025, a formal standards complaint moves through Wolverhampton’s Governance and Ethics process. By September 2025, a standards sub-committee finds that he breached the code of conduct and failed to co-operate. By mid to late 2025 the Wolverhampton Labour Group suspends him and he sits as an independent councillor while colleagues from all parties call on him to go altogether.
So the public now see a fire service where the Chief misrepresented his qualifications and career and where the Chair stood down after a storm over military claims. That is not an unlucky coincidence. It is a collapse of basic judgement.
Simon Tuhill and the problem of trust
Into that wreckage stepped Simon Tuhill, appointed as Chief Fire Officer after Wayne Brown’s death. His arrival was supposed to draw a line under the chaos and start again.
Instead his appointment reignited questions about the thoroughness of the recruitment process. Differences emerged between his LinkedIn career timeline and the way he was described in an official London Fire Brigade honours booklet for the 7 July bombings. More importantly, an Employment Tribunal in 2022 found that firefighter Ben Flanagan had suffered trade-union detriment under section 146 of TULRCA following a transfer decision taken when Tuhill was Borough Commander.
The tribunal concluded that the transfer policy had been breached, that the move was a detriment linked to union activity, and that his actions were not reasonable, although he lacked knowledge of some background detail. The Fire Brigades Union argued that any proper recruitment exercise for a Chief Fire Officer should have taken full account of this history.
WMFS responded with a familiar form of words, that all due checks had been completed. Mr Tuhill offered no personal comment. In a service already reeling from scandal, that silence feeds doubt rather than repairing confidence.
Ignored accountability
When I raised these issues directly with both the Chair and every councillor on the Fire Authority, asking them to address my concerns about Mr Tuhill’s appointment and the process behind it, they ignored me completely. Every one of them. They hid behind the officers of the Fire Authority rather than answering for themselves.
I reminded them that it was their duty, not the officers’, to respond to questions about oversight and governance. They chose silence. I will be returning to this failure of accountability in greater detail soon, because it goes to the heart of what is wrong inside the organisation.
The Fenella Morris KC inspection
All of this has fed into the Best Value Inspection ordered by the Government. Fenella Morris KC has been appointed to lead it, supported by governance and audit specialists. The inspection is examining governance and accountability, organisational culture, senior recruitment and promotions, welfare and mental-health policy, and the transparency of decision-making.
The team is gathering evidence from documents, interviews and public submissions. Their report will go to ministers around March 2026. If systemic failings are confirmed, the Home Office can intervene and insist on a recovery plan, new oversight or leadership change.
Given that background, it is extraordinary that WMFS cannot muster a one-line holding statement about a claim of missing NILO equipment. The inspection’s very purpose is to test governance. The response so far is evidence in itself.
A culture of avoidance at the top
The pattern is now painfully familiar. Whether it is the Chief Fire Officer, the Chair of the Authority, the councillors who sit on that Authority, or the media team meant to serve them, the instinct is to sit in the corner and hope the questions stop.
I remember a time when officers would front up to scrutiny and when councillors understood that holding public office meant answering awkward questions as part of the deal. Today, too many behave as if visibility is optional and accountability is negotiable.
If this is how WMFS handles a single, plainly worded email from a columnist, what chance is there for whistle-blowers, for families who have lost loved ones, or for firefighters trying to raise concerns inside the system.
Silence is now the loudest message
Let me repeat the central point. The social-media allegations about a stolen vehicle and lost NILO kit are unproven at this stage. They may turn out to be inaccurate. They may be partly right and partly wrong. That is precisely why WMFS should have responded, even if only to say that they are aware of the claims and are checking the facts.
Instead, silence. In the present climate, that silence shouts louder than any press release.
Trust in West Midlands Fire Service is already fragile. The Wayne Brown tragedy, the Charlton Athletic myth, the Brackenridge Royal Marines saga, unresolved questions over Simon Tuhill’s appointment, and the ongoing KC inspection have all chipped away at confidence. When an organisation that has learned from its mistakes is asked a straight question, it answers. When an organisation has not, it hides.
The biggest risk facing WMFS is not only a potential security breach, serious though that would be. It is the steady, corrosive loss of credibility.
Public services run on trust. Firefighters still enjoy deep public respect. It is time their leaders, political and professional, did the hard work to earn some of that respect back.