FAQs

In the first instance, please arrange a meeting with your Line Manager.

Line Managers will take any questions you have forward for you, but you can also request a meeting with any of the staff involved: - 

• Gary Ball – Area Manager
• Adrian Carter – Group Manager
• Catherine Walker – Head of Development & Training
• Steve Buchanan-Lee – Group Manager Operational Training & Development
• James MacKay – Operational Training Manager

You can either email, telephone or ask face to face.

You can email HRFRS@westsussex.gov.uk

Green Book employees can claim the cost of travelling from home to the old place of work and home to the new place of work at the standard County Council car or motorbike mileage rate (depending on the method of transport), for a period of two years from the date of move where the excess mileage exceeds the minimum weekly cost of £5.51. This amount is pro-rated for part-time staff.

Example:

Grey Book Employees can claim the cost of travelling from home to the old place of work and home to the new place of work at the standard County Council car or motorbike mileage rate (depending on the method of transport), for a period of four years from the date of move, but the first 20 miles are borne by the individual.

Example:

We will schedule in regular reviews during the 12-month monitoring period. The dates will be shared once the date of the move to the new station is agreed. In the meantime, please do utilise the HRFRS e-mail and speak to your line manager if you have any questions, concerns or queries.

The retained unit in Horsham is highly valued and is considered one of the best in the County.  The Service is committed to supporting all of those staff to be able to continue their retained employment at the new site and is therefore not currently making any specific exit offers. 

The consultation is an opportunity for you to tell us formally what you need and how we can support you through the change.  We will genuinely consider any proposals that arise from what you tell us.   

Once the station has moved, there will be regular reviews over a period of 12 months, with each of you to tell us how it is working for you and to discuss how we can support you further, whether that is in continuing your employment with the retained unit in Horsham or alternative opportunities. 

We are consulting with you on the change of location at this stage. The service wishes to avoid any redundancies to ensure that we can retain the skill and experience of the existing Horsham workforce. The 12-month monitoring period will assess the situation. We will consult with you separately on redundancy should the monitoring period highlight risk to the community or employee work.

In line with grey book terms and conditions, the service will pay any mileage incurred after 20 miles of travel in a return journey. Our initial exercised demonstrated that all travel for RDS would be under 20 miles. As such, and in line with your terms and conditions, there will be no compensation for the additional mileage.

The Expenses SOP states at 4.47: 

Home to Duty travel expenses for wholetime uniform personnel are only applicable to employees who are transferred by the Service to a location that is further from their home address.  Payment will be made for the difference in mileage between the employee’s home to their new work location and their home to their old work location, subject to; 

• The calculation of mileage being by the most direct route and from the county boundary for those employees living outside the county.
• The exclusion of the cost of the first twenty return miles of the journey which will be borne by the employee.
  https://yourvoice.westsussex.gov.uk/20080/widgets/56846/documents/33365

We know that the retained staff are a dedicated and committed unit and we absolutely intend to do what we can to keep staff at the new site.  Every station has retained staff that leave the Service for unrelated reasons, retirement, health, changes in personal circumstances etc, and all stations continue to recruit on an ongoing basis.  

We also understand that despite all of our efforts to keep you, some of you may decide that you do not want to come with us to the new station.  This currently presents the Service with an unknown risk of how we can respond to incidents in the future, which we need to plan for.  As the time to develop a new recruit into a competent firefighter is lengthy and the Service is generally under establishment for retained across the County, increasing the FTE at Horsham helps to mitigate that risk. 

The Service naturally looked at a number of options to support staff in the change, which originally included considering a relocation package.  WSCC runs a relocation scheme that supports the recruitment and retention of staff in hard-to fill  roles by contributing towards costs incurred by employees who move their main residence to start employment with WSCC. The criteria includes when the employee is:

• changing their sole or main home as a result of starting their employment with WSCC; 
• living outside of reasonable commuting distance from their normal work location at the time of their recruitment and is relocating their main residence to within this distance. Reasonable commuting for these purposes is where typical travelling time is 90 minutes or less from the employee’s home to their normal work location, unless a specific lesser requirement is identified for their appointment

Our understanding on initial discussion, following feedback from the retained individuals, the relocation package was not a viable or attractive proposition and we believe that both the Service and the individuals are better served by our commitment to support all staff in moving with us to the new station.

Employees are welcomed to time their own journeys. As part of the modelling, the service used google maps and two separate times during the day to assess the timings. We appreciate that this is not 100% accurate, which his part of the reason to ensure we review the changes over a 12-month period, to gain a more accurate picture of the potential impact. 

Yes, we will be installing new station end equipment, as this will enable us to test and operate the new station without disrupting the mobilisation system at Hurst Road.  

 When Hurst Road is vacated, the station end equipment from there will be used to support ongoing maintenance of station end across the County.

How we mobilise appliances from the new site is based on achieving our Emergency Response Standards.   The general principles are that: 

1. Appliances can use either exit for the best route to the incident; 
2. Traffic lights (wigwags) will be in place on both exits to support safer exit; 
3. Appliances should return via the North entrance, past Highwood Mill; and 
4. The Aerial Ladder Platform will use the South access for entrance into and exit from the site due to the turning circle available on the north access.

Mileage claims should be submitted using mileage claim forms MT10R and an MT4. Mileage claims are paid one month in arrears, so employees should ensure that their claims are submitted in good time before payroll deadlines (usually 3^rd of the month).  Employees need to claim their expenses monthly, not save them up and do them in bulk.

 There is some useful information here, including a sample spreadsheet and Frequently Asked Questions.

Additional appliances will be mobilised as per current process within JFC if the appliance is unable to mobilise after the current set time. We will review the turn out time averages regularly as part of the 12-month review phase

This is something we can explore as a new way of working along with how our new paging/alerting system can support.

This can certainly be explored as part of reviewing new ways of working.

Initially, the new station turn-in and out times will not be amended but, they will be continuously and regularly reviewed. 

Our staff are of most value to us and we have tried hard to ensure that any negative impact is minimal to individuals. What we are able to support with certainty is the ‘smarter working’ options ( West Sussex County Council ‘smarter working’ approach what works best for you, your role and your team). Individuals can discuss and agree with their Line Managers (Catherine Walker has already agreed to this option) that some of their working week could be carried out remotely, either at home or at a more local office to their home. Working at other offices is already in the consultation document at 3.1 “Travel for DOT Grey Book Trainers may be reduced by where it is possible to work at other WSFRS stations nearer to home.” Hopefully, this will significantly minimise the cost of travel to both employees and the Service.

We are bound by the terms of the policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for grey book employees which are often different and more favourable than the ‘Green Book’ terms and conditions.  The expectation is that fire fighters are mobile, as stated in the Transfer & Move SOP Transfers Moves Process.pdf which quotes; -

• 4.4 ‘ In line with contractual requirements, grey book employees can be required to serve at any of the WSFRS’s establishments, or any other area covered by the Service’ 
• 4.9 ‘Where additional travel costs are incurred as a result of a management move then employees can claim expenses in accordance with the process detailed in the Expenses Claims SOP (home to duty travel).’  

 Grey book employees are rewarded with many enhanced benefits, such as higher starting salaries, an enhanced pension Pensions - West Sussex County Council, paid lunch breaks,  Working_Hours.pdf better annual leave  Leave_policy.pdf etc, but they are asked to contribute more for their travel costs.

The last time any grey book employees were eligible to claim home to duty mileage due to organisational change was in 2015 when all Firefighters, Crew Managers and Watch Mangers were consulted with to introduce the current Group and Day Crewing shift systems.  At that time, the same Expenses SOP was followed.