Control room staff at Avon Fire & Rescue Service (AFRS) have been denied career-boosting jobs in other parts of the organisation because they’re too important where they are, councillors heard. Their crucial role coordinating the response to emergencies and serious incidents has also been belittled by colleagues as a “call centre” or “switchboard”, a committee was told.
The findings, which members called “troubling”, are revealed in a major staff survey into the service’s culture which also discovered that employees in fire prevention feel “looked down upon”. And while much progress has been made since the damning Baker Report in 2017 that described AFRS as an “old boys club” rife with “endemic bullying and harassment”, a quarter of respondents said they had personal experience of discrimination, prejudice, harassment or bullying, with gender or race the most common reasons.
While this is partly explained by “legacy” issues that happened under previous regimes, less than half said they were confident complaints would be dealt with effectively by bosses, and many felt reluctant to raise them because of possible negative consequences. Avon Fire Authority (AFA) people & culture committee heard last summer’s questionnaire was carried out to determine how much progress had been made since the first culture survey in 2018, with follow-up focus groups of employees held to explain and understand some of the negative responses.
