Crapita Same Day Fire Service ?

[Lordflasheart]

..
Crapita Same Day Fire Service ?

Anyone remember this thread from last year ? - https://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/610426-capita-wins-defence-fire-rescue.html?highlight=Capita

Now, after some expensive legal spatting, Crapita is confirmed to be running the Defence Fire Service for a twelve year contract ‘worth’ £525 mil..

And Serco gets £ 10 mil, just to shut up.

Given that Capita seems to be making a hash of army recruitment and recently had a ‘defence lands’ contract taken away half way through its term, one wonders what is going on ? Not helped by the infinitely variable and confusing terminology, a raft of questions arise, starting with:

Q 1. Does this contract include the RAF Fire Service that provides heroic airfield fire-fighting and rescue ? Or is this just for the ‘domestic’ non-aeroplane stuff ?

Q 2. Are the 2000-strong Defence Fire Service staff currently members of the armed forces, or are they already MoD civvies ?

Some recent relevant links -

18 July - https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/local-news/royal-navy-army-raf-fire-3108491

18 July - Capita signs fire and rescue service contract with Ministry of Defence | Capita (http://www.capita.com/news/news/2019/capita-signs-fire-and-rescue-service-contract-with-ministry-of-defence/)

May 7th - MoD firefighting contract awarded to Capita in last minute deal with Serco (http://unitelive.org/mod-firefighters-privatisation-capita-serco/)

18 July - Unite slams government as MoD fire and rescue service handed to Capita (http://unitelive.org/mod-fire-rescue-capita/)

And the usual - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Fire_and_Rescue_Service

Twelve years - 2000 staff and 53 bases including Cyprus and Falklands - new fire engines, new Defence training facility at the Fire Service College

Will there be much change from that £525 mil, for the shareholders etc. ?

Answers on a sixpence please.

LFH

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[Blossy]

Flasheart, you didn't specify whether .925 or .5 silver or cupronickel. Not that it matters greatly as I would need a far larger surface area to write of my disdain of the whole fiasco.

[Wander00]

Tears before bedtime, I predict

[Asturias56]

Flash

"Will there be much change from that £525 mil, for the shareholders etc. ?"

Come ON! That's the first call on funds - 10-15% straight out of the pot and into the Corporate account

then minimum wage etc etc for the staff - and hey! Firemen don't work very much - they lie around sitting and waiting - = Zero Hours Contracts = you only get paid when there is a fire.

The rest is put down as "internship" or "off the job training"

[reds & greens]

I guess if you're in the business of producing and selling Netball Court equipment, there's a sales opportunity for 53 new sets on the horizon...

[air pig]

Not deployable then?

[Sandy Parts]

[QUOTE=reds & greens;10526171]I guess if you're in the business of producing and selling Netball Court equipment, there's a sales opportunity for 53 new sets on the horizon...[/QUOTE
Even allowing for greater numbers of female firefighters, I’m guessing you meant volleyball not netball ? 😁.

[reds & greens]

But we're all about embracing equality now what?
Surely they can choose whatever balls they want to play with...

[Asturias56]

only the 100th time that "joke2 has been deployed here...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[reds & greens]

only the 100th time that "joke2 has been deployed here...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
"joke2
You've got me there... zzzz (being economical and thinking of the planet)

[pr00ne]

I assume that this is a management, equipment and support service contract as the RAF is still advertising for and recruiting regular Firefighters?

[OvertHawk]

I assume that this is a management, equipment and support service contract as the RAF is still advertising for and recruiting regular Firefighters?

I think at the moment it's a mix and match service with some of the firefighters being serving personnel and thus deployable and some of them being civilians employed at fixed locations. I'm not certain of exactly what the distribution is. I could be wrong.

[pr00ne]

OvertHawk,

Thanks, that makes sense, and is like the RAF Fire Service has always been, with a mix of serving RAF personnel and civilian Air Force Dept firefighters, only they will now be Capita rather than civil servants?

[BEagle]

pr00ne wrote: […]like the RAF Fire Service has always been, with a mix of serving RAF personnel and civilian Air Force Dept firefighters[…]

Indeed! I recall going into the old 4FTS groundschool building (next to VASF) with a colleague, when a chap in fireman's uniform was coming the other way. "Good morning", I said, to which he replied in the same manner. Whereupon my colleague, who was rather an aggressive little so-and-so, snapped "Don't you normally salute officers, Corporal?". The fireman then politely explained that he was, in fact, a sub-officer of the civil fire service (as I knew he was) - hence the 2 bars on his shoulder boards.

Did he get an apology? Not from my colleague, sadly, but I thanked him for the explanation.

[Lordflasheart]

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Blossy - .925 or .5 silver or cupronickel ? Thank you. I was thinking more in terms of pinchbeck.

Asturias - "Will there be much change from that £525 mil, for the shareholders etc. ?" "Come ON! That's the first call on funds ........."


Yes it was a rather naïve question. I have ‘previous’ with Crapita and I didn’t want my prejudice to be too obvious, too soon.

Proone – “RAF is still advertising for ….”

OHawk - “Mix n Match …”It certainly looks that way. I have done some more reading. These two older articles by Gill Plimmer of the FT may give some clues.

June 18th 2018 “Capita wins controversial MoD outsourcing contract”
https://www.ft.com/content/ffb492a4-7316-11e8-b6ad-3823e4384287

May 7th 2019 “Defence ministry pushes on with fire and rescue privatisation”
https://www.ft.com/content/cb3e0338-6f15-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5

So my third ‘question’ relates to the contract’s headline price and term, and what the taxpayer will get for £525m.

From their own recent press release …. “Capita announces it has signed a contract worth £525m over 12 years to modernise and support improvement to the operational effectiveness of the Ministry of Defence’s fire and rescue service.”

NB - It was only £500m last year, but last year it was said to be 78 fire stations including 13 abroad. Apparently they’ve been running the Fire Service College since 2013 anyway. And the £10m sweetener to Serco may be just for starters.

That’s under £44 mil per year for the whole deal of fifty three establishments, 2000 staff, new fire engines and a training facility etc. Less than £1m per year for each establishment. It seems to me the very most that Crapita will be doing for their headline £525m is pushing paper and shuffling deck chairs. More like a ‘facilitation fee’ with ‘cost-plus billing.’

‘Pushing paper’ will likely include passing on all their bills with a ‘suitable’ mark-up, for the tax payer to pay. Costs of existing staff, plus redundancy or TUPE, price of fire engines and new college, plus Crapita office presence at each base, perhaps a manager, PA, creative accountant and personnel person will no doubt all be extras for the tax payer.

The tax payer will probably still be paying separately for the rather more specialised RAF airfield/aircraft fire and rescue including expeditionary, plus the RN equivalent including shipborne.

I might have got this all wrong, so I wonder if Capita management would care to add anything to the above ? ... Apart from a 22.5% mark-up, that is.

As an aside, I found this story from May 2017 on GBC News - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6BMpv-8e0U

Four new state of the art fire engines will be purchased for the airport Fire and Rescue Service at a cost of three million pounds. They are expected to arrive next year. The tender contracts have been awarded to two UK companies and the cost will be met jointly by the Gibraltar Government and the Ministry of Defence.

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