Radio transcripts
Transcript of the interview on Tameside Radio about the Life Skills programme with Community Fire Safety Officer Jonathan Knowles
Jonathan Knowles: It’s a multi agency programme that we have developed at Tameside Fire Service which engages with young people who are vulnerable or on the fringe of committing crimes. The ages are around 11 up to 16 and so far this year we have just completed working with 60 young people from 3 feeder schools in Tameside, those were St. Damians, Stamford High and Hartshead High and the 60 young people that have just completed the course have just received their certificates.
Presenter: What other agencies are involved in it?
Jonathan Knowles: Well we have the Branching Out Agency, where they do the drugs and alcohol information. We’ve had the prison service play a part with the 'prison me no way' aspect of looking at life in prison. The Fire Service plays quite a big role in it as well. What we’ve got is we use salvaged cars and scrap vehicles, where we give young people an insight into what it’s like to be cut out of a vehicle. They’re actually a crash victim. Many young people will say “oh yeah it was a buzz, I crashed a car, I took chase from the police, it was great”. I’ve yet to find a young person to say it was a buzz being cut out of a car when metals wrapped around you, machinery’s going, firefighters are working hard, paramedics are there, its claustrophobic, its noisy, the person that’s trapped in that car is helpless. They’re relying on everybody else that, ridden with the guilt that they’ve got because they’ve stolen a car in the first place, makes it a very very difficult situation.
Presenter: So the shock factor element works?
Jonathan Knowles: There is part of the shock factor but we don’t just do that. There’s obviously a lot of controlled work goes into it first. We do some workshop sessions in our youth engagement centre that we’ve got at Hyde Fire Station. We’ll spend two or three hours maybe in the classroom, looking at the effects of car crime and being allowed to be carried in a stolen vehicle because that’s an offence. Many young girls in particular are guilty of committing this offence. They allow themselves to be carried in a stolen vehicle. They’re impressed by young men who’ve got stolen vehicles and then say are you getting in? Do you fancy going for a ride and they’ll say yeah and all of a sudden they’re in a tin box in a very dangerous environment. They’re being driven round in a car by somebody who’s not even passed their test. Quite often it doesn’t have to be a high performance car, it can just be a basic Ford Fiesta with a 1cc litre engine in it. It’s a killing machine still, so yes there is a shock factor but there’s also a lot of classroom work that goes into it prior, before we do the actual session on the drill yard.
Presenter: Do you target specific skills?
Jonathan Knowles: Yes, well usually because we’ve sat in front of different steering groups. The schools that we’ve been working with recently were only able to do it because we received funding from New Charter in Ashton here. What they did, they provided us with some money so we could hand pick 60 young people from the Smallshaw and Hurst areas of Tameside. The next groups that have just started, we’ve got another 60 people who are working with Ground Work Tameside and what they’ve done is give us an ID list of 60 young people from the Ridgehill area. The feeder schools for Ridgehill are Westhill High School and Copley High School and we’re on board with that now.
Presenter: And at the end they have this ceremony?
Jonathan Knowles: Yes, obviously there’s a lot of work that goes into this programme and we insist on a 100% attendance. Another large of aspect of the course is learning about fire setting and the effects that that has on the community and arson. Many, many young people have set fire to a waste paper bin or a park bench and they don’t even realise that they have committed an arson offence. The thing is with arson, it’s such a broad crime, that you know a small fire obviously can lead into a large fire and prison sentences can stretch really from 2 months or a community sentence, right up to the broad spectrum, right up to 20 years in jail, if something goes wrong.
Presenter: Because it’s not just property is it, it could involve life as well?
Jonathan Knowles: Absolutely, we were working with a young person last week and she was telling us how she set fire to a couple of wheelie bins and some rubbish at the side of somebody’s house for a joke. Before she knew it, three fire engines were in attendance at that house and the family were brought out of the building. She didn’t have the intention to hurt anybody in that building. Her intention was to set fire and to show off and say 'hey look what I’ve done' and yes she did that but she didn’t realise that the fire was going to spread so dramatically and so quickly and that’s the thing. We’re trying to teach young people it’s the effects of fire and by the time they’ve finished this course they receive an award. We work on a 50% improvement rate if you like, 50% success rate and if five out of every ten young people we work with say look Jonathan I’m not going to set fire to anything again, we’re happy with that. My colleague Dave Billinge and myself, we’ve been Community Safety Officers at Tameside now for quite some time and we’re advising really any outside agency that engages with young people where they feel that they might have these kind of issues, to get in touch with us over at Tameside Borough Command, Fire Service.
Transcript of the interview on Tameside Radio about Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service identifying buildings which could be targeted by arsonists with Community Fire Safety Officer Philip Wright.
Philip Wright: We have a new initiative. Partner working with the Council in collaboration with building control, we’re trying to identify at risk buildings. They can be derelict, unoccupied or dilapidated and we’re trying to do something, be proactive, to stop them being involved in fire through arson. That might mean increasing security around the site, getting in touch with the owners to see if they can have any input and surveillance cameras. Really, to keep the kids out of the building and putting themselves in a dangerous situation as has happened at Hart Mill at Mossley.
Presenter: Yes, I was going to ask you which buildings are you looking at the moment?
Philip Wright: Well that’s our biggest trouble spot in the borough at the moment. The company who own the site is doing all they can that’s asked of them. They’re increasing the security, they’re fencing, every time its pulled down they’re putting it back up again but we can’t stop the kids going in, so we’re trying to alert them through the radio media, through the press, through local schools, trying to just advise them that there are nasty things on site that we don’t want them contaminating themselves with.
Presenter: Because in Hart Mill there was a fire there recently wasn’t there?
Philip Wright: Yes only last week there were 4 fire engines and the decontamination unit turned up because there was a white powder discovered involved in this fire that we didn’t know what it was. We had to get our analysts out to find out what it was and it turned out to be some chemical that was nasty really and we don’t want kids and our fire crews involved with it. If I could just say to kids out there please stay away from sites like that, there’s fencing round the site, there are signs on the fencing advising there are things on the site that we don’t want them touching.
Presenter: The signs are there for a reason obviously.
Philip Wright: They’re, there for a reason, yes and if we could ask parents as well, to monitor where the kids are, really to advise them against going on the site.
Presenter: How do you find the buildings?
Philip Wright: Mainly through the ops crews. The lads out on the fire engines when they’re out and about doing what they do during the day. They’re alerting me to the fact there could be a problem building and I’ll be going out and having a look at it and seeing if I can have any input before it goes through to the Council. If it’s a dangerous building and I can’t deal with it, I’ll hand it over to the Building Control officers of the Council but sometimes it just takes a phone call to the owners of the site. They’ll come and increase the security. It’s just working with different organisations and the different slant on things, different input.
Presenter: Is this a pilot scheme in Tameside or is it Greater Manchester wide?
Philip Wright: It’s piloted in Tameside. It was a Borough initiative. We’re trying to reach a target of zero fires in at risk buildings. Whether we can contain a zero is anybody’s guess but were doing our best.
Presenter: I’m sure you’ll get there eventually.
Philip Wright: It might get rolled out throughout Greater Manchester if it’s successful, hopefully, we’ll see how it goes.
Presenter: But it seems to have been a success so far.
Philip Wright: We’ve only been going for two weeks. We have had some limited success with Hart Mill. The securities been improved but having said that, they had a four pump fire there only a week ago.
Presenter: I suppose another one you could have targeted was the old clinic in Stalybridge because there was a bad fire there quite recently.
Philip Wright: That’s another one we’ve got our eye on and we’re trying to improve the security fencing around the clinic. There is a problem there with the public right of way at the back of the clinic. The building control people in the council are trying to take legal powers now to close that walk way off and continue the fencing round the site to the river, which is where the kids are coming in round the back of the building. So that’s another one we’re going to keep our eye on and see if we have any success with it.