Agenda item

To consider a report

Members received the summary or organisational performance at the end of the second quarter of the financial year 2022-2023.

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer provided a general introduction and advised that there were some areas of performance that had caused concern, especially in Response, and that Officers had been charged with identifying how improvements could be made moving forward. A Performance Board had been created to form an additional level of challenge and a new Performance and Insight Manager had been appointed to monitor and challenge the data.

Prevention

Areas of note included:

·         The number of Safe and Well visits continued to increase against the five year average.

·         The number of fires had increased, most likely as a result of the very hot temperatures experienced over the summer period.

·         Deliberate primary dwelling fires had increased. Strategic Operational Commander Ian Evans advised that these were potential arson incidents and the Service worked closely with Bedfordshire Police to catch perpetrators, as it was suspected that certain individuals were responsible for multiple incidents. There had been a reduction of these incidents in Quarter 3. The five year trend was relatively flat, with no significant increase or reduction.

·         Secondary fires had seen a significant reduction.

·         In general, the number of overall incidents attended had increased, with more incidents attended up to Quarter 3 than in the previous full performance year.

The Chief Fire Officer commented that the Redwood Grove fire had been classed as a deliberate fire and that there were a number of repeat offenders in specific parts of the County.

Protection

Overall, there was a positive level of performance, although there were some areas to note, including:

·         The number of fire safety audit/inspections was under target as, although new members of staff had been recruited, they had not reached their competency so were restricted in what work they could undertake. There had also been a number of complex enforcement cases, which impacted on the overall number of audits completed.

·         Additional call challenge had been introduced around response to Automatic Fire Detectors (AFDs).

·         A high level of enforcement had been undertaken in relation to Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) and sleeping areas above retail premises. To date, 29 prohibition notices, 9 enforcement notices and 1 caution had been issued by the team.

In response to a question, Members were advised that a high level of enforcement activity was focused in the Luton area, with hot spots including Leagrave Road.

The Chief Fire Officer suggested that at a forthcoming Member Development Day, Members could be provided with a map of enforcement activity, which would provide an overview of hot spot areas.

In response to a further question, Strategic Operational Commander Ian Evans advised that AFD calls from care homes were always responded to, as these were high risk premises with significant risk to life, as were hospitals. He referred to an incident in Hertfordshire where it was thought that there was a false alarm at a care home, however, this was not the case and the attendance of the Fire and Rescue Service prevented the possible loss of life.

In addition to call-handling challenge, interventions would also be carried out by the Protection Team if there were multiple false alarms to one premises. An “excessive” amount was defined as more than four false alarms per year. It was noted that the 80/20 rule applied, with the majority of incidents having 1 false alarm per year, with a proportion of others with numerous false alarms. These were normally large sites with many detectors.

The Authority was advised that the total number of false alarms attended was in line with the national average.

Response

Areas of concern were highlighted as follows:

·         The percentage availability of the first on-call pump: there had been an increase from the previous year but improvement was still required. The On Call Improvement programme had been developed to address this. A recruitment campaign was being run, including three on call recruit trainee courses during the current calendar year and it was anticipated that this would help improve on call availability.

·         The percentage availability of whole-time global crewing availability enabled 9 riders on two pump responses: the Service had taken a conscious decision to maximise the number of appliances available by deploying the fifth person on a two pump station to increase pump availability at On Call stations in key strategic locations. An example of this was the response to the recent high rise fire at Green Court, when two firefighters were moved to Toddington to help provide a response. The on call improvement project should therefore have a direct impact on performance against this measure.

·         The percentage of occasions global whole-time crewing met minimum level (4 riders) remained slightly below target but the data was being challenged as it was thought that whole-time pumps taken off the run for mechanical issues were being counted against this indicator as the Service was not aware of any occasions when this indicator had not been met.

·         In relation to call-handling, consideration was being given to reporting of separate indicators for calls where the location was known and for calls where the location was not identifiable, as this could considerably increase the length of the call and time of response, eg if a call was received and the location was given as the M1 without any location data such as the What3Words location.

·         The percentage of primary fires attended within 10 minutes, which was a key indicator, was not meeting its target, with the current time being 10 minutes and 30 seconds. This was due to the unseasonably hot weather, increased number of incidents requiring a response and on call availability. It was hoped that the Luton pump relocation trial would improve performance against this indicator.

It was noted that a scrutiny group was being created to examine performance around the response targets as it was acknowledged by all that the performance was not as high as it should be.

Empowering

Some training indicators had been affected during the summer period when firefighters were called out to attend the high number of incidents. It was important that the Service was flexible in mobilising its resources in order to respond to incidents.

In relation to the health and safety indicators, there had been no serious accidents reported during the year to date.

Utilising

All the indicators in this area were green with the exception of Grade A defect response time (within 2 hours). The Deputy Chief Fire Officer reported that there was one person working in this area out of hours. A change in ordering of parts was being discussed to increase the availability of spares.

Maximising

Performance against the indicator measuring the percentage of outstanding debt over 90 days old was down. One of the invoices had been settled and payment for the others was currently being chased.

The Finance Team continued to work with budget managers to ensure that purchase orders were in place to improve performance against the indicator measuring the percentage of uncontested invoices paid within 30 days.

In concluding this item, the Chief Fire Officer reported that the percentage of primary fires attended within 10 minutes had increased to 72.73% in January 2023. Work was ongoing to develop the scrutiny call-in process so that non-Executive Members could better scrutinise performance in this area.

RESOLVED:

That the Service’s performance against the delivery of the Authority’s Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) at the end of the second quarter 2022-23 and the issues arising be acknowledged.