Agenda item

To consider a report

Members received a summary of organisational performance at the end of the third quarter of the current performance year.

In introducing the report, the Deputy Chief Fire Officer commented on the positive direction of progress; however, some areas of concern remained. These were detailed in the report, along with the efforts being taken to improve performance.

Prevention

It was noted that the third quarter included part of the summer period. As this had been unusually dry and hot, there had been an increase in the number of incidents. There had also been a general rise in activity following the years affected most by the COVID pandemic and incident levels would continue to be monitored.

The Head of Prevention and Protection agreed that all areas had been impacted by the exceptionally hot and dry summer, with significant increases in both accidental and deliberate fires. The spate conditions had been reflected in the figures and it was likely that this would also be reflected in national data.

In relation to the ban of sales of disposable barbeques during the hottest periods in the summer, Members were advised that this action had been taken by responsible retailers across the UK as there was no legislation preventing these sales.

Councillor Burnett requested that the Chief Fire Officer continue to support local and national campaigns working with retailers to prevent the sale of disposable barbeques during peak fire conditions and to report back to the next meeting of the Authority on progress.

The Chief Fire Officer commented that there had already been 60 incidents that qualified as wildfires across the UK in the current calendar year.

Protection

Councillor Franks expressed his thanks to the Head of Prevention and Protection and his team regarding recent activity in relation to an unlicensed HMO in Luton.

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer reported that positive performance had been demonstrated against all protection performance indicators, with the exception of mobilisation to Automatic Fire Alarms, the reasons for which were set out in the report.

The Head of Prevention and Protection advised that approximately 40 formal notices had been issued by the Protection team during the current financial year. There appeared to be significant issues in terms of the quality of housing within the County, particularly in the southern parts of the County. The Protection Team worked with landlords and many properties were made operational within a day of a notice being served.

Response

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer referred to his previous comments in relation to the general increase in incidents, with all areas reporting a substantial increase in activity.

The deep-dive into the performance on some of the response targets was nearing its conclusion, with the results being reported to the Lead Member prior to being submitted to the Authority for information.

The whole-time global crewing indicator had been discussed earlier in the meeting, with the Deputy Chief Fire Officer reiterating that overall pump availability was maximised by deploying the fifth person on a two pump station to increase on call pump availability. This increased overall availability and the percentage of calls that could be responded to within the response times.

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer reported that additional resource had been allocated to the on-call improvement project to improve availability which would lead to future improvements in performance against these indicators.

In relation to the percentage of primary fires attended within 10 minutes, which was subject to the deep-dive review, measures were being implemented to improve performance incrementally in both the control room and at fire stations. These included changes to the pre-rigging areas to reduce the travel time to mobilise.

Members challenged the continued level of suboptimal performance. As the response standards were set out in the Community Risk Management Plan, it was important that performance improved. It appeared, in the current report, to be that the percentage of primary fires attended within 10 minutes was significantly lower than it had been the previous year.

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer explained that, in addition to the improvement measures being introduced, there was also work being undertaken to improve confidence in the data being captured. This was not necessarily measuring the correct activity when compared to national benchmarking data. There was also a large difference in response times to be expected when responding to an addressable location in comparison to a vehicle fire at an unidentified location on the M1. As he had previously mentioned, a meeting with the Lead Member for response had been arranged after Easter to present the results of the call-in of performance in this area.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer added that the calls mobilised to also included calls from a third party, such as the Ambulance Service. These required additional time to mobilise to and therefore would impact on performance.

In relation to a question on recruitment and retention, and how this linked to the cadet programme, the Assistant Chief Fire Officer reported that the Service attended careers fairs and events, and had recently been invited to an “Employability Day” organised by Luton Borough Council in April.

In concluding the discussion of the response targets, the Chief Fire Officer emphasised that emergency response was the core function of the Service and that improving response times was his top priority.

Empowering

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer reported that the majority of the empowering performance indicators were green, with two areas of slight decrease, one of which was the result of a crew being unable to complete Working at Height training as they had been called to an operational incident. The other was related to PDRPro and was being addressed.

Utilising

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer advised that only one indicator was amber and the reasons for this were set out in the report.

Maximising

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer reported on the one amber indicator: percentage of uncontested invoices paid within 30 days. Parts of the approval process were now being automated and it was hoped that this would speed up the process. Training for new budget managers continued.

RESOLVED:

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