Agenda item

To consider a report

The Chief Fire Officer presented the report and findings from the 2023 service inspection undertaken by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) and the proposed action plan to address the areas for improvement identified by the HMICFRS arising from this. The Service had been one of the first three inspected in the third round of inspections. HMICFRS had introduced a new grade of adequate and no longer issued judgments for each of the three overarching areas of effectiveness, efficiency and people, but individual judgments for the eleven underlying areas.

The Service had been judged as good in understanding fire and risk and future affordability; adequate in responding to major incidents, right people, right skills, promoting fairness and diversity and managing performance and developing leaders; and requires improvement in preventing fire and risk, public safety through fire regulation, responding to fires and emergencies, best use of resources and promoting values and culture.

In the area of promoting values and culture, the Service was judged to require improvement as a result of the singular issue of the backlog of firefighter fitness tests that had arisen during the COVID pandemic. HMICFRS had given a ‘cause of concern’ as they considered the Service could not assure itself that its operational members of staff meet the minimum fitness requirements to perform their roles.

The action plan specifically addressing the cause for concern was tabled. The Chief Fire Officer commented that immediately prior to the publicationof the inspection report, the Service had already completed 98.6% of fitness tests. HMICFRS would return in November to assess the Service’s performance against this action plan.

In response to a question, the Chief Fire Officer confirmed that there were no surprises arising from the inspection report, and commented that there were many areas of good practice detailed in the report. The Service had been disappointed to receive an RI judgment; however, there was a commitment to improve and the draft action plan was one of the first steps on the roadmap to this.

Cllr Gurney joined the meeting virtually at 11.18 am

Cllr Coombes left the meeting at 11.31 am

The Chief Fire Officer introduced Thomas Warner, the Service’s Liaison Officer with the HMICFRS, who advised that, following the first six inspection reports being released, the Service was currently ranked third out of six.

It was noted that some services had been issued with the more serious ‘accelerated’ cause of concern, where HMICFRS judged there to be an issue potentially affecting public safety, that required a letter to before published before the inspection report was released.

The Chief Fire Officer provided background on the inspection regime for newly appointed Members to the Authority. Since its inception in 2018, when the HMIC assumed responsibility for the inspection of fire and rescue services, services had been inspected on approximately a two-yearly cycle. There had also been thematic reviews undertaken on such topics as COVID response and handling of misconduct charges. Therefore, it was anticipated that the next full inspection would take place in 2025.

In previous inspection rounds, HIMCFRS had published a table setting out the expectations associated with each judgement. For this round, only the expectations for “good” had been published. To determine the expectations for other judgements would require reading the narrative reports contained within the published inspection reports.

In response to a question from Councillor Versallion regarding value for money and whether the higher spend per capita by this Service compared to others may have influenced the inspection result, the Chief Fire Officer referred to the development of the Productivity and Efficiency Board and the work of the Performance & Insight Team who would draw out these comparisons. The County faced specific challenges related to its large rural areas, along with the urban conurbations of Bedford and Luton, where activity levels were similar to those of a large metropolitan area.

Members recognised the commitment of senior officers in the Service to respond to the areas for improvement highlighted in the inspection report and the development of the comprehensive action plan.

The Authority was reassured that continuous dialogue would be maintained with the Service Liaison Lead for the HMICFRS and that the action plan had already been shared with her. It was important that the Service Liaison Lead was taken on the improvement journey with the Service.

Councillor Headley tabled a number of proposed amendments to the action plan to further refine the actions and suggested that there may be some deliverables that had not been included in the plan. It was important that all the actions required were very specific and measurable, so that their completion could be demonstrated to the HMICFRS in 2025.

In response to one of the suggestions, to include a completion date for all National Operational Guidance packs, the Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised that these had not all been released and therefore, the Service was not able to determine the length of time and resource required to implement them.

The Chief Fire Officer added that these would be included in the Plan following their introduction.

Another suggestion put forward was to simplify the deliverable under action 8.

Mr Warner advised that some of the areas for improvement were subject to standardised wording.

The Chair commented that, as this action plan was available in the public domain, acronyms should be avoided. With the Executive Committee and the Authority receiving regular update reports, the public should be able to understand and engage in the improvement process.

The Chief Fire Officer proposed that the monitoring and approval of the action plan be delegated to the Executive Committee to enable Members of the Authority.

Councillor M Hussain expressed the view that the Service must ensure that it was becoming more representative of the community that it served and should put additional effort into increasing the diversity of its workforce.

RESOLVED:

1. That the findings of the HMICFRS as set out in their report be noted.

2. That the Executive Committee be delegated authority to approve the draft HMICFRS action plan.

3. That the Authority receive regular updates on progress in delivering against the action plan.