Agenda item

To consider a report

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer introduced the summary of organisational performance at the end of the second quarter of the 2023-24 financial year, highlighting the good performance that had been achieved in relation to deliberate fires and injuries and protection activity. The emergency call handling measure on calls answered within 7 seconds had been met during the quarter. This was important within the context of the next report on the agenda, which proposed changes to the Service’s published response standards.

Strong performance had also been achieved against training, development and HR indicators.

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer then reported on indicators on an exception basis as follows:

·         The number of Home Fire Safety Visits delivered was under the target for the quarter; however, as a result of the recent inspection, the Service was now focusing on targeted delivery of these visits to the most vulnerable in the County.

·         The secondary fires attendance standard had not been reached for the quarter. It was recognised that performance against this indicator was affected by seasonality and it was anticipated that the target would be reached by year-end.

·         Additional training was being provided to on-call firefighters on a monthly basis to develop their competencies more quickly.

In response to a question about the number of fires at HMP Bedford, the Deputy Chief Fire Officer advised that the Service worked with the prison management at a local level and also formally expressed its concerns to the Governor of the prison to seek improvements to the prison’s management systems, behaviour management and housekeeping to prevent incidents of fire occurring at the prison, recognising that it was a challenging environment.

Stuart Auger, Head of Response added that a meeting had been held on 21 November 2023 with the prison management to address concerns around the operation of the Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations and to emphasise the Service’s expectations.

He also reassured the Authority that the mental health of prisoners was taken into account, although provision of services to prisoners was complicated by the method the Integrated Care Board had to use to commission these services.

In terms of availability, the Service was utilising a roaming pump to cover areas that were deficient.

In response to a concern raised about the level of cover at Bedford Fire Station, the Authority was advised that a large percentage of cover had previously been provided by two individuals who had left the Service, one as a result of retirement and the other had moved away from the area. This had a disproportionate impact on availability at that station. It was also difficult to recruit on-call firefighters to the station as it was surrounded by commercial properties and due to the way that resources were allocated to calls. As it was located so close to Kempston, the whole-time pumps would often be allocated by the system rather than the on-call pump at Bedford.

In an attempt to counteract this, the Service had relocated some whole-time specialist day to day roles to work from Bedford from Kempston and the Service was actively seeking to increase the presence at Bedford.

Councillor Goodchild mentioned a Town Council meeting that had been attended by the Deputy Chief Fire Officer where Home Fire Safety Visits had been discussed and local community agents had been mentioned as a method for identifying appropriate households. He asked if any agents or other local residents had contacted the Deputy Chief Fire Officer in this respect.

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer commented that he welcomed this sort of assistance from any Authority Members, as they were the representatives of their local communities.

RESOLVED:

That the Service’s performance against the published standards within the Community Risk Management Plan and the wider corporate Key Performance Indicators be acknowledged.