Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Fire Officer

Representatives of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) submitted a question that was considered and responded to following the presentation of the report and prior to questions from Authority members.

Craig Parkin, Deputy Chief Fire Officer, introduced the report that presents the outcomes from the recent inspection by HMICFRS. A further report detailing how the Service is responding to the inspection report will be presented to the Authority at the September meeting.

Overall, the Service was assessed as ‘requires improvement’ with the following ‘good’ areas:

·  protecting the public through fire regulation;

·  responding to national risks.

Assessment findings in several areas reiterated the information that the Service had provided to inspectors, this is an acknowledgement that the Service has a good level of self-awareness.

The ‘requires improvement’ assessment of the people strand is disappointing as the Service placed great emphasis on developing the right culture, values and wellbeing within the workforce. It was stressed that the Service is not complacent and is already undertaking activities in order to strive for service improvements.

Representatives of the FBU asked the following question:

“The HMIC report highlighted several areas for improvement, one area is that the service should ensure staff are appropriately trained in safety-critical skills.

Currently Approved to Ride trainees are being used on retained appliances, these trainees have had very little training and are not trained for all types of incidents. Approved to Ride trainees are currently supernumerary on a normally crewed appliance.

The service has now been trailing the use of alternatively crewed appliances for over 6 months, crews of less than 4 are being mobilised to incidents with approved to ride trainees form part of these crews. In light of the HMIC report, does the Fire authority feel that is appropriate to be mobilising crews with Firefighters that have not completed any training for certain incident types?”

The Chair of the Authority welcomed the engagement by the FBU and responded to the question. It was stated that the arrangements had been thorough consultation with representative bodies prior to implementation of the alternative crewing trial, and that policies are subject to periodic review to ensure they are achieving the desired outcomes by appropriately serving communities. Officers welcomed continued discussion and engagement with the FBU.

Comments from members of the Authority included:

(a)  the reference within the inspection report to the monitoring of working hours, where whole-time firefighters also work at on-call fire stations and its impact on the team and public safety;

(b)  a need for an action plan to address the issues raised from the inspection which prevented the Service achieving good or outstanding. It is disappointing that such an action plan has not been submitted to this meeting, particularly as senior officers were aware of the embargoed content of the inspection report prior to its publication;

(c)  the comment of the inspectors that reliance on reserves  to keep the Service financially afloat is not sustainable, has been raised by members of the Authority  to be addressed;

(d)  reference to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18