Lancashire Combined Fire Authority

Meeting to be held on 24 April 2023

Member Champion Activity Report

Contact for further information:

Deputy Chief Fire Officer Steve Healey – Tel No: 01772 866801

Executive Summary

This paper provides a report on the work of the Member Champions for the period up to 31 March 2023.

Recommendation

The Authority is requested to note and endorse the report and acknowledge the work of the respective Champions.

Information

The concept of Member Champions was introduced in December 2007 with a review of the roles in 2017. 

The Authority appoints its Member Champions at its Annual Meeting in June, and the current Member Champions are:

· Community Safety – Councillor Jean Rigby

· Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – Councillor Zamir Khan

· Health and Wellbeing – County Councillor Andrea Kay

· Road Safety – County Councillor Ron Woollam

Reports relating to the activity of the Member Champions are provided on a regular basis to the Authority. During this period, all have undertaken their respective role in accordance with the defined terms of reference. Their activity to date is as follows:

Community Safety – Councillor Jean Rigby

Lancashire Fire and Rescue Fire Cadets were represented at the Northwest IFE Junior Lecturette Final by Jack Nicholls from the Morecambe unit, Emily Evans from the Burnley unit and Callum Shorrock from the Preston unit. Jack’s presentation was on Equality and Diversity in the Fire Service, Emily presented on 999 Re-Unite and Callum was responsible for keeping the evening on track as Master of Ceremonies. Merseyside and Cheshire Fire and Rescue Services were also represented. There were some fantastic presentations across the evening from all the young people demonstrating so much passion, enthusiasm and knowledge. Jack was awarded the overall winner of the competition.

In Southern area there has been a rise in the number of Automatic Fire Alarm activations in sheltered accommodation so the Prevention Team have started a programme whereby they start the day with a general Fire Safety Talk and then the residents can have a bespoke Home Fire Safety Check, which is person centred and tailored to their situation and needs. This initiative will be monitored alongside the alarm activations to evaluate effectiveness.

The Prevention Support Team has completed an evaluation of the Winter Safety campaign, which has largely focused on the Cost-of-Living Crisis. The campaign has allowed collaboration with partners, members of the public and third sector organisations. LFRS were able to identify and engage directly with approximately 42,000 people from the target audience and issue resources and safety information to them and delivered nearly 8000 Home Fire Safety Checks. Throughout the campaign, accidental dwelling fires and other related incidents were monitored to allow the identification of any emerging behaviours or trends relating to the cost of living. The evaluation was able to evidence a reduction in the number of accidental dwelling fires from November 2022 to the end of February 2023 in comparison to previous years. 

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – Councillor Zamir Khan

The Service has several employee voice groups comprising members of staff from underrepresented groups who undertake activity to make LFRS a better place to work for all. 

· We continue to attend recruitment events promoting LFRS as an employer of choice, recently attending an event at UCLAN which was aimed at offering employment opportunities to ex veterans. As we look to recruit to our wholetime recruits course next year we will again be embarking on positive action events. 

· We continue to improve the scrutiny and quality assurance arrangements in relation to equality impact assessments.

Further to several cultural reviews in relation to other Services and more recently the HMICFRS spotlight report on values and culture we continue to identify and implement any recommendations and any learning.

· We have adopted the new Code of Ethics and built this into our induction and performance management arrangements, we are relaunching our Code of Ethics development sessions which clearly communicate our standards and expectations in relation to banter and behaviour. 

· We have written to all our firefighters in development with key contacts in case they need additional support. 

· We are in the process of establishing a confidential reporting hot line which members of staff can utilise to report issues of concern. 

· We have promoted our standards in relation to the use of social media in a variety of different ways. 

· We currently undertake Enhanced DBS checks for anyone who undertakes regulated activity, we will be extending our checking process to include a basic check of anyone who undertakes an operational role, or a role within community safety. We have written to Lancashire Constabulary to ensure that their Common Law Police Disclosure powers are being used appropriately in circumstances involving fire and rescue employees. 

· We continue to deliver management development training to all those in a supervisory, middle or senior leadership role and this includes development on how to undertake investigations and the management of people issues. Further to the development of new Fire Standards Board’s leadership standards we are in the process of reviewing our development programmes against these standards.

Health and Wellbeing & Climate Change Update – County Councillor Andrea Kay

Climate Change and Environment

This quarter’s environmental focus has been Living Lent. This is an opportunity for people to try making a change for 40 days and commit to changing their lifestyle in support of the climate during Lent. Ideas for this Living Lent include:

· Giving up using single-use plastics

· Going meat-free

· Finding alternative modes of transport

· Reducing electricity use by 10%

· Commit to living/shopping locally

· Buy nothing new for the whole of Lent.

These ideas were shared with the Environmental Champions across the Service as well as being creative with recycled materials to display these and other environmental messages in a Noticeboard at Service Headquarters.

The Environment and Sustainability Promotional Calendar 2023/24 (attached as Appendix 1) has been approved and is ready to be launched in April. Topics this year include; Earth Day, Recycle Week, Energy Saving Week and the Great British Spring Clean. Further updates will be shared about this as they are promoted.

Health and Wellbeing

In January 2023 we launched a trial wellbeing initiative – Wellbeing Wednesdays. The idea behind the Wellbeing Wednesdays is that a representative from the SHE Department will work from a different station each week (not always on a Wednesday so as to ensure On Call units are included in this trial), with the aim of encouraging mental health conversations and good working relationships between all levels of staff.  There is not a specific format to the day, it is entirely up to the crew/staff how the day develops but it could be an opportunity to:-

· enable managers to have a wellbeing chat.

· support managers in having wellbeing conversations and about how to start/have difficult conversations with staff.

· encourage open and honest discussion about wellbeing/mental health/experiencing struggles etc. both in and out of work.

· deliver Workplace Wellbeing Toolbox Talks or facilitate wellbeing sessions for anyone on station.

· other wellbeing related support/activity – pre-arranged by the Station Manager or staff on station.

During Jan – Mar 2023 we have completed 20 sessions and each one has been well received, with staff at all levels taking the opportunity to find out more about the wellbeing resources the Service have in place and also taking part in workshops. To date this has resulted in over 60 wellbeing interactions with colleagues, such as supportive conversations and workshops. The trial will continue until the end of July, after which the impact/feedback from sessions will be reviewed.

A review is underway to refresh the Distress Management and Self-Care course that was developed in 2017. The contract for this course has come to end and we are now updating the content of a new bespoke course to focus on more relevant topic areas; such as, how to deal with impact of attending suicide/attempted suicide incidents as a responder, building personal resilience and maintaining work-life balance, recognising stress reactions and learning coping strategies etc. It is hoped this course will be developed and ready to pilot in Q3 2023/24.

Road Safety – County Councillor Ron Woollam

Road Sense is a Year 6 Road Safety Education Package delivered by LFRS and offered to all primary schools in Lancashire. Delivery since September reached nearly 11,800 pupils. Feedback from teachers is very favourable. An evaluation tool has been trialled and is now in use, this makes the process of evaluation easier for the teachers and results in better data to evaluate effectiveness. An anonymous evaluation has recently been introduced for the children to complete following completion of the session. This will allow evaluation of the effectiveness of the delivery from the pupil’s perspective and will feed into a wider piece of work Prevention Support are doing into the evaluation of our Prevention activities. 

Biker Down continues to be very popular with nearly 265 attendees since September. Attendees all receive a Safety Helmet Assessment and Rating Programme (SHARP) information booklet alongside their First Aid Kit. The National Fire Chiefs Council campaign, ‘2 Wheels Week’, in April will deliver 7 courses throughout the month and will aim to increase social media activity. Short clips have been created to release throughout the week promoting the course and highlighting the importance of wearing personal protective equipment when riding, the theme of the campaign. The Facebook followers have increased to over 850 and posts often reach over 1900 people. The course also has a 5-star review status on social media.

LFRS continues to work with partners including the Child and Youth Justice Service. The two sessions that have taken place have been delivered from Burnley Fire Station and more are planned at Chorley and Garstang. The purpose of the sessions is engagement and education in road safety and the young people gain a level two qualification. LFRS is a specified authority under the Serious Violence Duty, so this collaboration is supportive of this.

Financial Implications

Activities are within budget.

Business Risk Implications

Whilst no formal obligation is placed on the Authority to have Champions, effective utilisation of such roles offers a number of benefits.

Environmental Impact

The Member Champion role provides leadership on environmental issues and assists in engaging Authority members in strategic objectives relating to protecting the environment.

Equality and Diversity Implications

The Member Champion role provides leadership on equality and diversity issues and assists in engaging Authority members in strategic objectives relating to equality and diversity.

Human Resource Implications

Some Member and Officer time commitments.

Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985

List of background papers

Paper:

Date:

Contact: DCFO, Steve Healey

Reason for inclusion in Part 2 if appropriate: N/A