Lancashire Combined Fire Authority

Meeting to be held on 18 December 2023

Member Champion Activity Report

Contact for further information:

ACFO Jon Charters – Tel No: 01772 866802

Executive Summary

This paper provides a report on the work of the Member Champions for the period up to 17 December 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 John Singleton

· 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

LFRS had the pleasure of joining the local Hindu community in celebrating Diwali and the New Year, Annakut, at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Preston. Members of the senior management team, prevention support and the community safety team from Preston Fire Station were warmly welcomed at the temple. Upon entering, staff were greeted with a bindi placed on their foreheads, symbolising a mark of respect and blessing. The visit commenced with a guided tour of the temple, which provided an insight into the significance of Diwali. The partnership with LFRS has had some positive outcomes for the Hindu community and this year they embraced the use of battery-operated tea lights in their celebrations.

Western community safety team have started engaging with Weeton Army Barracks as they have recently welcomed 55 families from Afghanistan to the site. These families are refugees and community safety advisers are liaising with them and the barracks, to deliver home fire safety checks and provide safety advice. They have also delivered talks around loose clothing and cooking and coordinating donations of vital things like Quran, hijabs, and prayer mats from the Muslim community.

Over the last couple of months, operational crews have helped with the logistics for the Water Safety Boards soon to be placed on the Leeds Liverpool Canal at UCLan Sandygate in Burnley, and by the River Ribble at Ribchester. They have accompanied the prevention support team staff on site visits with the landowners and other interested parties to help confirm the suitability of the location. Being involved in this consultation process helps staff gain an increased awareness of the risk sites prior to attending an incident at the location. LFRS Prevention Support staff have also arranged and chaired the Lancashire Water Safety Group, which brings representatives from many partners agencies and communities together to pre plan activities based upon identified risk.

Southern area community safety team supported the West Lancashire Community Safety Partnerships ‘Welcome Week’ campaign, focusing on Student Safety at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk. The team spoke to students about fire safety in their rented accommodation and used the crashed car to engage in conversations about the dangers of drink and drug driving and being over the limit the next day.

Northern area community safety team and Lancaster crews also supported student safety at Lancaster University. They talked to students about fire safety, particularly around cooking, and used the hot oil unit to demonstrate the real dangers of fire risk.

Fire Cadets have opened a new unit at Skelmersdale fire station welcoming fifteen young people onto the two-year programme. The Preesall unit has relocated to Fleetwood fire station in response to the high demand for youth diversionary activities in the area and in September, fourteen young people started their Fire Cadet journey with us. The Fire Cadet Co-ordinator is working on a new partnership with the Police Cadets to offer additional learning opportunities for the young people and add further enrichment to our existing programme.

Staff from many areas of the service have worked with partners to support the 2023 Bright Sparx campaign. Initial feedback looks very positive, and a full evaluation is now taking place to aid organisational learning and develop future prevention plans.

EQUALITY, DIVERSITY & INCLUSION – COUNCILLOR ZAMIR KHAN MBE

Further to the recent wholetime recruitment campaign, interviews have taken place during the month of November. Of the successful candidates identified and invited to the next a stage of the process, 50% are female, 17% are from minority groups, 29% are members from the LGBT+ community and 6% declared a disability.  The rest of the clearance process will now progress, all applicants are measured against the same criteria and only the highest performing candidates are appointed. 

During October and November, we delivered several half day leadership development sessions for all those in a leadership role utilising drama-based training.  This was followed by afternoon sessions for Watch Managers, focused on setting standards and expectations in relation to behaviour and having difficult conversations.

We have had an external audit in relation to our approach to equality impact assessments which concluded substantial assurance on the adequacy and effectiveness of how EIAs are conducted. 

On 22 November representatives from the Service’s Race and Religion Employee Voice Group attended the Asian Fire Service Association Awards, the Service was nominated in four different awards categorises with community safety advisor Faz Patel, winning the award for Partnership of the Year for the Services “Safety during Hajj campaign”. Station Manager Trevor Jenkins won the Health and Inequalities category for our initiative together with public health on delivering NHS checks in East Lancashire and the Race and Religion Employee Voice Group  and the Positive Action Team, were also highly commended for their amazing work in the Champion of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion category and in the Positive Action category. 

HEALTH, WELLBEING & CLIMATE CHANGE – COUNTY COUNCILLOR JOHN SINGLETON

Climate Change and Environment

We promoted Recycle Week in October with a noticeboard display at Headquarters, Routine Bulletin item and communication with Environmental Champions.  The main message for Recycle Week this year was about increasing the types of items getting recycled, focussing on some items that are often put into the general waste by mistake such as empty cleaning products, shampoo and conditioner bottles, takeaway trays, empty food tins and deodorant cans.  As part of this promotional campaign, we included our poster about what types of things we can put in our recycling bins.

We ran our first ever Climate Fresk workshop on 30th November 2023, at Headquarters.  The workshop objectives include:

• Having a clearer understanding of the cause and effect of the climate science

• Having a visual overview of the interconnectedness of the concepts

• Exploring how you feel about the climate crisis and what actions you might take

• Testing your own knowledge and assumptions

• A powerful shared experience your group/team can relate to.

Finally for this quarter, the first draft of our new Environmental Sustainability Plan is now complete and with the Departmental Heads for feedback.  Key information for the plan includes discussions about potential costs involved and progressing with site surveys for decarbonisation roadmaps.  A further update will be available once feedback has been received.

Health and Wellbeing

We have undertaken a promotion to encourage staff to increase the amount of time they are physically active through a ‘Fitness for all’ challenge.  The objective was to achieve 150 fitness points each day, which equates to 15 minutes of physical activity or 75 minutes a week, which is half the recommended activity time for an adult per week. Other wellbeing promotions this quarter have included a suicide awareness drop-in session at headquarters, Fire Fighters Charity wellbeing workshops (developing resilience and Musculoskeletal injury prevention) and Peer Support Ambassador (PSA) workshops for 28 members of staff.  This is a great start to increasing our peer support network and we continue to promote the role of a PSA, to achieve our goal of a minimum of one PSA per station, to further support the de-stigmatisation of mental health conversations in the workplace.

Health and wellbeing information has recently been added in to the CFA Members monthly bulletin, to share the monthly wellbeing focus and associated information with Members.  Coming up in the next few months the topics will be financial wellbeing, cancer and endometriosis.  If anyone has any questions relating to these articles or suggestions for topics, please contact Bekki Ford, the Safety, Health and Wellbeing Advisor.

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. Whilst we are only at the start of the academic year nearly 4,000 pupils have received the package, so we are on track to deliver to all schools by end of summer term. Feedback from teachers remains very positive, please see example below:

“Claire was extremely knowledgeable and relatable to the children. She kept them engaged all afternoon and the children enjoyed the session.”

The inclusion of a QR code post questionnaire for all the pupils continues to show very positive results. To date 4 out of the 5 questions have been answered correctly by 99% of respondents. This is a very positive figure as it proves the key messages taught in the session are being retained by the pupils and discussed at home with parents and carers when filling this in. 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 in popularity with 4 sessions delivered since the summer break. The partnership with Bowker Motorrad is growing from strength to strength with the Biker Down Team attending the 100-year anniversary event and then Bowker hosted a large course (35 attendees) from the venue. The pre and post questionnaire maintains very positive feedback about the session. One of the questions the attendees were asked is around their confidence to create a safe scene following a road traffic collision. The scale they use is 1-5 (1 not confident – 5 very confident). Prior to the session the average rating was 2.4 but increased to 4.6 following the session. We also asked for free text feedback, please see an example below from a recent course:

“Excellent and appreciate all the effort and passion that goes into this. Feel up to date and more confident now.”

During Tyre Safety Month in October the results of a recent National study were released. This worryingly showed Lancashire as being in the top 2 areas for tyre treads being borderline or illegal – 64% of all those checked. This was even worse than the previous findings. With kind permission from Cllr Woollam to utilise the CFA Road Safety Champion budget, all staff and CFA Members were gifted a tyre tread depth checker and information how to check their tyres. 

To support International Men’s Day ‘Wasted Lives’ the pre driver education programme was delivered to young males aged 15 to 17 during 4 workshops at Blackpool Football Club. The crashed car was also used to accompany the delivery. Feedback from the day has been valuable and has led to the booking of further sessions.

“I attended the International Men's Day event at Blackpool FC last Friday and one of the workshops we attended was the Wasted Lives. This was a really good opportunity for our students and extremely impactful with the hard-hitting message.”

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: ACFO Jon Charters

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