Fleetwood – 224 to flexible day crewing (FDC) pilot and existing employee ‘turn in to station’ analysis
There are 27 existing Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS) grey book employees who live within a five-minute travel time of Fleetwood station. One is precluded due to being a Station Manager, one is about to retire. 12 are employed on an On Call contract only. Ten are at 2/2/4 stations in Western area, two are at day crewing plus (DCP) stations (Bispham and Chorley). There is one Fire Safety inspector.
Should agreement to proceed with a pilot be supported by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), the Service intends to write to all eligible wholetime (WT) members of staff who live within 5 minutes of the station (13 people). Depending on the number of staff interested in the pilot, the Service may need to ringfence a small number of posts to on-call firefighters from Fleetwood.
Forecasting the reaction, or ‘turn in’ time of an On Call unit is possible, but due to the large number of variables, a margin of error should be expected.
Firefighters may choose multiple modes of transport from running, to cycling or driving, the time of the incident and the activity which the On Call firefighter is undertaking at the time of mobilisation also bears a substantial impact on the reaction time. External factors such as traffic also cannot be adequately accounted for. And perhaps most pertinent, forecasting assumes that a firefighter is mobilised from their home address, whereas in reality, the firefighter may be at any location which they believe to be within five minutes of the station.
Assessing road travel time from their home addresses, the table below shows that, the potential FDC crew could respond to the station in approximately 3 minutes (average travel time by road to the station is 2min 56 seconds), depending on who is available and their location at the time of receiving a fire call.
Travel times are sourced from AA Route Planner and are indicative.
|
Existing On Call |
Potential FDC (existing WT FFs) |
||
|
Reaction Time (mm:ss) |
Reaction Time (mm:ss) |
||
|
Name |
Car |
Name |
Car |
|
FF |
02:27 |
FF |
03:02 |
|
FF |
03:23 |
FF |
02:44 |
|
FF |
03:46 |
FF |
04:44 |
|
FF |
02:59 |
FF |
02:17 |
|
FF |
05:13 |
FF |
02:59 |
|
FF |
02:29 |
FF |
00:37 |
|
FF |
02:17 |
FF |
03:18 |
|
FF |
02:48 |
FF |
03:19 |
|
FF |
03:21 |
FF |
03:29 |
|
FF |
03:55 |
FF |
01:47 |
|
FF |
03:34 |
FF |
04:44 |
|
FF |
02:40 |
FF |
03:13 |
|
FF |
03:07 |
FF |
01:56 |
|
FF |
03:52 |
|
|
|
FF |
01:47 |
||
|
FF |
01:56 |
||
|
Average |
03:08 |
Average |
02:56 |
Table 1: Travel times from home addresses to Fleetwood fire station for existing On Call and wholetime staff. Table is anonymised.