Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from County Councillor David O’Toole and Councillors Jane Hugo and Tony Williams.

Members are asked to consider any pecuniary and non-pecuniary interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the agenda.

None received.

RESOLVED: - That the Minutes of the last meeting held on the 15 November 2021 be confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer presented a report on the Service's Annual Service Plan and Strategic Assessment of Risk for 2022/23. 

This year’s Annual Service Plan, as now considered by Members continued to provide LFRS with the platform to highlight the priority activities and projects the Service intended to deliver over the coming year; leading improvements and innovation in the sector with some of the best firefighting equipment and training facilities in the country and a highly skilled and motivated workforce.

The year ahead would build on achievements by staying focused on continuous improvement to make the people of Lancashire safer, particularly the most vulnerable members of our communities. Many priorities were initiatives that would transform the way the Service worked and would bring lasting benefits.

Annual Service Plan

The Annual Service Plan was built around the Service’s four corporate priorities as detailed in the Community Risk Management Plan which were: -

1.    Valuing our people so they can focus on making Lancashire safer;

2.    Preventing fire and other emergencies from happening and Protecting people and property when fires happen;

3.    Responding to fire and other emergencies quickly and competently;

4.    Delivering value for money in how we use our resources.

The Annual Service Plan informed activity that would be led across the Service as well as locally within district plans. Activities that were planned for delivery also informed the staff performance appraisal process so that all staff understood the plans and were involved in helping to deliver key activities.

As in previous years, detailed under each corporate priority was a series of priority activities and projects with a brief description of each item to give further clarity and context. This ensured that all staff and the public were informed of the changes and activities the Service aimed to progress and how these items fitted within our priorities. This provided the opportunity for the Service to ensure that it continued to provide transparency and visibility of plans in a clear concise format. The governance arrangements for delivery of the Annual Service Plan items would continue to be monitored through the Service's Corporate Programme Board and Service Management Team.

As always, the aim was to continually improve and refine the planning process and this year’s Plan aimed to add focus on achievable objectives to be delivered within the year, acknowledging that a proportion of items were continued from the 2020/21 Plan, reflecting the commitment to a number of long-term projects.

Strategic Assessment of Risk

Risk in Lancashire would always remain dynamic: it changed over time, differed by area and demographic, and needed different interventions to reduce the likelihood of the risk occurring or to lessen its consequences. These risks were identified in the Strategic Assessment of Risk which was refreshed annually and was also informed by the Lancashire Resilience Forum Community Risk Register. Through our risk management framework, the Service continually assessed changing risk and prioritised our response framework.  A wider consultation had also taken place, involving Unitary Authorities, District Councils,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 28-20/21

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer presented the report.  The Authority had a consultation strategy which provided a framework through which it could seek public opinion on major change issues.

Each year the Planning Committee reviewed the strategy as now considered by Members to assure continued compliance with guidance or legislation and to incorporate learning from any public consultation exercises undertaken.

The review concluded that the strategy continued to be legally compliant and in line with good practice. 

It was noted that the Strategy was implemented to good effect during the public consultation on the draft Community Risk Management Plan 2022-27 (CRMP) in summer 2021 and had been updated to reflect learning from that exercise.  This included a mid-point review of progress, in addition to a closing review, to provide an opportunity for any adjustments to be made to the consultation plan if needed.  It was commonplace to use a standard 12-week period for public consultation however the length of time given for consultees to respond could vary depending on the subject and extent of impact of the consultation. Although in most cases 12-weeks would be sufficient, the maximum 12-week period had been changed to reflect the need for flexibility to allow sufficient opportunity for consultees to participate.  The Deputy Chief Fire Officer advised that the recent consultation on the CRMP had received 1,907 responses in comparison to the previous consultation in 2017 on the integrated risk management plan which received only 11 responses.

This year the Authority would consult the public in relation to the emergency cover review, incorporating the withdrawal of the day crewing plus duty system.  Any other requests to the Authority to consult with the public would be made as-and-when priorities identified in the annual service plan reached the point where this was required.

Members were pleased with the increase in responses to the consultation and that the consultation methodology (detailed on page 39 of the agenda pack) included focus groups and social media platforms.

In response to a question raised by County Councillor Hennessy the Deputy Chief Fire Officer provided reassurance that the consultation on the emergency cover review and changes to the day crewing plus duty system (which was a separate item later on the agenda) would include the production of video communications to support engagement with staff, communities and stakeholders.

RESOLVED: - That the Committee noted and endorsed the consultation strategy.

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer presented a report which contained an outline of the circumstances that had led to several proposals to introduce, amend, or remove performance monitoring across the 5 core priorities of:

-       Valuing our People so they can focus on making Lancashire safer

-       Preventing Fires and other emergencies form happening and,

-       Protecting people and property when they happen

-       Responding to fires and other emergencies quickly and competently

-       Delivering value for money in how we use our resources.

The report contained a description of the change proposals, including rationales for their review; all supported by a visual summary of how the proposed KPI suite would look following approval/endorsement of the changes.

The most simplistic change had been to re-order the KPI suite to better reflect the content of the refreshed Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) 2022-27 along with the Service’s STRIVE values. The outcome of this change now saw ‘Valuing our People’ as the primary KPI, further demonstrating our intent to put our people first. 

A summary of the new KPIs was:

1.           Valuing our people so that they can focus on making Lancashire safer

1.1            Overall Staff Engagement

1.2.1      Staff Absence Wholetime

1.2.2      Staff Absence On-Call

1.2.3      Staff Absence Greenbook

1.3.1      Workforce Diversity (as a %)

1.3.2      Workforce Diversity Recruited (as a %)

1.4         Staff Accidents

2.           Preventing fires and other emergencies from happening; Protecting people and property when fires happen

2.1         Critical fire Risk Map Score

2.2         Overall Activity

2.3         Accidental Dwelling Fires (ADF)

2.3.1      ADF – Harm to people – Casualties

2.3.2      ADF – Harm to Property – Extent of Damage (Fire Severity)

2.4         Accidental Building Fires (ABF) - (Commercial Premises)

2.4.1      ABF (Commercial Premises) – Harm to Property – Extent of Damage (Fire Severity)

2.5         ABF (Non-Commercial Premises)

2.5.1      ABF (Non-Commercial Premises – Private Garages and Private Sheds) – Harm to Property – Extent of Damage (Fire Severity)

2.6         Deliberate Fires Total

2.6.1      Deliberate Fires – Dwellings

2.6.2      Deliberate Fires – Commercial Premises

2.6.3      Deliberate Fires – Other (rubbish, grassland etc)

2.7         Home Fire Safety Checks (HFSCs)

2.8         Numbers of other prevention activities such as Childsafe, Wasted Lives etc

2.9         Fire Safety Enforcement

2.10       Building Regulation Consultations

3.           Responding to fire and other emergencies quickly

3.1         Critical Fire Response – 1^st Fire Engine Attendance

3.2         Critical Special Service Response – 1^st Fire Engine Attendance

3.3         Total Fire Engine Availability

3.3.1      Fire Engine Availability Wholetime Shift Systems

3.3.2      Fire Engine Availability On-Call Shift Systems

4.           Delivering value for money in how we use our resources

4.1         Progress Against Allocated budget

4.2         Partnership Collaboration

4.3         Overall User Satisfaction

Members considered the report and noted that several KPI’s had been introduced, amended, or removed to provide better information, in a more understandable way, and to enable measurement against more specific goals.  It was also noted that the proposed changes would be implemented as and when the underpinning technology and integration within new PowerBi performance management software came into effect within  ...  view the full minutes text for item 30-20/21

The Deputy Chief Fire Officer presented the report.  Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS) was required to review its emergency response arrangements periodically to ensure that provision remained effective and consummate with the dynamic risk profile. This process was a robust assessment of historic data and emergent risk and was delivered in the format of an Emergency Cover Review (ECR).

The Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) for 2022–27 would be presented for approval at the next Combined Fire Authority meeting and within this Plan were a series of organisational commitments associated with LFRS’ capabilities including the emergency response provision.

The Service sought to deliver high standards of operational response and in doing so prepared and planned for emergencies so that when an emergency happened and the Service had to respond, it was done quickly, with the right fire appliances, the right specialist vehicles and the right crewing arrangements to deal with the incident effectively and safely.

As part of the ECR, the Service would be considering revised crewing arrangements at all 11 Day Crewing Plus (DCP) stations following the recent decision? by the Authority to withdraw the duty system. 

The aims of the ECR were to:

1.     Ensure LRFS always provided an effective response to fire and other emergencies.

2.     Ensure LFRS crewing arrangements were fit for purpose to meet the risk levels of the community.

3.     Ensure the DCP duty system was phased out and replaced with crewing arrangements that provided efficient and effective resources across the whole of Lancashire. 

The community of Lancashire changed dynamically through commercial and residential growth and retraction, new road and other infrastructure provision and these along with many other factors may create a differing emergency response requirement from LFRS. To ensure that response arrangements remained appropriate and effective, to validate current provision and to identify any appropriate proposals for change in response provision it was recommended that LFRS undertake an ECR process in 2022 and that within the methodology three key elements focussed upon would be:

1. Risk and Demand (Performance Data and Risk in Lancashire).

2. Process (Mobilising criteria).

3. Resource Provision (Location, Configuration and Weight of attack).

In order to validate the current response arrangements and to test predictive impacts, LFRS planned to draw on the services of an external specialist organisation to provide third party objective data analysis. This would enable the use of predictive modelling software to determine and subsequently validate the potential impact of any changes to the number, type, location and crewing arrangements of emergency resources across the county.

It was recommended that the scope of the ECR included:

A)   Validating the deliverables, outcomes and actual performance.

B)   Developing a subsequent Baseline Model for 2022 inclusive of the above.

C)   Determining the potential impact of a series of changes to the number, location, response capabilities and crewing arrangements of emergency resources across the county. More specifically but not exclusively:

1)    Replacement of the Day Crewing Plus (DCP) duty system

2)    Enhancement of our response to climate change

3)  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31-20/21

The Acting Assistant Chief Fire Officer presented the report. 

The Strategic Assessment of Risk identified the increasing impacts and consequences of climate change in terms of both prevalence and duration of large-scale flooding and wildfire events in the county.  The Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) 2022-27 detailed high-level ambitions in response to those emerging risks and the Climate Change Operational Response Plan (CCORP) 2022-27 aimed to provide a more detailed overview of how the provision of services to our communities would be strengthened to ensure that LFRS remained best placed to plan and respond to incidents of these types.

It was noted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  (IPCC) earlier in 2021, shared a view on the current ‘State of the Climate’:

“The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.

“Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic Sea ice, snow cover and permafrost”.

A key element of their observations was that:

“Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle, including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events”.

Armed with this insight and to ensure LFRS’ preparedness and response capabilities, the five-year plan detailed LFRS’ ambitions in response to emerging evidence and warnings on the likely impacts of climate change. 

As the extremes of foreseeable weather events were evident, the action plan would consider flooding and wildfire as two separate areas of focus, whilst recognising that some of the proposed actions to be taken, would serve to mitigate aspects of both risks in tandem.

In delivering against this plan, the aim was to:

•        Reduce the threat to the communities in Lancashire

•        Improve firefighter safety

•        Reduce the costs and impact upon LFRS, partners and our communities

Key principles outlined in the plan integrated activities across preparedness, prevention, protection and operational response.  Several key principles that guided activities were:

1.    Working in partnership with other agencies and/or private bodies to make our communities safer;

2.    Delivering prevention activities serves to educate and inform and thereby reduce potential risks;

3.    Empowering communities to play their part can increase local resilience and assist planning and response;

4.    Utilising operational debriefing and learning supports continuous improvement in the delivery of our services;                                                                                                                     

5.    Working to support local, regional, and national policy design through learning and sharing areas of best practice;

6.    Responding effectively when required, with the right vehicles, trained staff, best equipment, and operational tactics.

Members considered the report in detail which included the legal framework, causation factors and incident demand which demonstrated that both flooding and wildfire incidents had increased over  ...  view the full minutes text for item 32-20/21

The next scheduled meeting of the Committee has been agreed for 10:00 hours on 18 July 2022 in Washington Hall, Service Training Centre, Euxton.

Further meetings are:          scheduled for 21 November 2022

                                                proposed for 6 February 2023

The next meeting of the Committee would be held on Monday 18 July 2022 at 1000 hours in Washington Hall, Service Training Centre, Euxton.

Further meeting dates were noted for 21 November 2022 and agreed for 6 February 2023.