Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from County Councillor D Stansfield and Councillor M Khan.

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

None received.

The Chairman, CC Holgate expressed his appreciation and thanked everyone for their hard work which included good scrutiny being undertaken during challenging times.

RESOLVED: - That the Minutes of the last meeting held on the 14 September 2017 be confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

(Oral report)

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer had advised at recent previous Performance Committee meetings it would be helpful for Members to be updated on the action the Service had  taken to improve and continue to build on its current strong position regarding retained pump availability across Lancashire.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer then welcomed Station Manager Mick Strickland, Retained Support Manager who currently led the team of 7 Retained Support Officers (RSO’s) and Mick Dawson, Station Manager from  Fylde District. 

Station Manager Strickland presented Members with a detailed update on the current establishment which is currently operating at 80% of its overall allocated hours.  Currently there were 94 wholetime staff providing dual contract roles which brings together shared skills and experience that could bridge the gap between the two duty systems.

He explained that the role of the RSO’s went live in May 2017 following investment from the Fire Authority.  The RSO’s worked from a base station to maintain operational skills and to build relationships between wholetime and RDS which would promote and build on working together.

The responsibilities of the Retained Support Officer were:-

·        Co-ordinate, plan and deliver training;

·        Co-ordinate and strengthen links between duty systems;

·        Liaise with Unit Managers, Service Delivery Managers, Training and Operational Review and Corporate Communications;

·        Provide Operational Cover when necessary;

·        Lead, manage, coach and support operational incidents;

·        Flexible working pattern.

The role supported RDS units throughout recruitment and employer engagements by contacting potential new employers and with the help of the Corporate Communications team information packs were currently being developed.

SM Dawson then provided an update on the RDS recruitment drive which included a short news broadcast production video which Members had the opportunity to view.  He then summarised the number of successful number of applicants who had completed the retained recruits course which commenced in November 2017.

It was also noted that there was an enormous amount of work being undertaken by all involved and support from departments to ensure the Service continued to improve on its current position.

In response to a question raised by CC Perks, SM Strickland confirmed the station locations of the RSO’s were 2 roles in Pennine (based at Rawtenstall and Nelson), 2 in Northern (both based at  Lancaster), 1 in Western (based at  St Annes), 1 in Eastern (based at Hyndburn) and 1 in Southern (based at  Chorley).

In response to a question raised by Councillor Smith, SM Strickland reported that there would always be certain areas in Lancashire where the Service had struggled to recruit which was due primarily to work and family life.

Members thanked SM Strickland and SM Dawson for the presentation and for all their work which had been undertaken in this process.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised Members that this was the 2^nd quarterly report for 2017/18 as detailed in the Risk Management Plan 2017-2022.

The report showed there were 2 negative KPI Exception Reports. An exception report was provided which detailed the reasons for the exception, analysis of the issue and actions being taken to improve performance.

Members focussed on the indicators where an exception report was presented and examined each indicator in turn as follows:-

2.4 Fire Engine Availability – Retained Duty System

This indicator measured the availability of fire engines that were crewed by the retained duty system. It was measured as the percentage of time a fire engine was available to respond compared to the total time in the period.

The percentage of time that RDS crewed engines were available for quarter 2 was 87.73%, previous year quarter 2 was 88.39%, a worsening of 0.66%.

The previous quarter (April to June 2017) recorded 89.61%.

Annual Standard: Above 95%

This was a negative exception report due to the cumulative RDS availability for the three months of quarter 2 being below the standard and outside of the two percent tolerance.

Exception report provided.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised Members that quarter 2 availability had decreased over quarter 1, with the cumulative availability recorded at the lowest level over the last 5 years.  To aid local level monitoring, additional analysis had been supplied at pump level, along with a new KPI 2.4.1 which measured RDS availability without wholetime staff imports to supplement RDS staff.

The Retained Duty System Recruitment and Improvement Group would continue to be responsible for progressing areas for improvement, continuing to work on a number of ongoing actions which would strive to deliver incremental improvements in order to strengthen and support the Retained Duty System.

It was noted that the actions being taken to improve performance would be that the  new recruits, who started in May 2017 would continue to show an improvement in RDS crew availability when the respective qualifications of Breathing Apparatus (BA) and BA Team Leader had been completed and staff had gained experience to start acting up to cover the Officer in Charge role.  There was a minimum of 6 months before a Firefighter was BA qualified, and a further 6 month period of BA experience before acquiring BA Team Leader Skills.  Therefore results in availability may only start to be realised during quarter 3.  Similarly some stations had suffered from a lack of available driver however, this would start to show improvement when staff members continued to build driving hours in preparation for their Emergency Fire Appliance Driving Course. There were stations where staff on dual contracts made up half of the RDS crew, with the inevitable impact on the RDS availability.

The Retained Support Officer (RSO) role would continue to assist in some of these areas, in particular around recruitment and firefighter/officer development and with the various strengthening and improving work streams, the Service should see a positive effect  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14/17

The next scheduled meeting of the Committee has been agreed for 10:00 hours on 15 March 2018 in the Main Conference Room, at Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service Headquarters, Fulwood.

Further meetings are:   scheduled for 7 June 2018 and 13 September 2018

                                        proposed for 29 November 2018

The next meeting of the Committee would be held on Thursday, 15 March 2018 at 1000 hours in the Main Conference Room at Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Headquarters, Fulwood.

Further meeting dates were noted for 7 June 2018 and 13 September 2018 and agreed for 29 November 2018.