Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from: County Councillors P Britcliffe, M Perks, 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.

RESOLVED: - That the Minutes of the last meeting held on the 16 March 2017 be confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

Oral report

At its meeting held September 2016, the Committee received a presentation from Group Manager Neil Taylor on the background to the Springboard project.  For the benefit of new Members, GM Taylor explained that Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service had secured an Information Sharing Agreement with Lancashire County Council which complied with data protection regulations.  The Agreement provided for the secure transfer and handling of adult social care data which enabled the Service to profile risk information and thereby target prevention resources towards individuals: aged over 65, who use a telecare system or who have mobility, sensory or cognitive impairments. These individuals were statistically likely to experience poorer outcomes in the event of a fire occurring in their property; therefore by utilising this strategic referral source and directing resources accordingly a reduction in fire related deaths and injuries was expected.

Due to the high percentage of adult social care in some areas the project had initially been piloted in Burnley, extended to Preston and following positive evaluation it had been rolled out on a phased basis across the Service.  Progress included that Information Sharing Agreements had now also been secured with Blackpool Council and Blackburn with Darwen Council.  Process mapping had been undertaken for each area and processes improved using technology to integrate information systems automatically.  Following staff engagement / briefing and training sessions project ‘Go-Live’ was 3 April 2017. 

Early key performance indicator for Accidental Dwelling Fires (KPI 1.3) showed an improved performance when compared with the previous year.  KPI 1.7 for the provision of home fire safety check visits had increased by 3,793 to August 2017, when compared against the cumulative number of visits to August 2016.

It was noted that the project had been delivered against a back drop of austerity and the achievement in securing the Information Sharing Agreements was recognised.  A number of lessons had been learned which included the value from horizon scanning and the engagement and feedback from staff which had resulted in positive changes to the delivery of the service.

Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service was the only Fire and Rescue Service using adult social care data to risk profile and deliver a more effective prevention service.  Future steps would include: the opportunity to share this best practice, to ensure compliance with emerging legislation, monitor the impact on capacity and undertake a more detailed evaluation in 12 months to review the long term impact.

Members thanked GM Taylor for the presentation and for the work undertaken particularly to secure the data sharing agreements given the clear benefits being achieved as a consequence of this work.

In response to a question raised by Councillor Smith, GM Taylor advised that it was difficult to conclude that the percentage of people who refused a home fire safety / safe and well visit were of a higher risk or led more chaotic lifestyles. 

In response to a question raised by Councillor Smith on whether it could be possible to make it a condition of social housing tenancy  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4/17

Oral report

For the benefit of new Members, Sarah Wilson, Head of North West Fire Control (NWFC) introduced herself and Ged Basson, Operations Manager, NWFC. 

Mrs Wilson provided the following update including what had been done since the last meeting to try and improve workflow and speed of response. 

·        It was noted that Ged Basson was Lancashire’s single point of contact.  Work was ongoing to look at the differences between the different Fire and Rescue Services whose calls were handled by NWFC (namely, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Cumbria and Cheshire);

·        Some operational stages to mobilise including some pre-mobilising actions had now been removed;

·        Research was currently being undertaken to determine whether the implementation of pre-alerting would improve response times (this enabled resources to be alerted as soon as a caller’s location was known);

·        Facilities for control room operators had been improved including changes to the intercom facility, the addition of a request for assistance function and amendments to call management prompts which enabled operators to pause mid-process to make mobilisation earlier;

·        The address gazetteer was currently used by other agencies and contained a lot of address information not required (such as: fallow land, grazing land, orchards, ponds, advertising hoardings etc).  The gazetteer was currently in the process of being updated.  Once this was complete unwanted addresses would be filtered and removed;

·        Mr Basson was also the line manager of 2 teams and there was a focus on individual staff performance.  He was working on a computer programme that would look at: each fire and rescue service, incident type, staff performance and team performance to identify best practice and make improvements.

Mrs Wilson advised that at the end of September it would be possible to see if these improvements had had any effect. 

In response to a question from County Councillor Holgate regarding staff turnover, Mrs Wilson confirmed that staff retention had been an issue.  Five new control operators were starting on 25 September 2017.  Currently staff in development who were working towards competency was at 60%.  Retention was not however seen to be problematic as new people brought new life experiences.  Exit interviews were also conducted and reasons for leaving were valid.  The majority of reasons were to pursue careers such as ambulance technicians and firefighters now these agencies were recruiting and feedback included that the experience of working at NWFC had enhanced their skills for interview.

In response to a question raised by County Councillor Clarke, Mrs Wilson confirmed she did not believe local knowledge had been lost with the move to NWFC. Not every operative who worked in Lancashire knew all the locations but the knowledge of how Lancashire operated was important.  Teams were structured to include staff with different geographical knowledge, skills and experience.  Mrs Wilson advised that in terms of location identification, NWFC now had an Enhanced Information Service for Emergency Calls (EISEC) which enhanced information for emergency calls by cross referencing the telephone number to an address in a database which enabled the operators to see on  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5/17

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised Members that this was the 1st 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 1 was 89.17%, previous year quarter 1 was 91.96%, a worsening of 2.79%.

The previous quarter (January to March 2017) recorded 90.10%.

Annual Standard: Above 95%

This was a negative exception report due to the cumulative RDS availability for the three months of quarter 1 being below the standard and outside of the two percent tolerance.

Exception report provided.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised Members that quarter 1 had recorded the lowest level of availability for any quarter period 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 number of RDS personnel who had been successful in obtaining wholetime positions had had an impact on available RDS hours.  This was due to staff leaving the RDS service being able to commit fewer hours due to wholetime commitment or being unavailable due to their development (W/T recruit course).

With an ageing workforce, the loss of staff due to retirement also had an impact on the ability to fully crew an appliance and a number of retirements had occurred over the last 3 quarters, along with a number of resignations, albeit some temporarily which had also reduced coverage.

The Retained Duty System Recruitment and Improvement Group would be responsible for progressing areas for improvement. This would not be viewed as a project with start and finish dates but as a number of ongoing pieces of work which would strive to deliver incremental improvements in order to strengthen and support the Retained Duty System.

It was noted that the new recruits, who started in May 2017 would begin 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.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6/17

The next scheduled meeting of the Committee has been agreed for 10:00 hours on 30 November 2017 in the Main Conference Room, at Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service Headquarters, Fulwood.

Further meetings are:           scheduled for 15 March 2018 and 07 June 2018

                                                proposed for 13 September 2018

The next meeting of the Committee would be held on Thursday 30 November 2017 at 1000 hours in the Main Conference Room at Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Headquarters, Fulwood.

Further meeting dates were noted for 15 March 2018 and 7 June 2018 and agreed for 13 September 2018.

The Authority is asked to consider whether, under Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, they consider that the public should be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following items of business on the grounds that there would be a likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in the appropriate paragraph of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972, indicated under the heading to the item. 

RESOLVED: - That the press and members of the public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following items of business on the grounds that there would be a likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in the appropriate paragraph of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972, indicated under the heading to the item.

It was noted that arrangements were in place within the old Best Value (BV) Family Group 4 to compile comparative data in respect of the two (now withdrawn) National Fire Indicators that related specifically to fire authorities.  

Data was provided for the six components that made up the two National Indicators in respect of: the position of each Fire and Rescue Service within the Family Group, 2015/16 – 2016/17 comparative progress/decline; percentage change in terms of actual numbers; the position of each F&RS within the comparative group for the respective indicator and a summary overview in graphical form.

Members examined each indicator in turn and noted Lancashire’s position.

National Indicator 33 – Number of deliberate (i) primary and (ii) secondary fires per 10,000 population.

NI 33 – Arson Incidents (deliberate fires) per 10,000 population

NI 33i Deliberate primary fires per 10,000 population

NI 33ii Deliberate secondary fires per 10,000 population

National Indicator 49 – Number of primary fires and related fatalities and non?fatal casualties (excluding precautionary checkups) per 100,000 population.

NI 49i Number of primary fires per 100,000 population

NI49ii Number of fatalities in primary fires per 100,000 population

NI49iii Number of non-fatal casualties in primary fires per 100,000 population

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer tabled the Response Improvement Performance Report for April 2015 to March 2016 which recorded the Service response times against our Fire Rescue Service’s family group. Members were advised that the data for 2016/17 should be available to Members later in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9/17