Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from County Councillors H Khan and T Hurn and Councillor J Rigby.

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 14 September 2022 be confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer presented a comprehensive report to the Performance Committee. This was the 2^nd quarterly report for 2022/23 as detailed in the Community Risk Management Plan 2022-2027.

This quarter, 3 Performance Indicators (KPIs) were shown in negative exception. These were 1.2.1 Staff Absence Wholetime (WT), 1.2.3 Staff Absence Greenbook, and 3.3.2 Fire Engine Availability On-Call Shift Systems.

Members examined each indicator in turn focusing on those KPIs in exception as follows:

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

1.1           Overall Staff Engagement

Members received an update on how staff were engaged during the period.

From July to September 2022, staff engagement centred on informing and involving people in relation to the emergency cover review (ECR) consultation. An extended version of the public consultation survey was created specifically for members of staff which included more detailed questions to collect their feedback on the proposals. The survey was available online and via paper copies. Twenty-seven staff engagement sessions with firefighters were held throughout the consultation period plus additional sessions with managers.

Sixteen station visits were carried out by principal officers and Area Managers during the period, along with 33 wellbeing interactions which included wellbeing support dog interactions, health and wellbeing workshops and traumatic incident briefings. The Service also engaged with staff in matters relating to vehicles and equipment including replacement of tactical PPE and breathing apparatus; road traffic collision tools and equipment; and climate change vehicles.

1.2.1   Staff Absence Wholetime

This indicator measured the cumulative number of shifts (days) lost due to sickness for all wholetime staff divided by the total average strength.

Annual Standard: Not more than 5 shifts lost.

Annual Shifts Lost ÷ 4 quarters: 1.25

Cumulative total number of shifts lost: 4.513

The negative exception report was due to the number of shifts lost through absence per employee being above the Service target for quarter 2 as it was half way through the year. It was noted that the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported nationally that absence rates were high across public services.

During quarter 2, July to September 2022, absence statistics showed Whole-time personnel absence above target for the quarter.

1,542 Wholetime absence shifts lost = 2.54 against a target of 1.25.

There were 2 cases of long-term absence which spanned over the total of the 3 months; the reasons being:

·         Mental health – Work related – 1 case

·         Gastro-intestinal (abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea) – 1 case

There were 34 other cases of long-term absence also recorded within the 3 months:

·         Hospital / post operative – 9 cases

·         Mental health (Other) – 5

·         Musculo skeletal (Back) – 4

·         Mental health (stress) – 3 cases

·         Heart, cardiac & circulatory problems – 2 cases

·         Covid-19 Coronavirus (sickness) – 2 cases

·         Cause known, but not specified – 1 case

·         Gastro-Intestinal (abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea) – 1 case

·         Cancer and tumours – 1 case

·         Respiratory (cold, cough, influenza) – 1 case

·         Musculo Skeletal (upper limb) – 1 case

·         Musculo Skeletal  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18/22

Verbal report.

The Chair welcomed Ged Basson, Senior Operations Manager, North West Fire Control (NWFC). Mr Basson, provided the Committee with a presentation detailing the performance of NWFC during quarter 2 (July – September 2022).

Emergency Calls in to NWFC

NWFC received 36,743 in quarter 2 compared to 43,583 for the same quarter of 2021/22. For the year to date, NWFC had received 77,044 emergency calls compared to 86,544 for the same period of the previous year. Emergency calls included 999 calls from members of the public and emergency calls from Lancashire Constabulary and North West Ambulance Service. Mr Basson highlighted that there were peaks in call handling during the spring/summer months and around Bonfire night in November.

Emergency Calls for LFRS

A total of 9,299 emergency calls were received in quarter 2 for LFRS, compared to 10,414 for the same quarter of the previous year. For the year to date, NWFC had received 19,835 emergency calls for LFRS, compared to 20,845 for the same period of the previous year.

Admin Calls in to NWFC 

NWFC had received a total of 31,727 admin calls in quarter 2, compared to 29,432 in quarter 2 of the previous year. The number of calls for the year to date was 61,452, compared to 58,506 for the same period of the previous year. Mr Basson explained that the exception in July, which fell outside of the tolerance level, was due to the extreme weather conditions.

Admin calls included crews and officers contacting NWFC for either guidance, or to offer advice such as notification of missing equipment, defective resources, liaising with control regarding exercises or resources availability.

Mr Basson confirmed with Councillor Smith, that all calls received regarding the same incident were all recorded as separate calls and not as one collective call.

Admin Calls for LFRS

Within quarter 2, a total of 7,384 admin calls were received for Lancashire Fire and Rescue (LFRS), compared to 6,116 in quarter 2 of the previous year. For the year to date, NWFC had received 14,405 admin calls for LFRS compared to 12,319 calls for the same period of the previous year.

Calls Challenged Resulting in No Mobilisation

In quarter 2, the percentage of calls challenged and not mobilised to was 44%, compared to 42% for the same quarter of 2021/22. For the year to date 45% had been challenged and had resulted in no mobilisation, compared to 42% of calls for the same period of the previous year.

In April, NWFC implemented a new call challenge process for automated fire alarms on behalf of LFRS, which could have attributed to the positive exception in quarter 2.

Fires: Average Response to Mobilise First Resource

For NWFC, mobilising performance times for fires in quarter 2 was 84 seconds which was under the 90 second target. NWFC had continued to mobilise resources to fires under the 90 second target for the year to date.

All FRS Response Times – Fires

The call handling times for fires continued to be relatively favourable compared  ...  view the full minutes text for item 19/22

Verbal report.

Area Manager – Head Prevention and Protection, Matt Hamer provided members with a presentation regarding the 2022 Water Safety Campaign ‘Be Water Aware’. He advised Members that the recent tragic incident in Solihull where children fell through ice on open water and lost their lives, highlighted that water safety was not limited to the summer months. Tony Hewitt, Prevention Support Manager was to be Chair of proposed Lancashire Water Safety Partnership and was actively targeting water safety around the seasonal changes. The Service worked with partners and schools to raise awareness of the risks, currently around ice.

The Water Safety Campaign:-

·       was a campaign to raise awareness of the risks of water;

·       ran from April to September with the ability to scale up due to the weather conditions.

·       was data driven following the principles of Equality Impact Assessment;

·       adapted within all areas towards their risk;

·       was multi-agency.

Tony Hewitt explained that the Service had identified a large increase in the number of people accessing open water through water related hobbies, however, those people were not necessarily aware of the associated risks. Community Fire Safety (CFS) Team Leaders were involved in a project around identifying nationalities in Lancashire translating safety resources into different languages.

Tony Hewitt reported that the crews carried out work, centered around World Drowning Prevention Day, to identify sites most at risk in order to improve the safety at those sites using a multi-agency approach. The reasons the Service ran a Water Safety Campaign included that, in 2020, there were 254 accidental drownings in the UK. Almost half of those people did not intend to enter the water, and 78% of accidental drownings were male. To tackle this, those involve in open water-based activities would be targeted

Objectives for the 2022 campaign included;

·       to increase the number of people, spanning a range of ages, that received water safety education both formally and informally;

·       to reduce the number of drowning incidents;

·       to promote local and national drowning prevention projects, initiatives, and messages;

·       to reduce the overall number of incidents and associated risks to LFRS staff;

·       to increase the overall campaign engagement from 16% in 2021 to 18% in 2022.

Tony Hewitt advised that 2022 was the first year that the Service had been able to go into schools following lockdown to deliver messages to children face to face, around water safety and risks. The Service aimed to reduce the number of drowning incidents, as in 2022 there had been 4 fatalities in open water in Lancashire.

The Service delivered;

·       NFCC Drowning Prevention Week (25 April – 01 May 2022);

·       Royal Life Saving Society Drowning Prevention Week (15 – 25 June 2022);

·       for the first time since its introduction last year, LFRS actively engaged in World Health Organisation’s initiative World Drowning Prevention Day (25 July 2022), aimed at raising water safety awareness around the world;

·       approx. 3800 learners joined the virtual session organised and run by the Prevention Support Team;

·       approx. 7000 learners received in-school water safety input;

·       delivered sessions  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20/22

At the final Performance Committee of each financial year, the Measuring Progress report was accompanied by a comparative performance analysis of other Fire and Rescue Services (FRS) which was formed upon historic ‘Family Groups’.

Over the years, this comparison had enabled Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS) to demonstrate to the Committee how the Service was performing against other FRS on a small number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

As the fire sector evolved, the use of Family Groups had slowly diminished as had the value of their use in effectively comparing FRS with FRS. The position had been further weakened by new FRS joining Family Groups that they were not originally intended to be placed within.

At the 16 March 2022 Performance Committee meeting, (resolution 24-20/21 – review of Family Group Comparative Information), Area Manager Mark Hutton proposed that future Family Group analysis could involve data that looked beyond the Family Group, taken from other national databases that the Service could now access, and which could offer a broader and more suitable comparison than the current arrangements. Since that time, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) had commenced a project to nationally rework the Family Groups using common data relationships with the early outcomes of this work to be shared with each FRS by Christmas 2022 and planning workshops being delivered during 2023.

The set of new groupings would have verifiable data and should offer a statistical tool for grouping the various Services in a way that could report ESV data (economic and social value). The project also aimed to enable new relationships to be developed by FRS who shared certain characteristics, some of which individual FRS may presently be unaware of.

To facilitate the use of the new tools and datasets there were three regional workshops planned for the second quarter of 2023 (July to September). The Service therefore, proposed to pause any internal work on this topic and await the outcomes from the NFCC project before providing final options to Performance Committee for consideration later next year.

RESOLVED: - That the Performance Committee noted the progression of the national project and endorsed the Service await the delivery of the project outcomes, before determining the future provision of comparative data.

The next scheduled meeting of the Committee has been agreed for 10:00 hours on 15 March 2023 in the Main Conference Room, at Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service Headquarters, Fulwood.

Further meetings are:          scheduled for 28 June 2023 and 13 September 2023

                                                proposed for 13 December 2023.

The next meeting of the Committee would be held on 15 March 2023 at 1000 hours in the Main Conference Room at Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Headquarters, Fulwood.

Further meeting dates were noted for 28 June 2023 and 13 September 2023 and agreed for 13 December 2023.