Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from County Councillors Peter Britcliffe, David O’Toole, Paul Rigby and Barrie Yates.

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 26 June 2024 be confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chair.

County Councillor Clifford commented that he was impressed with the minutes and felt they were comprehensive.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer highlighted that he had brought the ward information from the review of the risk map, from the actions of the previous meeting. The handout sheet, which had been distributed to Members, showed areas of High Risk broken down to ward areas which would be presented in the performance management report agenda item under KPI 2.1.

Councillor Baker requested confirmation of the risk categories and stated that the Stanley Ward in Blackpool did not appear on the handout sheet. The Assistant Chief Fire Officer explained that there were over 940 Super Output Areas and the wards listed focused those where risk was categorised as ‘Very High’ or ‘High’, hence some wards were not listed. The four risk categories were: Very High; High; Medium; and Low.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised that, following a request from County Councillor Hennessy at the previous meeting, he would share any measures that could be learnt from Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service in relation to Sickness Absences under KPI 1.2.1.

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer presented a comprehensive report to the Performance Committee. This was the 1st quarterly report for 2024/25 as detailed in the Community Risk Management Plan 2022-2027.

This quarter, one Key Performance Indicator (KPI), 2.9 Business Fire Safety Checks was shown in positive exception and four Key Performance Indicators were shown in negative exception. These were 1.2.1 Staff Absence Wholetime (WT), 2.6.2 Deliberate Fires – Commercial Premises, 3.1 Critical Fire Response – 1^st Fire Engine Attendance, and 3.3 Total Fire Engine Availability.

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 April to June 2024, 19 station visits were carried out by principal officers and area managers as part of the service-wide engagement programme. Six service delivery engagement sessions were held for local leaders across the county to reflect on progress achieved in 2023-24 and consider priorities for the year ahead.

The Service also engaged with staff over several topics that related to the Service’s fleet and equipment, which included water rescue buoys, fire flash hoods, devices to monitor heat stress in firefighters, and property projects such as improvement works at Blackpool and Preston fire station.

As previously reported: A comprehensive staff survey was undertaken periodically to gain insight from all staff on a range of topics which included leadership, training and development, health and wellbeing, and equality, diversity, and inclusion. The feedback was used to shape future activity and bring about improvements and new ideas. The survey included a staff engagement index which was a measure of overall staff engagement based on levels of pride, advocacy, attachment, inspiration, and motivation. The current staff engagement score index was 74% (2023).

The engagement index was calculated based on five questions that measured pride, advocacy, attachment, inspiration, and motivation; factors that were understood to be important features shared by staff who were engaged with the organisation.

For each respondent, an engagement score was calculated as the average score across the five questions, where strongly disagree was equivalent to 0, disagree was equivalent to 25, neither agree nor disagree was equivalent to 50, agree was equivalent to 75 and strongly agree was equivalent to 100. The engagement index was then calculated as the average engagement score in the organisation. This approach meant that a score of 100 was equivalent to all respondents saying strongly agree to all five engagement questions, while a score of 0 was equivalent to all respondents saying strongly disagree to all five engagement questions.

During the survey period, the corporate communications department visited wholetime and on-call crews on 51 occasions to encourage participation in the survey. Five focus groups were held with on-call units by the Service’s independent researcher to obtain  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12/24

The Chair welcomed Ged Basson, Senior Operations Manager, North West Fire Control (NWFC). Mr Basson provided the Committee with a presentation detailing the findings from the 2023-24 Annual Report and investment in people.

Mr Basson explained that for the previous 19 years NWFC had been set up with a business plan for what it was expected to achieve and in 2023-24 NWFC published its first three-year business plan and first annual delivery plan. The impact of control rooms throughout incidents to a successful resolution had been recognised. The control room staff had received Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Programme (JESIP) training in with regard to their role, which had been integrated with other emergency services. The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) had set out an agenda that control rooms should have standards which included Occupational Standards and Fire Control Fire Standards.

The four new organisational priorities that the plans included were:

-      Priority 1:  To provide an effective and efficient control room function that satisfies our partner fire and rescue services’ operational response requirements. (Impacting this priority were financial pressures, the new mobilising system, social changes & impacts, the threat of terrorism, and Grenfell tower phase 2 report).

-      Priority 2:  To train and develop our people to provide a skilled, motivated, and competent workforce. (Achieving this priority involved JESIP collaboration, the right people with the right skills at the right time, new initiatives by the Police Service, and the impact of the Manchester Arena Inquiry and recommendations).

-      Priority 3:  To provide professional business services to support the control room function and the training and development of our people. (Retention of staff in controls rooms was a national issue and to help tackle this, NWFC had established the People Development and Assurance Programme (PDAP) and would train test and exercise staff).

-      Priority 4:  To develop open and inclusive relationships with our people and partner fire and rescue services. (NWFC worked to strengthen collaboration, had a Board of Directors which met quarterly, had a Steering Committee, and an Operations Management Committee which oversaw the operational function of the control room).

The Annual Delivery Plan identified 37 commitments that provided the focus for the year with progress on completion of the commitments reported quarterly to the Operations Management Committee, Steering Committee, and Board. The commitments and projects for the upcoming years had been mapped out.

NWFC’s partner fire and rescue services had approved additional investment of £860k funding for 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 for key commitments and projects in the annual delivery plan. Funding had been specifically provided for:

-      A new mobilising system solution project team and specialist legal and procurement advice;

-      An organisational improvement team;

-      A programme management team;

-      A resource to undertake a review of the control room’s capacity, working patterns and associated arrangements; and

-      A resource to undertake reviews of potential future operating models for fire control and the support provided by partner fire and rescue services and external bodies.

NWFC was out to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 13/24

The next scheduled meeting of the Committee has been agreed for 10:00 hours on 4 December 2024 in the Main Conference Room, at Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service Headquarters, Fulwood.

Further meetings are:          scheduled for 5 March 2025 and 25 June 2025

                                                proposed for 3 September 2025

The next meeting of the Committee would be held on 04 December 2024 at 10:00 hours in the Main Conference Room at Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Headquarters, Fulwood.

Further meeting dates were noted for 05 March 2025 and 25 June 2025 and agreed for 03 September 2025.