Agenda item

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 LFRS, which was anticipated in the second half of 2022-23 performance year.

It was acknowledged that the Performance Committee had recommended the removal of KPI 1.3.2, accidental dwelling fire – number of incidents where occupants had received a home fire safety check (as detailed on page 44 of the agenda pack) as the indicator was unclear and potentially misleading.  Members discussed whether qualitative data could be included in the measuring progress report to the Performance Committee as an alternative given the small number of incidents reported under this measure. The Acting Assistant Chief Fire Officer provided reassurance that every accidental dwelling fire was followed up; this was dictated by the nature of the incident (and involved prevention and operational staff as appropriate) with community safety debriefs following more serious incidents, exploring interventions delivered and lessons learnt to inform further service improvements.  Members therefore:

RESOLVED: - to approve the changes to the Key Performance Indicators and their inclusion within the Service’s Measuring Progress report.