Agenda item

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer presented the report.  He advised that Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS) currently set itself one of the most challenging targets for critical incident response times in the country.

Having a high aspirational target reflected the priority and importance of responding to incidents in a suitable time, and whilst LFRS response times remained exceptionally fast in comparison to many other Fire and Rescue Services, the standard was not presently achieved.  As such, Members of the Performance Committee had requested that the Service consider the ongoing suitability of this KPI.

Members were aware that UK Fire and Rescue Services set their own response standards in line with their Community Risk Management Plan and were then held to account against those standards.  It was noted that there were different methods of measuring the response, primarily from time of call or from time of mobilisation, through to the time that the appliances booked as being ‘in attendance’ at the incident. 

The two key methods used by fire services in the UK were “Crew Response Time” and “Total Response Time”.  It was also noted that LFRS previously used the “Crew Response Time” standard (which measured from the point of mobilisation). However, in 2015/16 (and to present a more accurate position) this was reviewed and updated to a “Total Response Time” method whereby 60 seconds were added to each risk level to account for call handling time by North West Fire Control (NWFC). 

LFRS used a median average of call handling time and the data used for this analysis showed the median call times within Lancashire for critical incidents varied between 1 minute 2 seconds and 1 minute 23 seconds and that the median was 73 seconds.  Therefore, when considering that the updated response time factored in only 60 seconds for call handling time, the figures represented a tightening of the standard of between 2 – 23 seconds from 2015/16 onwards.

Also, when comparing LFRS with other Fire and Rescue Services (FRS), the 90% target and the reaction times set by LFRS were amongst the most challenging set by any UK FRS, particularly those within the Family Grouping (considered by Members at appendix 1).  The other FRS’ within the ‘predominantly urban’ category had response standards which were slower than those of LFRS even when call handling was often not factored into the overall response times.

LFRS was currently categorised as ‘predominantly urban’ though it had a diverse demographic with both highly urbanised and remote rural areas.  Comparing LFRS with other ‘predominantly urban’ services (considered by Members at appendix 2) it was evident that Lancashire was significantly larger geographically than the majority of the services in the category (but with a relatively low average population density / km²).  It was not surprising therefore that when comparing average attendance times of ‘predominantly urban’ services for primary fires (considered by Members at appendix 3) Lancashire was slower than the national average for this category.  However, LFRS was performing better than the overall national average (by 1 minute 5 seconds) and had also showed an improvement since 2016 which contradicted the national trend of increased response times.  This reflected the work which had gone into this field and the benefits of technological innovations that had been delivered by the Service, such as the ‘pre-alerting’ of fire engines.  Since 2016/17 the Service had improved average response times by 21 seconds whereas the overall family group had only improved by 3 seconds.  Furthermore, it could be argued that given Lancashire was the largest county within the family group, with a low population density per km² it was more similar to ‘significantly rural’ FRS which had a notably higher average response time of 9 minutes and 58 seconds.

The 2 most common approaches for measuring performance were: i) by percentage of incidents achieved within target (ie: life critical incidents attended within 10 minutes on 80% of occasions); or ii) by average time to attend incidents under target (ie: life critical incidents attended within an average of 10 minutes).  Although the 2 metrics appeared to be very similar, they provided significantly different results. Of the 2 methods used HMICFRS identified that, 57% used the first method and 32% used the second with the other 11% a variety of other approaches.  HMICFRS had not made a judgement on which method to use but they had praised a FRS that had used the second method.  The disadvantage of the first method was that it offered a binary pass or fail result whereby the second method provided for an average and was proposed to be more transparent for understanding by our communities and therefore a better overall representation of Service performance.

Changes to reporting

KPI 3.1 – Critical Fires

LFRS currently used the first metric and aimed to achieve its response standards on 90% of occasions.  A table in the report set out how successful the Service had been in successive years from 2015/16 to 2022/23 for each of the very high, high, medium and low risk categories. The flaw in that approach was it did not provide a measure of by how much time the response had or had not been achieved. 

The report also set out a table using the same data (using a mean average as this was considered the most accurate and transparent approach) to show an average response time which clearly identified how effectively the Service was achieving each standard as set out below:

Furthermore, Members were reassured that regardless of response time ‘success’ or ‘failure’ against target, robust operational assurance and debriefing processes were embedded to ensure the Service had a learning and development approach to operational response arrangements

KPI 3.2 – Critical Special Service Response

The Critical Special Service Response target was set at 13 minutes and was not affected by risk rating.  The current method of measuring performance showed that LFRS had only once achieved the 90% target within the period of data used for the analysis (2015-2023).  However, the following table in the report showed that by applying the same average response metric to critical special service incidents, the Service could be seen to be performing much better than the current binary method and provided a more accurate reflection of service performance:

CC O’Toole was pleased that call handling times were included in the data which he believed should be consistent across all FRS to compare performance effectively.  In response to a query from CC O’Toole regarding whether call handling time had improved due to the benefit of North West Fire Control Centre (NWFC), the Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised that performance had improved significantly with the percentage of calls handled within standard now circa 90%  and there were many additional ancillary benefits.  For example, at the most recent Performance Committee meeting a graph had been shared which detailed incidents ‘not mobilised to’, as a result of effective call challenge, which ultimately improved FRS productivity by preventing unnecessary mobilisations and interruptions to crews’ activities (Business Fire Safety Checks, Hone Fire Safety Checks, gathering risk information and training). 

In response to a question raised by CC Singleton regarding the family group comparator information not including call handling time across all FRS (appendix 1), the Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised that if 1 minute was removed from LFRS’ figures (the call handling element) then our response standards and times achieved, would look even more favourable.

In response to a question raised by CC Hennessy, the Assistant Chief Fire Officer advised that the FRS praised by HMICFRS had used the method of reporting by average time to attend incidents however, this did not include a call handling time.  In response to further questions from CC Hennessy, the Assistant Chief Fire Officer added that the proposal was for the method of reporting to change only, and not the target times for speed of response, in order to improve transparency.  When asked by CC Hennessy whether the proposal provided ‘best value’ the ACFO confirmed that in his view the speed of response provided outstanding value to Lancashire’s communities.  He confirmed that the response standards against each category of risk would remain the same (at: very high, 6 minutes; high, 8 minutes; medium, 10 minutes and low risk, 12 minutes).

Resolved: That the Planning Committee noted the content of the paper and agreed to change the method of reporting for both KPI 3.1 – Critical Fire Response - First Fire Engine Attendance and KPI 3.2 – Critical Special Service Response - First Fire Engine Attendance to ‘average response times’.