Agenda item

The Committee were provided with a report detailing the performance of NWFC during quarter 4 (January – March 2023).

Negative Exceptions

There was one negative exception which was for the KPI for Emergency Calls with the reason being missing data. An investigation by NWFC and system contractors had found that due a connection failure, the data on a number of calls was not retrievable. This had no impact on service delivery during the period. The connection failure had now been resolved and NWFC were working with system contractors to ensure that resilience was in place to prevent a reoccurrence.

Emergency Calls in to NWFC

NWFC received 26,849 in quarter 4 compared to 37,462 for the same quarter of 2021/22. For the year to date, NWFC had received 135,455 emergency calls compared to 162,590 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.

Upon investigating possible reasons for a fall in emergency call numbers, NWFC had established that for quarter 4, there was some missing data for the period which data extraction software was unable to retrieve. This had been reported to system contractors, who had now fixed the issue and were looking at further resilience measures. This had not affected transferring NWFC data to FRS IRS software. There was missing data from 17^th – 29^th January 2023 and from other dates in January and February for several hours at a time during specific days. Not all emergency calls and administrative calls data was missing during these periods, but these had been identified as to when there were connection failures.

Emergency Calls for LFRS

A total of 6,036 emergency calls were received in quarter 4 for LFRS, compared to 9,179 for the same quarter of the previous year. For the year to date, NWFC had received 33,446 emergency calls for LFRS, compared to 39,258 for the same period of the previous year.

Admin Calls in to NWFC 

NWFC had received a total of 25,917 admin calls in quarter 4, compared to 29,507 in quarter 4 of the previous year. The number of calls for the year to date was 115,296, compared to 117,377 for the same period of the previous year. Similar to emergency calls, there was missing data that was not retrievable for administrative calls for quarter 4.

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.

Admin Calls for LFRS

Within quarter 4, a total of 5,873 admin calls were received for Lancashire Fire and Rescue (LFRS), compared to 6,772 in quarter 4 of the previous year. For the year to date, NWFC had received 26,385 admin calls for LFRS compared to 25,222 calls for the same period of the previous year.

Calls Challenged Resulting in No Mobilisation

In quarter 4, the percentage of calls challenged and not mobilised to was 42%, compared to 42% for the same quarter of 2021/22.

These were any calls where Control Room Operators asked additional questions provided by Fire and Rescue Services in order to determine if a response was required. Examples of these incident types were automatic fire alarms, animal rescues, bonfires and NWAS gaining entry.

NWFC continued to support Fire & Rescue Services with call challenge questions, which determined whether there were resources mobilised to incidents such as automatic fire alarms. In supporting these initiatives, 42% of calls challenged were not required to be mobilised to, and therefore these resources were available for other emergencies. NWFC had recently supported both Lancashire Constabulary and Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service in updating their call challenge questions for automatic fire alarms.

Call Answering Times

The average answer time for all Emergency calls for quarter 4 2022/23 was 5.1 seconds. This was an improvement of 0.9 seconds when compared to the same period in 2021/2022. In quarter 4, 89.68% of all incoming Emergency calls were answered within 10 seconds. The average call duration for answered calls and total count had not been completed due to missing data.

Fires: Average Response to Mobilise First Resource

For NWFC, mobilising performance times for fires in quarter 4 was 79 seconds which was under the 90 second target. This compared to 76 for the same quarter in 2021/2022. 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 to other fire and rescue services (Cumbria, Cheshire, and Manchester). During quarter 4, the average time to mobilise the first response to fire related incidents was 81 seconds. This compared to 78 for the same quarter in 2021/22. The call handling time remained within the 90 second target.

Special Service Calls – Average Response to Mobilise First Resource

Mobilising performance times for LFRS in quarter 4 for special service calls was 119 seconds compared to 114 seconds for quarter 4 of the previous year. LFRS mobilising times for special service calls for the year to date was 122 seconds which had been maintained for the same period of the previous year.

It was noted that several incidents were exempted from the data which included those incidents where there was not an automatic response from NWFC, but when Lancashire FRS had asked that further clarification was sought from a specialist officer, e.g., NILO, prior to mobilisation due to the type of incident, such as suspect packages, and missing persons. Other incidents excluded were, when crews had proceeded to fix a defective smoke alarm several hours after being notified or where incidents had to be queued due to a depletion of FRS resources in a location.

All FRS Response Times – Special Service Calls

The average response times for all FRS Special Service Calls was similar to the other Fire and Rescue Services (Cumbria, Cheshire, and Manchester).

In response to a question raised by County Councillor Rigby in relation to how it was decided where to mobile appliances from, the Assistant Chief Fire Officer explained that it was an automated decision by the computer system. When a call was received, the call handler would enter the address details into the system which were then checked against a database and the system would identify which area and appliances were available to attend.

Councillor Smith asked if fire and rescue services from other countries were linked into mobilisation systems. Area Manager, Matt Hamer, informed that every fire and rescue service had an agreement for cross-border mobilisation. Where appliances were mobilised from depended on the incident type i.e., a small bin fire would not require cross-border mobilisation, whereas a domestic fire would attract cross-border mobilising to get the quickest available resources on scene, where fire stations from adjacent countries were located very close to borders. Members also noted that control rooms could mobilise and share information between them quickly as they were well connected.

Resolved: - That Members noted the content of the report.