Agenda item

The DoCS presented the productivity and efficiency plan 2024/25 – midyear update to members.

As part of the Spending Review 2021, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) and the Local Government Association (LGA) agreed that between 2022/23-2024/25, fire and rescue services in England would increase wholetime firefighter productivity by 3% and create 2% of non-pay efficiency savings. Linked to these targets, the Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire asked that all standalone Fire and Rescue Authorities (FRAs) draft and publish Productivity and Efficiency Plans. A plan was produced for 2023/24, the information provided a strong evidence base for the next Spending Review and demonstrated positive leadership from the sector to engage with the productivity and efficiency agenda.

For 2024/25, the Minister had again requested that all FRAs, publish a Productivity and Efficiency Plan for 2024/25 to help the Home Office, NFCC and LGA to build a more comprehensive picture on the sector’s progress against the agreed targets and savings achieved.

Guidance was provided by the Home Office setting out the information that must be contained in the statements; providing primary information about the Authority, details of efficiencies and productivity measures achieved to date and planned. The guidance provided three examples from FRAs of well written plans from 2023/24 of which Lancashire was one of the good practice examples.

The 2024/25 plan follows the same format as the previous year. It showed that compared to the Government Spending Review non-pay efficiency savings target for fire authorities of 2%, the LCFA achieved 5.6% on average over the period.

The mid-year update of the Productivity and Efficiency Statement for 2024/25 was set out in Appendix B within the agenda pack and showed excellent progress against the agreed actions, with many of them achieved already.

To date the service had completed 12,138 Home Fire Safety Checks (HFSCs), which was greater than the 11,737 completed at the end of Q2 2023/24. Built environment training had been provided to all community safety advisors for them to identify areas of non-compliance with the fire safety order. This training provided community safety staff with the knowledge to support residents living in multiple occupation homes along with when onward referral was appropriate to the services protection department. The Service had completed 1,867 Business Fire Safety Checks (BFSCs) year to date, which was greater than the 1,719 completed at the end of Q2 2023/24.

The On-Call Improvement Programme (OCIP) was driving transformation across the service with several workstreams to improve productivity and efficiency. Incident Command trainers had reviewed the process for On-Call Incident Command Courses, which had resulted in 10 Courses and 58 staff being trained as Incident Commanders in 2024. This was a significant increase in course delivery from previous years.

On-Call Performance Management training for Station Managers and Unit Managers was completed in Q2, which included the roll-out of sector-leading innovative software for On-Call Availability, Recruitment and Skills (OARS). The software had improved the efficiency and effectiveness of workforce planning, development, and performance. OARS is the first of its kind nationally, and the service demonstrated the project and software as best practice at the NFCC On-Call Conference in September.

Resolved: That the Committee noted the report.