To receive a presentation from Wayne Bowcock, Chief Fire Officer, Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
The presentation is expected to be approximately 20 minutes in duration after which there will be an opportunity for Member questions of no more than 10 minutes in duration
Minutes:
Council received a presentation from Wayne Bowcock, Chief Fire Officer, Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
The presentation covered the following points:
· RBFRS performance – the response standard had increased from 68.9% in Q1 2021 to 70.1% in Q1 2022, but was still below the 75% target. Safe and well checks had increased significantly.
· Prevention – prevention proposals for 2020-2023 were outlined including –
o Focus activities in support of children and young people through road and water safety education programmes, Fire Cadets and Fire Safe;
o Within the Road Safety Programme targeted activity for motorcyclists based on risk;
o Enhance the quality and quantity of referrals received through the Adults Referral Programme (ARP).
· Response – response proposals for 2020-2023 were outlined including
Ø Undertake a review of our specialist water rescue capability to ensure it continues to be aligned to local risk and national best practice
Ø In 2022/23, we propose to undertake a review of our incident support capability to ensure it continues to be aligned to local risk and reflects national best practice
· Protection –
Ø Develop Risk-Based Inspection Programme methodology to look at both risk to property and risk of compliance.
Ø Actively promote the use of sprinklers and suppression systems as part of the overall fire safety solution to improve fire safety in both new and existing buildings.
· Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP) – Members were informed of a forthcoming public consultation on the Corporate Risk Management Plan.
· Financial Position –
Ø (2022/2023 Budget - £38.446 million)
Ø Between April 2016 – March 2022 we have delivered the final efficiency plan target savings of £2.401 million
Ø 2022/23 deficit forecast is £650k (1.7% of budget)
Ø We are looking at unfunded pay awards where each 1% = £200k to base revenue
Ø 4th lowest level of reserves as % of budget in England
Ø In 8th lowest precepting Fire Authorities in England
· Sector wide challenges – e.g., climate challenge had seen an increase in wildfires and flooding incidents. Also the challenge of ‘greening’ the organisation such as its infrastructure.
Following the presentation, Members asked the questions set out below:
Question from Imogen Shepherd-DuBey
What plans are being made to make the Fire Service more environmentally friendly – solar panels on buildings, electric vehicles will make the fire service more energy efficient, but are you also using biodegradable foam and other materials?
Answer:
We are funding buildings, electric vehicles etc. that is probably slower than I would like, particularly on the estates side of the situation. I am very pleased to say that we have invested a lot of the capital side of the organisation in the development of three fire stations that all have photovoltaic cells, some have grey water recovery etc. Where we can in new builds, we are developing the buildings to be more sustainable, and that has a significant impact on the revenue budget because we reduce our overheads as well. Unfortunately, the remainder of the estate, another 14 buildings, are significantly ageing, and we have a conditions survey that says we have to spend about £15million in a budget of about £1.2million to spend on those buildings. We are just about to reprofile that as a result of the sustainability audit and work out how we can accelerate the investment in the older estate on two parts. One is the environmental sustainability, and the second is on the inclusive facilities in those buildings. To attract a more diverse workforce we need to improve the facilities in those buildings as well. So, there is an audit currently being undertaken to support us in increasing the sustainability of the buildings.
In terms of the fleet, we have already purchased three electric vehicles, three hybrid vehicles and six new vehicles will come on to the fleet this year, but we have what we call a ‘white fleet’ and a ‘red fleet’, so the white fleet we would generally run around in every day, and the red fleet are the fire engines that run around. There is very little innovation at the moment in terms of either hydrogen or electric vehicles for firefighting. We are doing what we can in the white fleet, and we are keeping a close eye on some of the work in London and Oxfordshire around hydrogen and electric vehicles for firefighting. We will build that into our Fleet Strategy.
Biodegradable foams and other materials, we have already improved the foam that we use. There is work to do but again I think it is, the innovation into this sector is very limited. Fire and rescue as a sector from either science or engineering is a very small sector, very low returns for the private sector, so we are often very slow to see the benefits of new technology coming into the sector. We have moved away from environmentally harmful foams which we were using as recently as 10 years ago. Now we are into more environmentally friendly foam solutions, but in terms of biodegradable we are not fully there yet.
Question from Parry Batth
A resident recently suffered abusive and threatening calls and text messages which were reported to the Police. Following extensive enquiries by TVP the issues were resolved and TVP informed the resident to contact the Fire Brigade to assess fire safety in her house. The resident then contacted Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service (RBFRS) who were most helpful in installing fire alarms throughout her property and informed the resident that TVP should have contacted RBFRS to check fire safety at her house. Is there a communication disconnect between TVP and RBFRS, as TVP simply left it with the resident to contact RBFRS?
Answer:
First of all, I am sorry to hear that your constituent suffered that abuse, but also in answer to the question, I think of this occasion the service that your resident received was less than ideal. We have since taken that up with Thames Valley Police and have had quite a full answer to that question. I am pleased to say that we were able to support your resident as soon as we were made aware of the situation.
The results that I have had, would lead me to the answer of no there is not a communication breakdown between us and Thames Valley Police. They have been very well receiving of the question that we raised. They have identified that they have a high number of new Police Officers. A lot of them are young in their service, not in their years necessarily, but young in their service, who are learning the job, and often the amount of demand and how busy the Police are, some of the connections between organisations, if a new Police Officer is not familiar with them, can sometimes be missed. The response we have had from the Local Policing Area and the Chief Inspector there is that he is going to make sure those referral pathways and the expectations are made clear to his new officers, and that training takes place. He has thanked us very much for raising the issue with him, so I do not believe there is a communication breakdown. I think it is probably an experience and a reminder issue for policing.
Question from Michael Firmager:
In your presentation you said a number of restaurants and businesses, after a fire, do no restart. Do you work with the insurance industry and if so how?
Answer:
No, we do not directly as an individual Fire and Rescue Service but as a sector more broadly it works with an organisation called the Fire Industry Association which is populated by a number of insurance companies who feed their information and intelligence back in via the Fire Industry Association. That does find its way through to the Fire and Rescue Services so when we are engaging through our Protection Officers with businesses, we can use some of the data and trends that are coming from the insurance industry to inform them about risks to their business. So there is a connection on a membership body national level, but not directly between Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service and individual insurers or the Insurance Agency. Part of the reason behind that, just very briefly, is obviously we have a primary enforcing authority status as well and there is a fine line to tread between the advice that we give and the work that we engage in with private industry where we may also have enforcement role under a piece of legislation.
Question from Phil Cunnington:
Could you tell us what are the primary causes of the 30% of call outs we do not manage to make in 10 minutes, and are there any measures particularly Wokingham could consider that might aid you in meeting those targets?
Answer:
There is a mix of the primary causes of those fires. We attend still a number of automatic fire alarms. We have reduced the number by revising our response strategy to automatic fire alarms, the cause of which is often a faulty alarm system, poor management of the property, or a smoke detector going off for a controllable or spurious reason. Once we deploy a fire appliance to an incident, we lose it until that incident is closed. Hypothetically if there was an incident in this building and a Wokingham fire appliance was deployed to an automatic fire alarm, you would get the next nearest appliance which would obviously affect the response standard.
The majority of our incidents are the lower severity incidents. For a broad mix you saw me talk about the secondary fires and automatic fire alarms. In terms of the support therefore around secondary fires particularly and automatic fire alarms, when we work with your Neighbourhood Teams or Education as well, making sure that both young people and the kind of design of simple things such as where you would put refuse bins or what happens when school children are moving in and out of school, that kind of thing, we can often identify hotspots of where incidents will occur. Working with the local authority we can design out traps or bottlenecks is something we very much welcome doing with local authorities. In terms of automatic fire alarms, again working with your Planning departments and Building Control teams, particularly planning departments around the design of buildings and making sure that the appropriate standard of fire direction, but also the management systems that are put in place within buildings which can be picked up, particularly with Building Safety regulations now, between Planning departments and Building Control functions, is definitely going to be a role where work closer together and we would very much appreciate local authority support in that space.
In accordance with Rule 4.2.2.1 it was agreed that the time limit for the item be extended by 10 minutes to allow further Member questions.
Question from Bill Soane:
The ambulance crew and fire crew were able to find exactly where she was [his wife who had had a fall in an inaccessible place] because she had what3words on her phone. I think at the time the call is put through the operator who takes the call asks if they have what3words, and I would just like to say that it certainly worked as they were able to pinpoint exactly where she was, so it is something that the Fire Brigade would encourage people to have?
Answer:
Glad that we were able to help, and I wish your wife a speedy recovery. What3words is fantastic and I think that your example and your wife’s experience is a fantastic example of when what3words can be extremely useful. If you have got a road name or a house number or a road number, it is very easy to pinpoint people. When people are out and about in rural areas or the countryside what3words really does come into its own as well as in those urban areas as well. We absolutely advocate the use of what3words. As you have stated we use it in our Thames Valley Fire Control Service. Control operators will ask if people if they use what3words. Unbelievably there are quite a lot of people who do not have the what3words app. I have a work phone and it is automatically installed on my work phone that is a control device, so yes, we fully endorse the use of what3words and your example exemplifies how useful it can be.
Question from Pauline Jorgensen:
I was very interested to hear you talk about the potential for extending the Fire Service’s remit to help the ambulance service. I recall that was mentioned a few years ago, and I just wondered how long it will be before it actually happens?
Answer:
We did assist the Ambulance Service and continue to do so in some cases. We use firefighters or Fire and rescue staff who volunteer to actually drive ambulances and support South Central Ambulance Service when their crewing is short. That is something that was started through the pandemic. Prior to that there was a national pilot and trial and Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service took part in that in terms of employing fire engines to cardiac arrests or certain categories of medical emergency if we were closer than an ambulance. The thing I would stress very clearly is that the Fire and Rescue Service is not a replacement for the Ambulance Service. We do not have ambulances. We do not convey patients to hospital, and people that need an ambulance, those that genuinely call an ambulance for the right reasons, need definitive medical care, which is conveying to a hospital.
It has been talked about for a long time. I also stated that the terms and conditions of firefighters, so that is their role maps, their job descriptions, as well as the remuneration that they receive are nationally negotiated. This is something that has been kicked around much to my professional frustration for many, many years, and it seems to be at an impasse. The document that the National Fire Chiefs’ Council together with the Local Government Association have produced, which is the future vision called Fit for the Future, includes renegotiating or redeveloping the job description of a firefighter, addressing the funding formula of how Fire and Rescue Authorities are funded across England, which is partly through revenue support grant from the government, and then predominantly through the Council Tax precept. Addressing that funding formula, both of those things together would lead to the job description being evaluated and the stumbling block being the appropriate level of pay for firefighters to take on that additional skill set, receive the right training, and then be able to formally support ambulance services where they need it up and down the country. A long way of saying I do not know how long that piece of string is, but it is frustratingly long and has been around a long time. At least we now have a coherent vision strategy that has been put forward to Government to see what their response to that is.
Question from John Kaiser:
There was a very serious fire in my ward about 18 months ago, where a block of flats burnt down and are currently sitting there condemned. There are 9 blocks of these flats, 54 homes, which are all rented, owned by a large insurance company. What I am asking is who is responsible for checking those flat because we still have 24 hour fire marshals wandering around those flats. I am getting a lot of flack from people with regards to the quality of the Fire Marshals looking into their windows, all those sorts of things, but they are living very much petrified. It is affordable housing basically, so they do not have the resource basically to just up sticks and move away. I would like to know what responsibility does the Fire Service have for that?
Answer:
The legal responsibility rests with the Responsible Person who either owns or operates the building, so they are required to produce a Fire Assessment if the building falls under the Fire Safety Order. They will have done that because our responsibility as a Fire and Rescue Service then is for Fire Safety Inspecting Officer to go out and carry out what we call an audit on the fire risk assessment that is in place. There are clearly some kind of issues in those buildings if the Responsible Person believes that they need to have a Fire Warden or a waiting watch or whatever it is, but any remedial measures such as Fire Wardens will have been agreed with the Fire Safety Inspecting Officers as being adequate in order to underpin the Fire Risk Assessment that the building has in place. Effectively as long as the Fire Risk Assessment is suitable and sufficient then in terms of legislation there is little or nothing that the Fire and Rescue Service can do. It is when the Fire Risk Assessment is not suitable and sufficient then we would take action, either by issuing an enforcement notice, prohibiting parts of the building or taking legal action against that Responsible Person. What I can guarantee is that because there was a fire in one of the other buildings there, my Fire Protection Team will absolutely have carried out audits on that building and they will be uptodate. If I can take the names of those buildings from you, I will also go back and double check that, that is the case.
Those Members’ whose questions could not be answered due to time constraints were requested to send them to Democratic Services for a written answer.
At this point in the meeting a short adjournment was held prior to the meeting continuing.