Report of Assistant Director Planning & Improvement

The Panel received a report from the Assistant Director Planning & Improvement (ADP&I) which presented the refreshed Strategic Tier 1 performance indicators that would form future quarterly performance reports.  It was proposed that these would be presented quarterly to the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and Scrutiny & Audit Panel.

Members were informed that Appendix 1 contained the entire list of Strategic Tier 1 measures that had been considered by SLT.  It was noted that a set of 35 indicators had been proposed to be reported on quarterly and targets and tolerances had been set by managers to enable clearer performance reporting.  The ADP&I also informed the Panel that the Fire Authority currently had seven performance priority areas and as part of the work to refresh the Strategic Tier 1 measures, it was proposed to delete one of these, ‘confining fires to the room of origin’.

The ADP&I advised that Appendix 2 contained a list of Tier 2 measures which had been considered by SLT, and that this had been included to allow the Panel to consider if they required any of these measures to be reported as Tier 1.  An example of the proposed performance report was included in Appendix 3 and the ADP&I explained that this would provide a high level summary of all of the performance measures based on performance ratings.  Further detail would be reported for priority areas as well as for any measures which were performing under the agreed tolerance level.

The Panel thanked the ADP&I for their report and asked whether historical data was available to compare with the measures presented.  The ADP&I confirmed that some of the measures were new and would therefore need to be developed in discussions with the responsible managers.

With regards to the performance priority areas, the Panel enquired as to whether road safety should be included.  The Chief Fire Officer (CFO) advised that road safety is reported on by the Sussex Road Safety Partnership, however attendance at road traffic collisions would be reported on.  Members suggested that item 4, ‘increasing the number of home safety visits to vulnerable members of the community’, should be included as a sub-set of item 7, ‘number of home safety visits’. 

RESOLVED – That the Panel:

(i)               considered the set of Strategic Tier 1 measures in appendix 1 and agreed them for future performance reports;

(ii)              noted that as a part of the work to refresh the Strategic Tier 1 measures a priority area, ‘confining fires to the room of origin’, was proposed to be deleted.  The Panel reviewed the remaining six performance priority areas in paragraph 3.2 and suggested the change detailed above; and

(iii)            noted that a new quarterly performance report will be created, however as number of the indicators were NEW, processes would need to be put in place to enable capture of the data if it was not already recorded.  This work would begin in Quarter 3 and as more indicators were developed, they would continue to be added into the report.