Report of the Assistant Director Planning & Improvement

The Panel considered the report of the Assistant Director Planning & Improvement (ADP&I) which presented the Fire Statistics for 2020/21 and comparative benchmarking of East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service against its family group to provide context to support the Authority’s future decision making.  Benchmarking performance enabled the Service to make decisions based on results and to provide a spotlight to managers for further investigation.  Results of previous benchmarking exercises had enabled the prioritisation of several areas where concentrated effort bore positive results in the 2020/21 year-end figures.  The ADP&I added that there were positives and negatives in looking at a suite of performance measures, the Senior Leadership Team, in consultation with the Chair of S&A and the Lead Member for Performance, were reviewing the set of measures and the draft list of these would be brought back to the Panel at a future meeting.

The Panel thanked Officers for a comprehensive report.  There was a query regarding the decrease in the number of Ethnic Minority Firefighters.  The ADP&I provided some context to the figures regarding Firefighters from ethnic minorities, this was a small number presented as a percentage, therefore if one person leaves it presents as a dramatic drop in numbers.  There were currently 8 Firefighters that declared as being from an ethnic minority, this figure was disappointing but unfortunately it was a standard figure across the sector. 

The Assistant Chief Fire Officer (ACFO) addressed a query regarding the number of Fire Safety Audits, the Panel were reminded that both Fire Safety checks and Business Safety Audits were conducted but the latter were not recorded in these figures, there were a total of 1200 conducted last year and including both the checks and the audits the Service now counted as higher performing.

In response to a question regarding deliberate Fire Setting and targeting those responsible, the Chief Fire Officer (CFO) explained that there was a national piece of work focusing on this.  There was no single demographic responsible for deliberate fires, at certain times of the year it would be young people responsible, but equally there were issues relating to homelessness, mental health conditions and drug use.  In the ESFRS area the figures for this were very low and there was evidence that diversionary schemes had been successful.

The Panel sought some reassurance regarding the levels of sickness absence.  The Deputy Chief Fire Officer (DCFO) confirmed that sickness figures had been impacted by Covid-19 and that this report demonstrated that there was a return to the pre-pandemic sickness absence figures, these were relating to Musculo-skeletal and mental health issues.  These had also been impacted by the NHS waiting list figures and a national delay in access to Occupational Health.  As a result, there was a current review of the Occupational health contract underway and Wellbeing arrangements were being refreshed.

The ADP&I addressed a query regarding attendances at Automatic Fire Alarms (AFAs).  The Fire Authority’s IRMP established that the service would reduce its attendance at AFAs.  Fifty percent of the Service’s calls were in response to AFAs.  There had been a lot of f preparatory work n the run up to this change and large amount of publicity and communication with business is advance of implementation.  It was important for the Panel to note that this would not shoe in the figures until the process had time to bed in, but it was reassuring to note that there had not been any complaints from business with regards to this policy change.

RESOLVED: The Panel considered the results of the report in relation to future plans and were satisfied that action was being taken to address those areas of concern that had been raised at this meeting.