A report looking at the current state of Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service has been released following an inspection by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS).
The 54-page report, which was released on Friday, dives into every aspect of the service and comes following the 1st full inspection of Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service as a combined authority.
Overall the report is a positive one with HIWFRS rated as good for ‘effectiveness’. However, inspectors have determined that the service requires improvement for ‘people’ and ‘efficiency’.
A number of concerning issues are raised by inspectors, including that retained (or on-call) availability remains a significant challenge and that the service isn’t consistently maintaining good levels of available fire engines.
Overall fire engine availability was just 69% in the year ending 31st March 2022 – wholetime appliances being available 89.3% of the time and retained appliances just 62.4%.
It’s known that 52 of the 84 fire engines across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight are needed to maintain business as usual, but control room operators told inspectors that there are times when 40 or fewer appliances are available. On the Isle of Wight, 7 appliances are required to operate as normal.
Response times set by the service itself are not being met, inspectors also found. On the Isle of Wight, the aim is to have a fire engine at a critical response incident within 10 minutes, 80% of the time, but currently, only 72.9% of these critical response calls get a response within the 10-minute limit. However, 100% of calls are attended within 15 minutes.
Concerns have also been raised about the lack of diversity within Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service. In separate 2018 inspections of both Hampshire and Isle of Wight, HMICFRS issued a cause of concern to both services that they weren’t doing enough to be an inclusive employer, however, inspectors now recognise the work HIWFRS has done to integrate equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) into processes such as recruitment and promotion.
Figures show that 1.65% of the workforce comes from an ethnic minority, although the service hasn’t been able to provide data on the proportion of the workforce on the Isle of Wight that comes from an ethnic minority background
In the past 5 years, 10.4% of the workforce has left or retired.
Other issues raised include that timescales for when the service will respond to safe and well visits aren’t always met. This means those who are most at risk aren’t always seen in the time the service has set itself.
HIWFRS completes just 0.40 fire safety audits per 100 known premises, compared to the England average of 1.70.
The service also still hasn’t done enough to put an effective system in place to share learning from operational activity. The debrief process isn’t effectively managed and learning isn’t always recorded and shared with staff.
In total 16,393 incidents were attended in the year ending 31st December 2021, of which 48% were false alarms, 28% were non-fire incidents and 24% were fires.
Dave Hunt, Fire Brigades Union official in Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire & Rescue Service, has responded to the report by saying:
“We welcome the regular inspection of fire and rescue services as part of the work of HMICFRS. It is absolutely right that fire and rescue services are held to high standards.
“We have only just had sight of the report yesterday and do have concerns regarding a number of points raised in the report that we will be reviewing and discussing over the next few days with our reps and members.
“Firefighters will all tell you the same thing: cuts to resources mean that fire and rescue performance is declining rapidly. Firefighters and Firefighters in our control rooms do the best job they can do each and every day, but with less firefighters it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain public safety. There has been a drop of 10.40% in the workforce over a five-year period and quite clearly as evidenced in the report that this is impacting on response times and the availability of fire engines across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
“It is of great concern to our members and will be to the public that the Services minimum level of fire engine is set at 52 and the reports states this is rarely achieved. We are aware that at times including today when the report has been published that there are only 41 fire engines available, well short of the services own minimum standard.
“We will continue to review the document and provide an in depth response and review to the report once we have discussed through our structures of the Union – ensuring our response is made following input and discussion with our operational and also equality sections as this report rightly raises concerns regarding the culture of the service”.
I think the fire service do a cracking job what needs to be looked at is the response time for the Police or sometimes no response to an incident
“In the past 5 years, 10.4% of the workforce has left or retired” ….. as a member of the public that’s worrying, all that experience going in 5 years, seems it’s no longer a job for life anymore, mind you, with public sector wages on the floor, who can blame them for leaving!
Shame, as I expect the firefighters on the ground do their best, the trouble is when staff feel undervalued they will inevitably look elsewhere, hence the exodus, reading the article it seems there is less staff in the Fire Brigade now & that may be due to a number of reasons, but cuts to public services is clearly one of them, going further down a ‘woke’ rabbit hole to appease diversity figures won’t help either!
With you until that last line.
One tiny paragraph in the article stating that only 1.65% of firefighters are from ethnic minorities and you latch right on to that?
Does the ethnicity of the people coming to put out your house fire or cut you out of your car actually matter to you? It doesn’t to me.
And if recruitment from ethnic and immigrant minorities plugs that staffing black hole then, surely, it’s a good thing because, clearly, current recruitment tactics aren’t working.
I didn’t mention ethnicity, you did!
So what does “going further down a ‘woke’ rabbit hole to appease diversity figures won’t help either!” refer to, then?
Do you know what “woke” means and the word’s origins? The simple fact that you think your comment has nothing to do with ethnicity while using that word suggest that you, like most others who use it disparagingly, have absolutely no idea.
Diversity isn’t just about ethnicity,I think you may need a course yourself Smiffy?
Woke: “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice”
The word originated in African-American communities in the 1930’s and is closely tied to BLM. If you use the word “woke” you are, absolutely, referring to ethnicity.
I think it is you who “need a course”.
“In the past 5 years, 10.4% of the workforce has left or retired.”
The problem in a nutshell.
Ditto the NHS, police, and pretty much all of our public services.
12 years of cuts, real-terms pay cuts and changes to working practices in the name of “efficiency” have led to this.
“Concerns have also been raised about the lack of diversity within Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service”
Lets hazard a guess where the money and resources are going to be targeted…
Front line firefighters do an excellent job, it’s senior managers that created this issue, morale is low, too much protocol etc. Some massaging of stats, I don’t think a fire engine from Freshwater or Shanklin attending a fire in Newport can be dispatched and working on scene in 15mins or less. Only 7 need to be available across the Island?. Winter sees more House, building fires putting lives at risk than in the summer. If only 7 then two fires in Newport meant no coverage for another fire or person trapped in vehicles. A few years ago we had 16 plus two Arial ladders and command and first responders!. Another good move (not) by Isle of Wight merging with Hampshire,so far poor education, poor Children’s Services, poor police, poor NHS.