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”.
