Chief Fire Officer, Rob Barber, said: “We acknowledge the findings of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies and Fire & Rescue Services’ (HMICFRS) report which was published following their inspection of the service between August and October 2021.
“We are pleased that HMICFRS still recognise us as providing an effective service to the people of Staffordshire. The report states that we are good at identifying those people in our communities who are most at risk from fire and we are well prepared for major incidents.
“It confirms that we have responded positively and proactively to learning from the Grenfell Tower tragedy and residents in high rise buildings are much safer as a result of our successful sprinkler scheme. Our staff are at the heart of our organisation and although we need to do more to address some issues related to our people, the report highlights the good wellbeing arrangements we have in place to support our staff.
“HMICFRS has provided us with some areas of improvement. But we are confident we can address these issues and we have already made significant progress in these areas since the inspection was undertaken and we are now on track to deliver our transformation plan to ensure the service is fit for the future.
“We know that since our last inspection, our response times and availability of fire engines have declined. However, overall we have an 80 percent fire engine availability rate in comparison to the national average of 86 percent, and are working hard to increase this. On-call availability is an issue that we are focussed upon daily and we would encourage anyone who lives or works within five minutes of your local station to get in touch and consider joining us.
“It is worth noting that the report reflects on a period during the covid-19 pandemic when we were operating with increased levels of sickness, which impacted on the number of fire appliances that we had available. Despite this, we still attended every incident and provided additional support to our communities and partner agencies for which we were praised in a previous HMICFRS inspection report in January 2021. During the first national lockdown, we saw a significant increase in availability of on-call firefighters as many of them were at home. Unfortunately, during subsequent lockdowns, the same measures were not put in place by government, which has contributed to the decline in our availability when comparing the figures year-on-year.
“We are always working to improve our on-call availability process to make it quicker and more effective, as well as looking at the availability of our on-call stations so that staff can help when they are needed, in the area they are needed, more efficiently.
We are also actively recruiting as much as possible to fill vacancies in order to prevent these gaps impacting our resource availability.
“We would also like to reassure our communities that we have a system in place called Firewatch which provides us with live data to show us our crewing availability at any point in time. We have a dedicated ‘Resource Manager’ whose sole role is to dynamically monitor availability and work with our crews and Fire Control, to ensure we have the right people and resources in the right places to effectively deal with the incidents we face across Staffordshire.”
Staffordshire Commissioner for Police, Fire & Rescue and Crime, Ben Adams said: “As Commissioner, my role is to hold Staffordshire Fire & Rescue Service to account on behalf of the public.
“Thanks to my regular performance meetings with the Chief Fire Officer, I was fully aware of the contents of the HMICFRS report. I am reassured that together, we had identified the same areas of improvement around response times, people and culture as the inspectors, and that work is already underway across the Service to address them. I welcome the independent confirmation that the Service’s effectiveness is good, as that is what the public directly experience.
“Since being elected in May 2021, I have been impressed by the commitment of fire fighters and staff to delivering a high-quality service to the people of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent.
“My Fire & Rescue Plan, which sets the strategic direction for the Service over the next three years, emphasises progressing changes to increase the productivity and the diversity of its workforce. I am confident that, under the leadership of the new Chief Fire Officer, the Service will maintain the good progress already being made in responding to the HMICFRS feedback with activities that will also deliver the Plan priorities.”
