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Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service – Improvement Plan
Why is the Improvement Plan needed? The Role of the fire and rescue service has
expanded really over the years. Going back to pre war days, fire stations were just put
there for response only and generally going to fires.
Our role now is wider, and that’s why we emphasise the rescue role. So these proposals
are really talking about gearing ourselves up to make us fitter and stronger to be able
to handle this wider role.
So when we talk about this, it’s about responding to flooding, wide range flooding, so we need
to be better kitted up and better equipped to do that and add some improvements to the
way we train.
We are also talking about transport incidents in its wider sense, not just road traffic
collisions that we go out to now, but what about our motorways, what about heavy cutting
equipment, all of these we are gearing up for the future of Warwickshire. So really
it’s about making our roles better and adding value in a whole range of ways.
Making Warwickshire homes safer One of the key parts of this proposal is to
increase the number of home fire safety checks we do and the fitting of smoke alarms. Now
this was quite a discussion we had with the public consultation and it was saying to them,
well really a fire engine is part of making you safe, but there are some more proactive
things that we can do.
So we will have firefighters and other partner agencies that will come out and make you safe
in your home by doing home fire safety checks. We look statistically up and down the country
and over the last few years, fire deaths and injuries in the home have really been driven
down and what’s that about? That’s about us making the homes safer in the first place.
False automatic fire alarm call-outs We are trying also to reduce the number of
automatic fire alarms and false alarms and we are confident that with a new policy of
reducing our attendance at automatic fire alarm that can be achieved, so that we are
not going to the ones we don’t need to go to.
What are the benefits? We want to do the best training we possibly
can for our firefighters. We want to expand our rescue role in a whole range of areas.
We want to drive down arson. Car make up is different and more complicated now. We have
got a lot of motorways in this area. We want to enhance our provision for that. So I want
to increase our cutting capacity, increase our lifting capacity and also expand the role
of specialist rescue in Warwickshire. These are all of the things the public expect us
to do, now that we are a fire and rescue service and not just a fire brigade.
Have you listened to the public? We have gone out for an extended consultation
period and what was really useful to me as a new chief fire officer coming to this area,
was spending that time when I first came, those few weeks, really face to face with
the public. There were some interesting discussions, but they were feeding in things about local
risk. They were telling me their concerns of the public about the overall capacity of
the fire and rescue service here and to deal with the types of incidents.
As a result of the things that they have told me, I personally went out and looked at us
at fires, at how we were operating and how many fire engines we had there and all of
these things have informed both me, my teams in our thinking and that’s why we have made
some adjustments.
How can you reassure Warwickshire residents? Obviously, when we talk about risk and safety,
that’s my job. I’m a professional fire officer, 28 years service, I wouldn’t be
making these proposals or going anywhere near them, if it was putting undue risk on the
public of Warwickshire.
What I do, is I look out of the window and I say is that making people safer across Warwickshire?
When I go and sit on fire stations and talk to firefighters about what they are up to
on a day to day basis, is it going to make them safe? These proposals wrapped together
across Warwickshire, will make people safer.
What were the public’s main concerns raised at the public consultation?
Certainly in the public consultation events, residents and the public were concerned that
we will be closing fire stations. That’s true with some of these options, but what
I would want to do is move the public’s mind away from a building.
What we are saying is that we are still going to get a fire engine there, to you within
ten minutes, that’s our existing standards or 20 minutes in rural areas. We are not moving
away from that. But what we are doing is moving that energy and money and resource from what
is property, actually into preventative measures or firefighter training and equipment. That’s
surely best for our firefighters and surely best for the community of Warwickshire as
a whole.
Why have the original proposals changed? First of all we look at historical data, historical
fires, number, type, locations and things like that. We look at our standards of response
that we have, the ten minutes and 20 minutes, that’s a starting point of course.
Of course we have talked to the public, we have listened to some of the views that have
come forward there. That’s another part of what we have looked at. But also, while
I have been here, I have been out and seen us operating at fires, personally. I have
looked at the risks that Warwickshire have from the oil terminals in the north of the
county, the ammunitions depo in the south of the county. The heritage that’s around,
the flooding risks, the environment agency footprint of where flooding is suspected and
things like that.
You add all of these together and then add some professional judgement with some statistics
and talk to firefighters out on the ground and actually find out what are the issues
for them and then you start to form adjustments to your plans to really come back to what
is best for the public and what is best for the safety of our firefighters. So there are
quite a lot of things.
We have also actually invited some of the groups who talked to us in the consultation
to come back and actually expand on some of their ideas a little bit more and that’s
helped us to inform these proposals and these options. So I think it has really been engaging
with the public for quite a while now and it’s really beneficial for the future for
Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service.