Inspectors concerned with Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service prevention work

Inspectors from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published an ‘accelerated cause for concern’ relating to prevention activity by the service last month.

They suggested prevention activity wasn’t “a sufficiently high priority” for the Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service.

And they issued the service – which is part of Hertfordshire County Council – with five recommendations.

Among those recommendations was the development of a prevention strategy that prioritises those people most at risk of fire – and the creation of a system to effectively and consistently define the levels of risk in the community.

They also included raising awareness so staff fully understand their role in prevention and ensuring the prevention department has enough resources.

And the Hertfordshire service had until Thursday (21 November) to develop an action plan to address the inspectors’ concerns.

Last week members of the council’s public health and community safety cabinet panel were updated on progress.

Director of community safety and regulatory services Andy Butler said officers had been “disappointed” that inspectors had felt that prevention activity was not a sufficiently high priority for the service.

He stressed that fire prevention was just one of 11 areas inspected by HMICFRS and that the ’cause for concern’ did not relate to emergency response.

And in addition to support from the council’s own public health and adult care teams, he said they had already been seeking support from fire services in Buckinghamshire and Merseyside.

He told councillors that feedback from inspectors following the publication of the ’cause for concern’ had suggested some operational crews saw home fire safety visits “as more of a numbers game than actually making sure that activity is targeted to the right people”.

And he said there was a feeling that work was needed to win over ‘hearts and minds’ so that prevention is seen as being just as important – “arguably more important” – than responding to incidents.

“Certainly there are lots of people in the service who are passionate about fire prevention activity,” he said.

“But clearly that isn’t the case across the service.

“And so we need to do more to make sure that is the case across the service – not least because for firefighters this is about their own safety as well.

“The more fires they go to the more risk they’re posing to themselves.”

Mr Butler acknowledged that the number of home fire safety checks in the county had increased from 7,500 to 10,000 last year.

But he said this was low compared to other services ad that inspectors felt they needed to be increased.

He also suggested that the triaging of higher risk referrals needed to be more robust so that they effectively identified vulnerabilities.

He said inspectors had highlighted a lack of resources in the fire prevention team. And he suggested that the service needed to consider whether they had the right model.

But Mr Butler acknowledged that this was not necessarily more resources, but better use of resources.

Putting the inspection in a “wider context”, he said that at the time of the inspection the service had recently launched work to embed prevention activity within the service which had been “very new”.

A new IT system to manage risk had just been introduced at the time of the inspection, he said, which was still in the process of being implemented.

And he said there had been “teething issues” with a very recently introduced new booking process for home safety visits

Inspectors are expected to visit again in the Spring. And Mr Butler suggested that they were confident they would make “strong progress” by the time of the re-inspection.

And that was echoed by the county council’s deputy chief executive Scott Crudgington who said he was confident that by the time the final report comes out from the inspectorate the service would be well on the way to addressing the concerns that had been raised.