Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011-2014

Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Index

Introduction ...... 3 Harry Humphrey Foreword ...... 4 Introduction ...... 5 Executive Summary ...... 7 How our Safety Plan is structured ...... 9 Strategic context, challenges and drivers ...... 11 National Overview: ...... 12 Regional Overview ...... 14 County Overview ...... 14 Norfolk Fire Authority Overview ...... 15 Equality and Diversity Summary ...... 16 Challenges ahead ...... 17 Performance and finance ...... 18 Performance overview ...... 19 External performance reviews ...... 21 Risk management review ...... 22 Financial forecast ...... 25 Summary ...... 27 Community risk profile ...... 28 Norfolk community profile ...... 30 Community profile ...... 31 Community environment ...... 34 Call profile and performance summary ...... 40 Summary ...... 58 Prevention ...... 60 Strategies and priorities ...... 61 Key activities ...... 62 Summary ...... 65 Protection ...... 66 Strategies and priorities ...... 67 Key activities ...... 68 Future development ...... 69 Summary ...... 71 www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 1 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Response ...... 72 Response Analysis Overview ...... 73 Our response to incidents ...... 74 Major incident response ...... 76 Dealing with calls to emergency incidents ...... 78 Responding to an emergency incident ...... 79 Geographical location of emergency incidents ...... 86 General response activity analysis ...... 93 Safely managing incidents ...... 102 Specific response analysis ...... 103 ICS performance standards ...... 106 Summary ...... 130 Proposals for Change ...... 131 Road map to proposals ...... 132 Consultation Process ...... 139 Communications and consultation strategy ...... 140 Glossary ...... 143 Appendix ...... 147 Appendix 1: ORH modelling ...... 148

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Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 Harry Humphrey foreword Introduction

Executive summary How our Safety Plan is structured Introduction

Introduction

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Harry Humphrey Foreword

Norfolk is one of the safest counties in England and our fire and rescue service is helping make it even safer. Since 2005 the number of significant fires in Norfolk is down 11% and the total number of incidents our firefighters attend is down 8%.

This is excellent news but we are not complacent. We know your fire and rescue service can work in better and smarter ways, can make your money go further and can use crews‟ time and fire engines more effectively.

The plans for change have been developed following thorough analysis of a huge amount and range of evidence. All confirmed new housing developments and the likely expansion of places like Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Thetford and King‟s Lynn have been taken into account.

We believe doing these things will help us continue to have the right resources in the right place at the right time. That is, after all, what we believe you ultimately want from us - to know that if you need us we will be there as quickly as possible. That will not change.

We know the majority of fires in Norfolk where lives are put in danger are in people‟s homes. This plan will enable us to get to your home, wherever you live, as quickly as we do now and even quicker in some areas.

We will be investing in parts of the county where we have identified a need. We have looked at the effectiveness of our resources and at how and where our performance can be improved by moving or changing the type of fire engine.

Thank you for taking part in our Safety Plan 2011/14 consultation which was the largest ever carried out by the Fire and Rescue Service in Norfolk. We have used the comments to shape our final plans to change the service and to ensure a more efficient and effective use of our resources during 2011-14.

Harry Humphrey Cabinet Member Fire and Community Protection

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Introduction

The Integrated Risk Management Planning (IRMP) process provided an opportunity for a fundamental review of fire and rescue provision in the Norfolk. This document sets out in some detail the analysis of risk in our county and how the fire and rescue service responds to that risk. From this comprehensive analysis, plans have been drawn up to deliver a more effective and efficient service across the county without compromising safety. The plans that emerged from the consultation period were ratified by full Council meeting and now form the basis of the fire authority‟s Safety Plan 2011/14.

Significant improvements have been achieved since our first Safety Plan in 2004:

 Emergency calls have significantly reduced - particularly the number of deliberate fires driven down through our arson reduction and intervention programme.  Our robust call challenge policy has reduced the number of malicious fire calls.  We have increased the number of rescue pumps throughout the county from three to twenty three.  We have invested in fire engines that carry compressed air foam to enhance our fire fighting capability.  We are in the process of upgrading our water-rescue equipment and training.  Our fire prevention activities have broadened, including the introduction of a Single Point of Contact for residents in Norfolk to call and arrange for a home fire risk check and a smoke detector installation.  We have strengthened our operational preparedness and assurance including delivering a new development programme for operational staff with more incident command, fire behaviour, and breathing apparatus training.  Significant investment in personal protective equipment means that every firefighter will have new kit during 2010.  We have undertaken a comprehensive review of our rural services and made significant investment in support of our retained service and their availability.  We have developed our understanding of the communities of Norfolk. Implementing our Equality and Diversity Strategy we work closely with different community groups and have used innovative initiatives to engage them in the work we do.  We have opened a new fire station in Norwich at North Earlham and construction work is underway to build a new fire station at Carrow to replace the city centre station on Bethel Street. This will provide better facilities and improve access to the road network around Norwich. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 5 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Our recent track record demonstrates the good progress we have made to make both the communities of Norfolk and our firefighters safer. However, we continue to operate in a challenging and complex climate. In addition to the strategic context, the service faces continuing challenges such as a small rise in accidental dwelling fires, a sustained number of false alarms in response to automated fire alarms and fire deaths remain between 0-5 per year. The service will continue to address these issues.

The service has achieved a position of very low cost per head of population over a number of years compared to other fire and rescue services. This has been the result of financial prudence and efficiency programmes. As a county council service, the service recognises its role in meeting the financial challenges along with all the other departments within the county.

To ensure progress is made in providing the communities of Norfolk a resilient, effective and efficient fire and rescue service and to meet the challenges ahead, we must:

 Implement a realistic and workable Safety Plan for 2011/14. In doing so we need to manage workforce, staffing, availability and resource requirements and ensure that the service we provide, within challenging financial constraints is the best in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and value for money.

 Ensure that we listen to our customers and reflect their views in the range and quality of the services that we offer.

 Continue to challenge the way we use our resources and strive to meet the requirements of the efficiencies agenda in a positive and professional way.

 Improve the resilience in our availability to respond to incidents throughout Norfolk at all times of the day. We must work to reduce activities that are an ineffective use of time and resources such as automatic fire alarms and road traffic collision response where no action is required.

 Embed a clear performance management framework based on analysis of national, service and local risks that will ensure appropriate priority setting and resource allocation.

 Continue to pursue enhanced competence of our employees to support operational effectiveness and firefighter safety.

 Demonstrate that all our activities are considered carefully for their environmental impact and lead on reducing carbon emissions wherever possible.

 Play our role and support partners in the delivery of the wider community cohesion agendas in Norfolk.

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Executive Summary

About the plan

The Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP) is also referred to in Norfolk as the Safety Plan and represents a comprehensive analysis of risk and service provision in Norfolk.

The purpose of the Safety Plan process is for fire and rescue authorities to evaluate risk to communities, risk to life, the economy, heritage and the environment – and to then challenge the current use of their resources to meet the requirements of that risk. We must be able to demonstrate that resources used in prevention, protection and response to meet those challenges will continue to deliver better and cost-effective outcomes.

In developing this Safety Plan we have taken advantage of the huge amount of evidence now available to us, analysed it carefully and, where necessary, employed specialist consultants to ensure the outcomes are based soundly on robust statistical analysis. We have considered all confirmed new housing developments and the likely expansion of places like Norwich, Great Yarmouth and King‟s Lynn.

This plan will help us ensure we continue to have the right resources in the right place at the right time and to know that if we are needed we will be there as quickly as possible. We know the majority of fires in Norfolk are in people‟s homes. Our plans, when implemented, will enable us to get to homes as quickly as we do now and even quicker in some areas.

We are committed to reducing the costs and improving the efficiency of the services we provide to Norfolk communities over the next three years to ensure we contribute to reducing the burden that public service provision has on public finances.

With regard to the plans that have emerged from the work undertaken:

 We will change our reporting priorities with regard to our standards of response and to replace reporting of some elements of second fire engine performance with standards for our incident command arrangements. This will not in any way affect the number of fire engines we will continue to send to emergencies.

 In Norwich, we will locate one fire engine instead of two at the new Carrow Fire Station. Emergency incidents in the Norwich area have steadily declined, with Norwich crews attending significantly less incidents now than in 2006/07. That will reduce even further as we work to drive down false alarms.

 Moving a wholetime crew from Great Yarmouth to work alongside the retained crew at Gorleston will mean an overall quicker response to fires for many local residents, particularly in Gorleston. We will monitor the ongoing viability of the retained crew at Gorleston during the life of this Safety plan. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 7 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

 We will be introducing a replacement programme for one of our two traditional fire engines at six Retained stations to replace them with modern, specialist, rural firefighting vehicles which not only deal with fires but can also go 'off-road', deal with land fires more effectively and work in shallow floods.

 We will be developing a new, additional service delivery point in King‟s Lynn to allow us to respond even quicker to the town and surrounding villages.

From this point on the document sets out, in a step by step way, detailed information to show how we have developed our Safety Plan. It is important to demonstrate that the safety plan combined with a thorough consultation process has been used to support understanding of what can be complex issues and has allowed communities to have their say regarding our proposals.

Our Safety Plan identifies strategic challenges and our approach to these within the context of Norfolk and identifies how well we are currently performing in delivering our services.

It provides a comprehensive analysis of community risk which has been compiled using sophisticated software and mapping tools to provide a graphical illustration of performance and priorities.

The remainder of the Safety Plan focuses on the analysis of prevention, protection and response, particularly focusing on the response plans for change which have been developed and agreed through this Safety Plan process.

Finally, the plans are confirmed along with an outcome analysis for each one which provides clarity on the performance, staffing and financial impact expected when they are implemented in April 2011.

The consultation process shaped the final proposals that were presented to and agreed by Cabinet and full Council meeting and therefore, for completeness, the details of the consultation process employed are set out in the final chapter of this Safety Plan.

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How our Safety Plan is structured

The purpose of the Safety Plan process is to provide an analysis of risk and, if appropriate, to develop plans that offer alternative service delivery approaches and offer evidence and explanation to support explanation.

The Safety Plan develops each of the areas that are important in this process and provides graphical, statistical and technical information to support the analysis and proposal development.

This Safety Plan is structured as follows to meet these requirements:

Chapter Purpose This chapter describes the environment within which Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service must operate Strategic Context, and describes the particular challenges that it faces during the 2011/14 timeframe of this Safety Challenges and Drivers Plan. Setting out current performance and the financial environment is an essential precursor to examining Performance and Finance possible areas for improvement. Essentially this chapter establishes a performance benchmark prior to examining risk and identifying any deficiencies or opportunities to be addressed. This chapter sets out the many facets that need to be considered whilst assessing the risks that exist in Norfolk. It also further examines performance relating to specific risks including our call profile Community Risk Profile and performance in dealing with actual incidents. The first three chapters set out a clear picture of existing performance and risk prior to examining in more detail the possible opportunities for improvement in Norfolk. Prevention continues to require considerable data analysis and planning to reach those most at risk Prevention in our communities and this chapter sets out our intentions in moving forward to increase our effectiveness in this area.

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Chapter Purpose The fire and rescue service has an important enforcement role with regard to safety of people whilst Protection they are at work and this chapter identifies the scope of this work and the objectives agreed to shape further improvements. The plans developed as part of the Safety Plan planning process have necessitated that this chapter is a comprehensive analysis of the information and data used in their preparation. The level of analysis has been completed with the assistance of external specialist consultants and presented Response both as a general assessment of response performance and also with a local analysis of key service delivery areas. Although technical and statistical in nature, the information has been carefully prepared to aid understanding and clarity in why the proposals have been developed and form part of this Safety Plan. This chapter reaffirms the plans and includes an indication of the outcomes expected following their Plans for change implementation during 2011/14. It is important to understand the process by which this Safety Plan and its plans have been subject Consultation process to 12 weeks of consultation. This chapter lays out the process of public consultation employed for the Safety Plan and the way the comments received shaped the final plans. Due to the need for technical and statistically-based information the glossary will ensure that we Glossary allow everyone to understand our proposals and the information that supports them.

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Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 National overview Regional overview County overview Norfolk Fire Authority overview Equality and dStrategiciversity summary context, challenges and drivers Challenges ahead

Meeting the challenges Strategiccontext, challenges drivers and www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 11 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Strategic Context and Challenges

The fire and rescue service continues to operate in a complex and rapidly developing environment that requires regular reassessment of priorities and performance. The Safety Plan process requires that the context for service delivery is regularly reviewed with regard to risk management approaches and takes account of the strategic context and challenges when constructing proposals to better meet local risks.

This chapter outlines and summarises the most important influences that are driving improvement and change within the fire and rescue service.

National Overview:

Statutory framework and legislation

The Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 sets the legislative framework within which the service operates. Through implementing legislation we are changing the way we work internally, with partners and the community.

The Act puts prevention at the heart of what the fire and rescue service does, for example by creating a new duty for all fire and rescue authorities to promote fire safety – and other powers to help create safer communities, particularly for the most vulnerable in society.

It reflects the broader role of the service including rescue from road traffic collisions as well as responding to other serious incidents such as major flooding and the new terrorist threat.

In addition, it provides fire and rescue authorities with clear authority to equip and respond to specific local risks and the individually identified needs of their communities.

In particular the act requires the fire and rescue authority to:

 Promote fire safety This will underpin the shift toward a more prevention-based and risk-assessed approach, thereby helping to save more lives by reducing the number of fires occurring in the first place.

 Provide civil resilience The Act underpins the fire and rescue service‟s role in dealing with a wider range of emergencies and ensures it can make an effective contribution to national resilience. It contains powers to respond to unforeseen events and ensure a strategic and coordinated response so that resources are focused where they are needed most.

 Provide equipment and services that promote the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of fire and rescue authorities.

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Other legislation driving much of our operations includes: The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005; the Civil Contingencies Act 2004; and the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006.

The Fire and Rescue Service National Framework 2008-11 sets out the Government‟s priorities and objectives for the fire and rescue service. It does this by making clear:

 The Government‟s expectations for the fire and rescue service  What fire and rescue authorities are expected to do and  The support the Government will provide in helping them to meet these objectives

Within the 2008 - 2011 document, three of the key priorities are:

 Delivery of an enhanced resilience capability  Fire and rescue authorities taking ownership and successfully implementing the Equality and Diversity Strategy and  That in a tighter fiscal climate, fire and rescue authorities meet public expectations of a modern, efficient and effective public service

It also includes the requirement to:

 Adhere to the National Procurement Strategy for the fire and rescue service and procure goods and services through FireBuy

 Implement the National Equality and Diversity Strategy and achieve targets to demonstrate that equality and diversity are integrated into all aspects of the service.

 Prepare a three-yearly Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP) which identifies the risks within the community and establishes service priorities to reduce those risks.

 Adopt guidance, policy and advice from the Office of the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser as and when required

External Audits and Inspections

Fire and rescue authorities are subject to annual inspections and reviewed under the Government‟s Performance Framework. During 2009 the Audit Commission conducted the Comprehensive Area Assessment for all public sector bodies in Norfolk. We were judged to be improving adequately for its Use of Resources and Managing Performance Assessments. This audit framework was removed early in 2011 with a replacement to be confirmed.

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Regional Overview

Regional Management Board

The Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 established nine regional management boards (RMBs) across England. The National Framework 2008-11 stated that working together remains essential to delivering efficiency, effectiveness and an enhanced resilience capability for fire and rescue authorities.

Regional Management boards were removed during early 2011

County Overview Norfolk County Council. As a service delivered by the county council, we are influenced by the County Strategic Partnership, the Local Area Agreement and the council‟s Corporate Objectives. Our budget sits within the county council‟s medium term financial plan. As with all county council services, we are supporting the Norfolk Forward agenda which is an ambitious strategic, cross-council programme which aims to look harder for more cost-reduction and transformation opportunities; to reconsider and reprioritise the services it delivers and those that partners deliver; and to consider other routes for delivering services.

Community Risk Register. As part of Norfolk‟s emergency planning arrangements, a community risk register (CRR) has been developed and is subject to regular review. It identifies the major risks to the community and looks at how Norfolk can be made safer. As a category 1 responder to emergency incidents, we are the lead agency for incidents such as fires, fuel explosions and chemical spills.

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Norfolk Fire Authority Overview Norfolk County Council is the Fire Authority. It has agreed the Service Plan for 2010-13. This includes strategic objectives, priorities, performance indicators and risk management arrangements.

Our Strategic Purpose. The service has set out five strategic objectives and identified priorities under each one:

Prevention – To stop fires and other emergencies happening. Protection – To reduce the impact of fire and other emergencies on people. Response – To respond efficiently and effectively to calls for assistance. People – To build a diverse, skilled, safe and high-performing workforce. Manage – To manage resources and assets responsibly and sustainably.

Further details on our strategic objectives can be found in the Performance and Finance section of the Safety Plan.

Performance Indicators

Service performance is measured against the former National Indicators on the number of deliberate primary and secondary fires (NI 33), the number of primary fires, and also the number of primary fire related deaths and non-fatal injuries (NI 49). The service also monitors local indicators that enable managers to manage local issues closely. Further explanation and detailed analysis of performance against indicators can be found in the Performance Review section of the Safety Plan.

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Equality and Diversity Summary

Equality and diversity do not work in isolation - they are an integral part of everything we do. It is about taking practical steps to:

 Eliminate unlawful discrimination  Advance equality of opportunity  Foster good relations between all the different sections of the communities and in all aspects of our employment practices, how we provide or buy services, how we deal with people in our contacts with them and how we work in partnership with others.

As a service provider and an employer we need to shape our services to meet the needs of all the people we serve and employ. An important part of this is developing a workforce that reflects, understands and respects the diversity of their colleagues and the communities they serve.

Working Together

We are committed to delivering a high-quality service that is accessible, meets local priorities and is responsive to risk by working with our:

 Partners locally, regionally and nationally to develop services that are appropriate, cost effective and accessible.  Communities to identify both risks and priorities, shaping our services to meet them and using the equality indicators within the Local Area Agreement (LAA) to assess our progress.

Our Staff

We will strive to be an employer of choice by:

 Attracting, recruiting, developing and retaining a highly-skilled and diverse workforce which reflects the communities we serve.  Working with our staff to create an inclusive culture in which everyone is valued and treated with dignity and respect.

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We will engage with and seek to better understand our diverse communities by:

 Being active members of our local communities.  Helping people understand how they can influence the decisions that impact on them.  Engaging with and listening to our communities.  Monitoring customer satisfaction and engagement activities.  Valuing and utilising the expertise within our communities.  Ensuring that other agencies, partners and contractors who work with us share our commitment to all aspects of equality and diversity.

Challenges ahead

In response to the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 and the ensuing National Frameworks, the service has successfully modernised its approach to prevention and protection, and introduced new risk-based emergency response standards. In addition, the service has recognised the need to change and meet the challenges presented by an increasingly diverse community with different needs and expectations.

Other challenges require careful consideration and planning. To meet the needs of our community and the risks faced within the current economic climate, the service needs to remain adaptable and deliver high quality services in a cost effective and efficient manner.

The requirements of the National Framework, the Emergencies Order, the Regulatory Reform Order FiRelink and the increasing pressure on public sector finance are expressed through a requirement to demonstrate ongoing efficiency and value for money.

Additional pressures include the outcomes from local and national audit, peer assessment and Health and Safety Executive inspections, and the potential impact of local government re-organisation. These proposals also reflect the direction of the organisational change agenda set out by the county council.

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Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2 011 - 2014

 Performance overview

 External reviews  Risk management review Performance and finance  Financial forecast

 Summary Performancefinance and

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Performance overview This chapter follows on from the analysis of strategic challenges facing the service and provides the next step in the process of establishing an understanding of the effectiveness of our services by summarising current performance and examining the financial outlook.

This overview is supported by using data from national indicators and comments from external assessments made by the Audit Commission and the Health and Safety Executive and also by including a short report on the risk management review carried out within the service during 2009/10.

The chapter concludes by restating the strategic objectives agreed within the last Safety Plan and a summary section to establish the continued relevance of our objectives for the duration of this Safety Plan.

Our Performance against the National Indicator Set

Deliberate Primary Fires

During 2009/10 we dealt with 503 deliberate primary fires (NI 33i). This represents an 11% reduction in deliberate primary fires from the previous year. We have been particularly successful in reducing the number of deliberate primary fires in Norwich and Breckland Districts through a targeted programme between the fire and rescue service and the police.

Deliberate Secondary Fires

There were 1066 deliberate secondary fires (NI 33ii) in 2009/10. This is a 0.8% increase compared to the previous year. We believe the main reason for this is that the reporting mechanism for fires changed on 1 April 2009. Communities and Local Government (CLG) introduced the National Incident Recording System (IRS). IRS has removed some degree of local discretion on whether or not incidents are recorded as primary or secondary fires. 28% of the fires were in Norwich City District, 26% in Great Yarmouth and Broadland Districts, 17% were in West Norfolk, with the remainder across the rest of the county.

Community Fire Safety

The service continues to deliver fire safety messages to school children at key stages 1-3 across the county through Stopwatch Theatre and general talks. Working with partner agencies, we have worked to co-ordinate “Crucial Crew” events which educate children and young people about how to reduce accidents caused by fire. In partnership with agencies such as St John‟s Ambulance, Her Majesty‟s Coastguard, Forestry Commission, National Grid and Norfolk Constabulary these events are an important tool for agencies to get safety education into schools. In spring 2010, Crucial Crew returned for its sixth event in King‟s Lynn and West Norfolk with 835 Year 6 pupils (10/11 year-olds) from 30 schools attending. This was the 27th Norfolk Crucial Crew since they were started in the county and following this event some 21,900 young people will have attended Crucial Crew since it began.

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During 2009/10 the fire and rescue service made 122 interventions through its Fire-setter Scheme. The fire-setters are young offenders aged 8-18 who are referred by the Police, or young people excluded from school for fire-setting, or adults with mental health issues.

Primary Fires, Fatalities and Injuries:

There were 1,579 primary fires (NI 49i) during 2009/10. This is a 10% increase compared to last year. Again, we believe this is reflected nationally and is due to the change in classification under IRS. There were four fatalities (NI 49ii), two of which occurred during accidental dwelling fires. There were three fire deaths the previous year. In total 54 people suffered non-fatal injuries (NI 49iii) and this is a 36% decrease on last year. 45% of the fires started in the home were caused by cooking.

There were 446 accidental dwelling fires last year. 41.6% of the dwelling fires were occupied by lone persons, with a high number being over pensionable age. The predominant cause of fires in dwellings is cooking. Only 40.9% of the properties had a smoke alarm fitted which activated, 11.6% had one but it did not activate, and 47.7% did not have a smoke alarm present.

We have continued our programme of Home Fire Risk Checks (HFRC) and smoke detector fit activity. We are prioritising those who are most at risk. In 2009/10 we carried out 2,144 HFRCs and fitted 2,672 smoke detectors. 99% of our customers are satisfied with our HFRC service. In addition, partner agencies completed 692 HRFCs and fitted 1,075 smoke detectors on our behalf.

Our Performance against the Protection Indicators

We have undertaken more than 1,440 fire safety audits at non-domestic premises. 90% of customers were satisfied with the audit.

Last year we attended 2,773 automated false alarms (AFAs), this is a reduction of 9.7% compared to 2005/06. Further work is underway to reduce AFAs during 2010/11. False alarms of good intent have also fallen by 9.1% since 2005/06.

Our Performance against the Emergency Response Standards

We continue to meet our overall Emergency Response Standards (set out in detail in chapter on response analysis and priorities). Of those householders who experienced a domestic fire, 98% said they were satisfied with the service they received from us. Where a non-domestic fire occurred, 96% of customers were satisfied with the service they received.

Since 2005/05 we have driven down hoax calls by 42.2% from 187 to 108. This reflects the success of our call challenge policy.

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External performance reviews Fire and rescue authorities are subject to annual inspections and review under the Government‟s Performance Framework. During 2009 the Audit Commission conducted the Comprehensive Area Assessment for all public sector bodies in Norfolk. We were judged to be improving adequately for our: „Use of Resources and Managing Performance Assessments.‟

Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service was the subject of an inspection by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) during June 2009. The executive planned to visit a total of eight fire and rescue services across the country.

The inspectors came to look, in broad terms, at our management of Health and Safety and particularly some specific operational areas, which were:

 Core operational skills

 Breathing apparatus/compartment fire behaviour training

 Incident command

 Provision of operational information

The inspection report made five main recommendations, these relating to:

1 Completing of a review of our operational policies and competency recording mechanisms relating to the use of breathing apparatus, fire behaviour training and incident command. 2 Establishing a communication plan to ensure staff are made aware of any changes required as a result of this review of policies. 3 Ensure robust arrangements are in place as part of the safety management system to ensure operational training and instructions are up to date and effective. 4 Review arrangements regarding premise risk information to include proactive information gathering to identify previously unknown premises. 5 Review monitoring arrangements for safety critical work to provide improved senior management oversight.

The service utilised the HSE recommendations to support work already underway and to ensure the benefits of this external review were fully incorporated into revised working arrangements.

As a conclusion to this process, a meeting took place between the HSE and senior fire and rescue service managers where all recommendations were discussed and signed-off as met in full.

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Risk management review

We have undertaken a fundamental review of risk management arrangements and in particular the use of risk analysis to set priorities in resource use and planning processes. This approach has strengthened our approach to risk management and is now sufficiently embedded in the service to show its importance in shaping the delivery of services to maximise the most efficient use of resources. Risk management is integrated into strategic planning; financial planning; policy making; audit review; performance management and project management.

We can demonstrate the effectiveness of our improved risk management approach. We undertake an annual self assessment of the effectiveness of our risk management practices. Our score has increased from 66.7% in 2008 to 72.8% in 2009.

Our approach to risk management is also reflected in our planning processes. For example, building on the successful reduction in arson incidents across the county by 8% and in particular the reduction of 66% in Thetford, we have applied the arson reduction model to Norwich. Working with partner agencies we have reduced deliberate primary fires in Norwich by 45% between September and December 2009.

Strategic Objectives

Within our last Safety Plan we agreed our strategic objectives as those set out below. These are closely linked together to move the service further towards achievement of our service goal of “Making Norfolk Safer”. These objectives were confirmed by the service as the key strands of service activity that should influence our partnerships arrangements and support our planning arrangements to deliver the safety plan outcomes.

Our Strategic Service Objectives Our Strategic Service Goal

PEOPLE PREVENTION Build a diverse, skilled, safe and To stop fires and other high performing workforce. emergencies happening.

MANAGE PROTECTION MAKING To manage resources and assets To reduce the impact of fires and responsibly and sustainably. other emergencies on people. NORFOLK SAFER

COMMUNITY RESPONSE To provide services that reflect the needs Respond efficiently and effectively and expectations of the community. to calls for assistance.

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Strategically the above diagram clearly articulates the nature of our goals and objectives but to support greater understanding and more effective planning arrangements, the table below includes very clear priorities for improvement against each strategic objective and also a brief explanation to support each improvement area.

Strategic Priority for improvement Reason objective Prevention Older people The number of fire deaths in Norfolk is above the national average. The significant Improve the safety of older people in their majority of these deaths involve older people. The number of older people in Norfolk is homes. above the national average. Protection Smoke detectors The level of ownership is below the comparable levels for similar fire and rescue To encourage an increase the number of services. At present only one in three homes experiencing a fire in Norfolk has a working smoke detectors in domestic working detector. dwellings. Ownership of working domestic detectors is central to protecting people in their homes. Response Operational assurance A safe and effective response to emergency incidents is a primary service expectation. Improve our systems for securing The operational assessment of service delivery suggests that our systems are not operational assurance. complete or fully integrated.

People Competent workforce Skilled, high performing people are essential to effective working and improved services To improve overall competence of and for this reason the service makes a significant investment in training and workforce. development. We will seek to develop a learning organisation, target development towards achievement of our objectives and to evaluate the effectiveness of training and development.

Manage Efficiency The authority, in line with all public bodies, is expected to meet specific targets for Achieve future efficiency targets. cashable efficiencies. These efficiencies are essential if the service is to meet future performance targets and budget plans.

Community Understanding our community We believe that we provide a high-quality service however we want to continually Improve our understanding of what the improve the services we provide to meet the needs and expectations of the Community. community wants from the service and how well we perform against those expectations.

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The following planning framework was also adopted and summarises the relationship between our strategic objectives, the outcomes that are required and how these are influenced by project work and activities that are undertaken by the service.

Drivers (What are our internal and external influences that we should account for?) Activity Target

Priorities Activity Measure

Activity (The mainstream things we do)

Strategic Objective Outcome (e.g. Prevention) (e.g. Fewer deliberate fires)

Project (The one off changes we make)

Outcome Measure (e.g. Number of deliberate primary fires) Deliverable

Outcome Target 2007/08 figure - 310 Completion Date

The strategic nature of the above objectives, priorities and planning framework suggest that they will continue to have relevance for the key areas within this Safety Plan and thereby form the basis for a revised set of outcomes in the finalised Safety Plan to go to Cabinet later in 2010.

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Financial forecast

The current economic forecasts and their impact on public services are well known, with the continued message from central government that difficult financial decisions face all local and central government bodies. Funding for the county council has been, at best, frozen, but we may yet see further efficiency requirements passed on in future budget cycles.

It will be for us to ensure that all levels of funding are used in the most efficient and effective manner to meet its service delivery targets and to deliver an integrated risk management plan within the budget available.

As can be seen by the chart (above) Norfolk has achieved a position of very good value for money compared with our family group of similar fire and rescue services.

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Furthermore when compared to a broader range of statistically similar neighbouring services the work that has been done in Norfolk to achieve a low cost-per-head basis shows through very clearly:

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Summary

Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service has operated within very tight financial limits for a number of years to provide excellent value for money and one of the lowest costs-per-head of population for provision of fire and rescue services in the UK. The challenge remains to provide high-class performance in delivery of services at these relatively low levels of cost.

As can be seen, our performance analysis presents a range of positive indicators including falling numbers of primary fires, decreasing injuries in dwelling fires, decreasing AFAs, hoax-call levels lowest in the UK and performance against our emergency response standards at overall good levels. Also, Norfolk has undertaken a review of risk management that will bring risk and resources together to support revised planning arrangements which will enable the service to plan and manage with confidence during the coming period where the fiscal environment may be challenging.

We have also had an increase in fire deaths, albeit still at low levels and a small increase in secondary fires. We also have uncovered issues within our ERS relating to second fire engine performance which will be more thoroughly dealt with later in the plan.

Our community safety work continues to develop and utilise new techniques and information, however, the number of fires in homes where no detector is fitted remains stubbornly high and supports our work to better target use of our resources in this area.

The comments from two significant external reviews have supported work already underway within the service and indicated where we may find further improvements to support what is seen as a developing service with strong leadership and potential to finalise programmes for improvement during the life of this Safety Plan.

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Norfolk CountyFire and description Rescue Aut hority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 Community profile Community risk profile Community environment Call profile and performance

Summary Communityrisk profile

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Community risk profile overview

A key element of the Safety Plan development is to re-examine the risks within Norfolk and to set out the key factors that should be included in any confirmation or revision of service-delivery priorities.

This part of the Safety Plan builds on the previous chapters which have set out the challenges and performance issues facing the service and by establishing the nature of the risk in Norfolk, enable our approaches to delivering prevention, protection and response services to be challenged for their effectiveness and value for money.

The analysis contained within this chapter sets out a comprehensive picture of the communities of Norfolk and the risks that result from the particular demographics of Norfolk and the work and leisure activities undertaken.

The quality of this analysis is possible due to the significant resources which have been invested into the establishment of a Fire Intelligence Unit, the use of technology and particularly the skills of the staff employed who are able to provide high-quality information which is used to shape the delivery of our services.

This investment can be traced back through previous Safety Plans where the recognition was established that delivery of high-quality services requires sophisticated data and information management techniques that have matured in the form of the Fire Intelligence Unit and represent a very tangible benefit that has been derived from the Safety Plan process.

This chapter is structured to achieve two main outcomes, these being:

Firstly, to describe and pictorially represent the county of Norfolk in terms of the people who live, work and visit the county as well as the environmental issues relevant to fire and rescue service delivery to ensure these are then reflected in the services we plan to provide.

Secondly, to summarise our approach to dealing with these risks in terms of our prevention, protection and response activities and to highlight areas of success and areas where more work is required to be done. This analysis is then further examined in subsequent chapters where, combined with additional analysis our plans for change are set out.

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Norfolk community profile

Norfolk is a largely rural county. It has 90 miles of coast, 250 miles of waterways, 6,329 miles (10,189 kilometres) of roads and 541 parishes. There are over 200 conservation areas, more than 10,000 listed buildings and more than 350 scheduled ancient monuments. The Broads National Park covers 303 square kilometres of Norfolk and a small part of Suffolk, and has a population of around 6,000. Tourism is a major source of income, and research by East of England Tourism estimates that in 2008 there were 3,979,000 staying visitors.

Norfolk has borders with Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast, including The Wash.

Area and population

The population of Norfolk is estimated to be approximately 850,000 (based on the online national statistics estimates for mid-2008), compared with 796,700 in the 2001 Census. The area is 5,400 square kilometres (fifth largest of the 34 non-metropolitan counties in England) and the population density is 1.55 persons per hectare (tenth lowest). Norfolk‟s population has a relatively older age profile. Compared with England and Wales it has higher proportions of people aged 50 and over and lower proportions in all the younger age groups.

Around 40% of the county‟s population live in the three major built up areas of Norwich, Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn with a further 18% in the market towns. Around 38% live in parishes with a population of over 300 and the remaining 4% in parishes with less than 300.

Since 2000 there have been over 6,000 applications for work permits from people in non-European Union countries, and the migrant Portuguese- speaking population is estimated to be in excess of 25,000.

Transport

Norfolk does not have a motorway however busy trunk-roads link the major towns internally and the county to the surrounding area. The A11 connects Norfolk to Cambridge and London via the M11. From the west there are two routes from Norfolk, the A47 which runs into the East Midlands via Peterborough and the A17 which runs into the East Midlands via Lincolnshire both of which have a direct link with the A1. Both of these routes meet at King's Lynn which is also the starting place for the A10 which provides West Norfolk with a direct link to London via Ely, Cambridge and Hertfordshire.

Rail links include the Norwich Great Eastern main line which is a major railway from London Liverpool Street Station to Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk. King‟s Lynn is the terminus of the Fen Line from Cambridge and ultimately connects with King‟s Cross in London.

Norwich International Airport offers flights within Europe including a link to Amsterdam which offers onward flights throughout the world. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 30 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Community profile - demographics summary

To support our strategic objective of a fire and rescue service, whose focus is on life safety, requires a considerably more detailed understanding of the community it serves and in particular where those at higher risk from fire are to be found.

The sources of data used are able to profile those that are likely to be at higher risk from fire and also which wards in Norfolk have the highest densities of these risk groups.

Norfolk‟s most significant factor is the older profile of its population especially along the North Norfolk coast, which has a nationally significant concentration of those over the age of 65.

Other areas of note include the significant areas of deprivation around Great Yarmouth and King‟s Lynn and to a lesser extent in Norwich.

When examining the deprivation survey findings, Norfolk has significant areas in terms of child poverty, unemployment, property condition and health deprivation and disability. These areas are generally located in the more densely populated areas of the county and are linked to the likelihood that incidents will occur.

The county has shown a significant and continued increase in older people residing in Norfolk. The areas highlighted red on the map show where the high densities of older residents live.

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The changing face of Norfolk

Due to the popularity and natural beauty of the area, there is a significant and continued increase in older people residing in Norfolk. This is particularly true for the North Norfolk coast where a high percentage of the population fall in the over 65 age group, this being a key at risk element with regard to fires in the home.

In addition to this, there is a continuing increase in migrant workers moving into Norfolk. These tend to centre around urban areas, in particular Norwich, King‟s Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Thetford and Dereham and are often linked with poor-quality rented accommodation, this being another risk element in the likelihood of fires occurring.

All of this has meant that there is a requirement for an increase in housing. The new dwelling targets are specified in the chart below:

New dwelling targets for Norfolk up to 2021 Estimates of population associated with large housing developments

An increasing elderly as well as general population, migrant worker influx and subsequent use of existing housing and new housing development in Norfolk, places a greater expectation on the service to work to prevent accidental dwelling fires by preventative strategies and a requirement to monitor the effectiveness of resources in responding to incidents.

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Community deprivation

The map (left) shows the areas of multiple deprivation in the county.

According to The English Indices of Deprivation 2007 Norfolk is ranked between the fourth and tenth most deprived of the 34 non- metropolitan counties in England, according to which measure is taken. On most summary measures it is ranked the most deprived in the Region.

There is a strong association between deprivation and other social factors with the incidence of fire both accidental and deliberate. Indeed, studies have shown a four-fold variation in the rate of dwelling fires associated with deprivation and other social factors.

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Community environment – heritage risks

The map (left) shows some of the many grade-one listed heritage sites in the county. Many are situated in rural locations and are significant architectural landmarks.

Our historical buildings and sites contribute significantly to the economy of Norfolk. They attract millions of visitors to the county each year. Many communities rely heavily on the tourism they create. By their very nature, therefore, these buildings and sites are of great value to communities and in many cases are irreplaceable if lost to fire. It is essential we identify these risks and quantify the volume, their value and nature, so we can plan an integrated approach to ensuring the highest standards of risk management and fire protection in these buildings so as to ensure their sustainability.

The map (left) identifies the risk of thatched properties.

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Heritage sites pose a special risk for firefighters due to the size and rural locations of many sites and are an important element to be included in local planning and response arrangements.

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Environment - flooding CLG report „Effects of Climate Change on Fire and Rescue Services in the UK‟ states that central England temperatures have risen by almost 1oC over the last century. Winters across the UK have been getting wetter which leads to increased flooding. Some sources of evidence suggest that these trends may continue.

The UK climate is likely to become warmer with more frequent hot and dry summers and milder wetter winters. Consequences include increased severity of grassland and forest fires, water shortages impacting on both training and firefighting and increased frequency of flooding events especially in winter.

It is important that where these changes can be addressed by additional training, engine capability, design or additional new equipment that these options are fully considered.

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We have begun planning for the potential impact of global warming. With an increase in flooding and rural fires we should continue the work to review our fleet capabilities and locations along with possible additional training and equipment for firefighters who may be required to deal with a changing profile of incidents in coming years.

Flooding and Water Rescues The East of England is particularly susceptible to coastal 1st April 2006 - 31st March 2010 flooding. Following experience gained from the 250 preparation for the North Sea tidal surge in 2007, the service carried out a full internal review of its practices. 200 The outcome of which is fully embedded within the service major incident planning processes. 150 The Norfolk community risk register identifies the threat 100 215 Rescue - Water (Human) of flooding as a „Very High Risk‟. It therefore requires Water removal/provision that strategies should be developed to reduce or 116 103

NumberIncidentsof 50 77 eliminate the risk, and that mitigation in the form of 15 21 7 10 0 (multi-agency) planning, exercising and training should be put in place. 06-07 07-08 08-09 09-10 Financial Year We work with partner agencies to ensure that these aims and objectives are met through the Norfolk Resilience Rescues from Water Forum.

1st April 2009 - 31st March 2010 We have plans to refresh and professionalise our 40 Rescue bird from water capability to deal with both inland water rescue work 35 34 and major flood events. This has been developed in Rescue domestic pet from water conjunction with local, regional and national 30 colleagues to ensure it meets the requirements of a Rescue farm animal from water 25 nationally supported event in one were to occur in Norfolk. 20 Rescue of person river/canal/other waterway This is an area of expertise that has developed 15 14 Rescue person lake,sea or greatly in recent years and the work done by teams

NumberIncidentsof 10 estuary in Norfolk, supported by additional funding from Rescue person swimming pool county, sees the service well placed to introduce 5 3 3 effective arrangements for all water-related rescue 1 2 1 0 Rescue person vehicle in flood work in the future. Type of Rescue

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Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Nature Reserves and Country Parks

SSSI‟s, Parks and Reserves pose a special risk to the service from wildfires in periods of dry weather, access for fire engines and problems due to limited water supplies for firefighting. Off-road capabilities are limited within the service, current reliance on taking our fire engines onto fields, parks and into forestry can prove challenging and often requires considerable reliance on large numbers of firefighters to successfully contain large rural fires.

Map (left) showing Nature Reserves and Parks in Norfolk.

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The geographic scale and diversity of rural risks means that Norfolk needs to be adaptable in ensuring effective controls on preventing and responding to rural emergencies. This includes an awareness of the environmental risks posed by fire in rural locations and reviewing the equipment, vehicles and procedures to ensure they are appropriate and current to deal effectively with incidents in these areas.

Map (left) showing the location of SSSI in Norfolk.

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Call profile and performance summary

This section will examine the different types of emergency incidents attended in Norfolk and highlight the key issues emerging from these incidents including profiles of those most likely to be involved, the main causes and also the service performance in responding to calls for help. Summary of types of emergency calls attended

The table below shows the types of incidents attended in Norfolk and the activity trend from 2005/6 to 2009/10

2005-06 2009-10 Improvements made

AFAs 3,067 2,773 -9.6%

False alarms good intent 1,106 1,006 -9.1%

Hoax calls 187 108 -42.2%

Total false alarms 4,360 3,887 -10.9%

Significant fires 1,621 1,008 -47.9%

Small fires 1,844 1,662 -9.9%

Assisting other brigades 259 195 -24.8%

Total fires 3,724 2,865 -23.1%

Non-fire incidents* 2,330 2,830 +21.4%

Total incidents attended 10,414 9,582 -8%

* Rise in non-fire incidents due to change in RTC mobilising policy in July 2005 resulting from Safety Plan process and implementing an increase in mobilising to road collisions and an increase in the provision of rescue capability in Norfolk.

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Primary fires

A “primary fire” is a fire involving either an item of value, a fire incident requiring five or more fire engines or a fire where there has been an injury or fatality.

The graph (right) shows the types of incidents that constitute a primary fire.

T h e

g r a p h

( The graph (left) shows that there has been a downward trend in the number of primary fires in Norfolk, with a 6.4% reduction over the last four years. The graph showing the breakdown of the type of property that these fires occur in, clearly shows that fires involving road vehicles have decreased year on year, and that dwelling fires have increased over the four year period.

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Performance Primary fires Primary Fires 1st Apr – 31st Dec 2009 During 2009/10 there were 1,581 primary fires (provisional figures). This is an increase on the previous year, but positive progress is being made as the number of primary fires has fallen by 6.4% over the last four-year period (since 2006/7).

The graph above shows that the rate of primary fires in Norfolk has increased compared Primary fires to the same period last year. However, Norfolk remains at a lower rate than our 0 to 2.9 family group average. 3 to 5.9 6 to 8.9 Qtr3 08/09 Qtr3 09/10 Family group 9 to 11.9 (1st Apr 08 – 31st Dec 08) (1st Apr 09 – 31st Dec 09) Average Q3 09/10 12 to 14.9

132.4 (1,102 fires) 148.9 (1,252 fires) 152.21 15 and over

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 42 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 Arson reduction

Deliberate fires constitute the largest single cause of major fires in the UK. The crime of arson has been recognised as one of the most destructive of all crimes and ultimately can lead to loss of life, serious injuries and a substantial cost to the economy.

The Arson Prevention Bureau research suggests that each week in the UK there are:

 2,213 arson attacks  2 deaths and 53 serious injuries  20 schools and colleges are destroyed or damaged by fire  262 deliberate house fires  360 businesses and public buildings  1,402 cars burned

Arson also indirectly affects communities by Arson costs the economy £53.8 million each week in England and Wales. adversely affecting the reputation and image Deliberate fires have a negative effect on the quality of people‟s lives. During 2009/10 in Norfolk there were 1,571 of the area. Those deliberate fires. This constitutes 52% of the total number of fires attended. These fires impact directly on the living on the lowest residents and business owners whose properties were damaged or destroyed. incomes are 31 times more likely to suffer an Information from the Arson Prevention Bureau states that each year in the UK there are an average 1,600 farm arson attack and 16 buildings and 85,000 areas of grassland destroyed by fire. Around 40% of these are started deliberately, many in times more likely to die mindless acts of vandalism. Following our Rural Services Review in 2009, it was decided that we will endeavour in a house fire. to provide additional capacity and supervision to personnel in rural areas. We have implemented alternative Source: Arson methods of delivering an enhanced level of community fire safety and community fire protection in rural areas, in Prevention Bureau. particular accepting that resources be locally-based but with added flexibility to be used in other geographical areas as and when the need arises. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 43 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Deliberate primary fires

During 2009/10 there were 504 deliberate primary fires (provisional Deliberate Primary Fires 1st Apr – 31st Dec 2009 figures). This continues the year-on-year fall in the number of deliberate primary fires, with a 33% reduction over the last four year period (since 2006/7)

The graph above shows that the rate of deliberate primary fires in Norfolk has decreased compared to the same period last year. However, Norfolk remains at a slightly higher rate than our family group average.

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False alarms

Over the last 12 years the number of malicious false alarms has fallen from around 1000 per annum to just over 100 per annum.

This is largely due to the challenge issued by control operators when they suspect someone is making a false call. This challenge informs the caller that the call is being recorded and will be passed to the police should it prove to be false.

During 2010 the service will seek to commence the implementation of the CFOA policy on unwanted fire signals to drive down the demand on the service of these calls.

The chart to the right shows that some progress has been made in reducing AFA calls, these remain a significant proportion of total calls and further action is required to reduce this drain on resources.

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Community impact of incidents Residential dwellings fires This is the most important area of response and still the area where most people are killed or injured by fire. In Norfolk 42.6% of dwelling fires were in premises occupied by lone persons, with a high number being over pensionable age. Our community fire safety (CFS) strategy is designed to target these vulnerable groups.

The map (left) indicates where accidental dwelling fires have occurred in the county between 1 April 2009 and 31 March 2010. This also shows where there has been an injury or a death as a result of a house fire

Accidental dwelling fires

Accidental dwelling fires where injuries have occurred

Accidental dwelling fires where a fatality has occurred

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 48 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 Causes

It is important to analyse this group of fires to determine what causes them and as can be seen below the predominant cause of fires in dwellings is associated with cooking ie cooker, oven, hob or ring.

The influence of smoking still appears as a significant factor, along with other naked flames. This tends to mean candles which have increased in popularity in recent years.

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As can be seen below in the analysis of the ages of people injured in fires, the majority of injuries sustained in dwelling fires are in the 20-40 age range which appears to be due to younger people attempting to extinguish fire rather that leaving the house and calling the fire and rescue service.

Older people are less likely to be injured in a house fire, but are more likely to be a fatality. Of the relatively few numbers of fatalities in fires in Norfolk, older people and those with limited mobility are the most likely to be victims. We are endeavouring, through partnership working, to further engage with these groups and target our resources to reduce this risk.

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Occupancy

The distribution of dwelling fires, particularly fires where persons have sustained injuries or death, is evenly spread throughout the county with greater clusters within the main more densely populated urban areas.

The graph to the left shows that the number of dwelling fires in Norfolk, whilst low in number, is on an increasing trend and indicates that further targeting work is required to reach the homes that are at risk from fire.

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 51 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 Dwelling fires in high risk groups We also need to identify where dwelling fires occur in the homes of high risk groups. The following map shows dwelling fires from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010 where at least one of the occupants was over retirement age.

The number of dwelling fires which have occurred in homes of people over 65 is over 21% of the total number of dwelling fires.

Dwelling fires which have occurred in homes where there is at least one person over retirement age is equal to over 29% of the total number of dwelling fires.

We will continue to target education through activities such as home fire risk checks and media campaigns towards people over 65.

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 52 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 Making Norfolk homes safer - Home Fire Risk Checks (HFRCs)

Local firefighters and community safety staff visit homes and provide fire safety advice and where necessary will supply and install smoke alarms free of charge. These checks are the cornerstone of the proactive role the service has adopted in its drive to reduce the deaths and injuries that are caused by accidental fires.

This map shows all the dwelling fires in premises where at least one of the occupants was over retirement age, and the location of home fire risk checks which have been carried out in the same category of homes. Our targeted activity needs to sharpen our focus to those most at risk

Dwelling fire

Home fire risk check completed

The Home Fire Risk Check initiative continues to provide a valuable service to the communities of Norfolk and continues to target areas most at risk from dwelling fires.

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Non domestic (commercial) premise fires When examining fires that occur away from the home there are a wide variety of buildings used either for work purposes or storage in which fires can occur. These types of fires are reflective of the rural aspect of the county. This is often due to poor working practices or incorrect storage of flammable materials. We are aware of the environmental impact of these incidents and strive to minimise the effect by offering advice and guidance.

Most of the more significant fires are within the highest risk category of sleeping accommodation premises. The risks of persons unfamiliar with their surroundings and asleep require a good level of fire safety arrangements to be in place to ensure their safety. Our community fire protection strategies reflect this with a robust fire auditing process under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. This area is covered in more detail in the Protection chapter.

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Through a process of fire investigation our staff can usually determine the most probable cause for the fires that occur. We are then able to use this information to raise awareness of the main causes of fire when conducting fire safety audits. As can be seen cooking remains a significant cause of fires in non-domestic premises along with electrical appliances and smoking/naked flames

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Road traffic collisions (RTCs) The map below shows hotspots (red areas indicating the greatest activity) of the 2,745 RTCs attended between 1 Apr 07 – 31 Mar 10, 636 of which were extrications, 1735 where services were rendered only and 374 where no services were rendered.

We are an active member of the Norfolk Road Casualty Reduction Partnership, which has in recent years shown consistent success in the reduction of the number of persons killed or seriously injured (KSI) on the county‟s roads. Along with our partners we are not only exceeding the national target of a 40% reduction over 10 years, we have also exceeded a five year „stretch‟ target set in the second edition of our Local Transport Plan by a comfortable margin.

Since the Baseline Period against which our progress has been measured (1994-1998) the partnership has achieved a 55% reduction in the number of KSIs.

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Location of RTCs in Norfolk This map shows that the locations of RTCs are predominantly in and around the urban areas and on the main roads connecting the larger villages and towns. Further, more detailed analysis is carried out within the response chapter later in the Safety Plan.

1st Apr 2007- 31st Mar 2010

RTCs where persons have been extricated from vehicles

RTCs where services were given ie making vehicle safe

RTCs where no services were required

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Summary

This chapter sets out in some detail the results of considerable analysis of the factors that influence risk in Norfolk, whether this is from a fire in the home or from a fire in the workplace or from a road collision whilst travelling on Norfolk‟s roads.

The role of the Fire Intelligence Unit is to review and supply current information which supports the delivery of targeted resources to continue to reduce the risk to the communities of Norfolk.

Some of the factors are not within the influence of the service, such as the changes that may result to incident types from climate change. By monitoring those changes and including them as part of our risk management process the opportunities to review our procedures of capability can respond quickly to these changes.

Much of this chapter relates to the incidents that occur when people live their lives in different ways and includes the factors such as age, deprivation and housing type that can influence the risk of fire. The ongoing challenge for the service is to target these higher risk groups and provide the advice and guidance as well as a smoke detector to improve the safety of those at risks.

To do this we will continue to analyse our historical data to review where the different communities within the population of our county live. In particular we will review:

 Which lifestyle types are most at risk in Norfolk.  Where the most at risk groups live and work in the County. Mosaic data (a computer database providing information on households for given postcodes) and will formulate the most effective means of communication in order to educate/inform these communities and gain permission to access their homes to conduct HFRCs.  The number of house fires that have occurred among these groups, and where they have occurred and how we might have prevented the fires from occurring.  Whether we have completed Home Fire Risk Checks in homes occupied by people in these groups and whether the advice and guidance was followed.  Partnerships to improve contact with other at risk groups such as the less mobile.

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Additionally a review has been undertaken of publicly available information to compare Norfolk with fire authority performance within the same family group and across all authorities in England.

The aim of the benchmarking is to better understand historical trends in risk profiles and recent performance and the results show Norfolk‟s performance in comparison with other authorities against a range of indicators.

An analysis of historical trends over the last five or six years shows that:

 Accidental fires in the home in Norfolk have been reduced by 17.9% which is the same as the national average but better than the family group average (10.9%).

 Arson fires in Norfolk have been reduced by over 40%. Higher reductions have been achieved in other authorities, however the likelihood of arson fires in Norfolk continues to be lower than both the family group average and national average.

 Reductions in accidental fires in non-domestic premises across Norfolk (19.7%) are higher than both the national average (12.4%) and the family group average (14.0%).

 Greater reductions in casualty rates have been achieved across Norfolk (28.7%) than the rest of England (17.9%).

Comparing Norfolk‟s more recent performance with others shows that:

 Substantially fewer accidental fires occur in Norfolk either at home or in non-domestic premises.

 The likelihood of arson fires occurring in Norfolk is much lower than the national average but similar to the family group average.

 Casualty rates associated with primary fires are lower in Norfolk (1.49 casualties per 10,000 population vs. 2.21 across England), resulting in 60 less casualties per year across Norfolk.

 The number of people killed or seriously injured in road traffic collisions is lower in Norfolk (42.71 people killed or seriously injured per 1,000km of road vs. 80.72 across England), resulting in 400 less people killed or seriously injured per year across Norfolk.

This analysis and risk assessment of the communities of Norfolk provides the backdrop and context for the following chapters which will build on this assessment by looking in more depth at the approaches within prevention, protection and response activities that are best placed to reduce the risks identified.

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NoStrategiesrfolk Fire a nandd R epsrioritiescue Aut hority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 Key activities Summary

Prevention

Prevention

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Strategies and priorities

Since the last Safety Plan, our key achievements within the service‟s community fire safety (CFS) strategy were:

 On average Norfolk has lower levels of accidental dwelling fires and deaths than other similar counties. Accidental dwelling fires, deaths and injuries have reduced over the last 10 years but this reduction has levelled-out with fires and injuries beginning to rise. This trend has been recognised within recent audits which have identified that progress has been made but more is now required.

 Significant improvements have been made in the community safety arrangements particularly our work with partners which has seen overall reductions in accidental dwelling casualties, casualties on the road, and deliberate fires. This has been recognised by the Audit Commission.

 Together with our partners we have carried out 7,198 home fire risk checks (HFRCs) and have fitted 8,623 domestic smoke detectors (DSD) over the last two years which together with active local and national campaigns, has significantly increased the levels of domestic smoke detector ownership in Norfolk.

 Fire Safety education has generally been maintained across Key Stages 1, 3 and 4 and a review is being targeted at the delivery of Key Stage 2 to continue to support the highly successful multi agency Crucial Crew events.

 Our partnership working is improving with a large range of agencies, charities and other organisations including; Age Concern, the police, through Safer Neighbourhood Teams and Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs), Breckland Rangers, PACT, and many others. A lot of these partnerships have delivered significant contributions to our strategic objectives including identification of those most at risk, HFRCs, DSD installation and home safety improvements for vulnerable people. These partnerships are now under review to ensure they are delivering against our objectives, and new partnerships are being set up that will further improve the safety of vulnerable people in Norfolk.

 We have actively supported and promoted youth development through a range of successful initiatives including, The Prince's Trust, Alite, XL/XLer8 and long standing fire cadet initiatives. These programmes have enabled young people at risk of exclusion from school or becoming involved in crime or anti-social behaviour to build their confidence and self-esteem and become useful members of the community.

 We have been an active member of the Norfolk Accident Reduction Partnership which has achieved significant reductions in the numbers of road casualties in Norfolk. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 61 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 . Key activities

Fires and Fire Casualties in the Home

The number of accidental dwelling fires and casualties has reduced over the last 10 years, but this reduction has begun to slow and in some areas shown a slight rise, but accidental dwelling fires and deaths are still below that of other similar counties. In the last year 34% of primary fires were in dwellings or other residential properties. Of these, 43% were people living on their own, the majority of whom were over pensionable age.

Road Casualty Reduction

Working in partnership and through the Norfolk Road Casualty Reduction Partnership we have shown consistent success in reducing the number of road casualties reducing the number of killed or seriously injured (KSI) on the roads in Norfolk by 55%. This exceeds the national target (40% reduction over 10 years to December 2010) and the 5 year local stretch target, and is ahead of both the national trend and that of similar counties.

Fire Safety Education

As with all education, fire safety education is a long- term process which can provide significant long term community safety improvements which are difficult to measure in the short term.

Fire safety education is currently provided across Key Stages 1 to 4 and aligned to nationally recognised subjects at each Key stage.

 Key Sage 1 – Fire safety education  Key Stage 2 – Crucial crew The „Fire Experience Unit‟ as used at Crucial Crew  Key Stage 3 – Arson reduction  Key Stage 4 – RTC reduction www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 62 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Crucial Crew is one of the key delivery methods of fire safety education. These are multi-agency events delivered across the county which teach children about a range of safety issues including fire safety, crime and disorder reduction, electrical safety, water safety, basic first aid and farm safety.

Reduction of the Number and Impact of Deliberate Fires (Arson Reduction)

The number and impact of deliberate fires with Norfolk has reduced over several years in line with our focus on reducing these.

The majority of deliberate fires are being set in urban areas particularly in Norwich, Great Yarmouth, King‟s Lynn and Thetford.

We have a dedicated arson reduction officer (ARO), and an active fire-setter educator scheme, these, together with strong partnerships, particularly with the police, have been effective in preventing and tackling arson and deliberate fire-setting. Until recently the main focus of the activity was in Thetford where a significant issue was identified but this has now been extended countywide and particularly in the higher risk urban areas where arson is more frequent.

Youth Development

In 2005 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister published the Fire and Rescue Service Strategy for Children and Young People which intended to deliver effective reduction of fire risk and fire crime by children and young people.

Our CFS strategy sets out our intention to:

 Engage actively with children and young people and their families.  Prevent and reduce fire crime and fire-setting by children and young people.

 Divert children and young people from fire crime and anti-social behaviour.

 Educate children and young people and their families in fire safety skills and responsible citizenship.

 Ensure that fire and rescue service staff working with children and young people are effective and professional.

 Identify and disseminate good practice in working with children and young people. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 63 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

To achieve these objectives we run a range of successful schemes to support and develop disadvantaged young people. These include an extensive Prince‟s Trust Team programme for which Norfolk is recognised as the fire and rescue service with second largest involvement in the country. Other schemes run include „Alite‟, „XL/XLer8‟, and fire cadets‟ schemes which support these objectives.

Crime and Disorder Reduction

We have played an active role in supporting the arrangements in Norfolk to achieve the objectives of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The arrangements to do this have been embedded throughout the service for many years and range from local level where managers actively participate in Local Strategic Partnerships, Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, Safer Neighbourhood Teams and Responsible Area Partnerships to the support provided for the countywide community safety team and initiatives.

This joint approach has resulted in many significant schemes to improve community safety and reduce crime and anti social behaviour which include; environmental action days, joint agency response to spates of arson, support for local community events and community safety initiatives.

Our CFS strategy aims to deliver improvements in the safety of those most at risk from fire in the home, in reducing deliberate fires and arson and in reducing the numbers of road casualties in Norfolk by:

 Make more effective use of community profiling information to identify of those most at risk from fire in the home.  Target our resources to improve the safety of those at most risk of fire in the home.  Review partnerships to ensure they are effective in achieving our objectives.  Develop new partnerships to appropriately share information on vulnerable people within the community and improve their safety.  Work with partners to continue to reduce the number of arson and deliberate fires in conjunction with community fire protection and the fire investigation team.  Improve our ability to collect information from incidents to inform our targeting of community safety activities.  Review our arrangements to deliver fire safety education to young people.  Continue to improve the delivery of community safety by further developing monitoring, audit and review arrangements.  Continuing to support the Norfolk Accident Reduction Partnership.

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Summary On average, Norfolk has lower levels of accidental dwelling fires and deaths than similar counties. We strive to achieve this by undertaking home fire risk checks, of which we have completed 7,198 in the last two years and fitted 8,623 domestic smoke detectors and by delivering schools education through all Key Stages 1 to 4.

We have been an active member of the Norfolk Accident Reduction Partnership which has achieved significant reductions in the numbers of road casualties in Norfolk.

We have a youth development programme working with young people aged from 13 to 25 and through various initiatives, and in partnership with the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme and The Prince‟s Trust, are engaging with over 250 people every year.

We continue to analyse our community profile and through national and local investigation and research review those most at risk and ensure our strategies are engaging with our target audiences.

Our partnerships are vital to the success of this engagement work and we are continuing to review existing partnerships and developing new ways of working jointly to reduce accidental fires in the home.

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 65

Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Strategies and priorities Key activities Protection Future development Summary

Protection

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 66 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Strategies and priorities

Since the last Safety Plan our key achievements within the Norfolk community fire protection (CFP) strategy have comprised of:

 The start of a process to ensure a true risk-based fire protection audit regime that clearly identifies properties at risk and allocates the correct level of skills and resources where risk is highest.

 A 99% reduction in the number of very high risk premises and at least a 27% reduction in high risk premises as a result of our planned audit programme.

 Ensuring that Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service (NFRS) properties have high standards of fire protection to set an example to the people we regulate.

 Establishing a centralised training plan and liaising closely with the training department to ensure coordinated training allocation to CFP staff that is based on service needs to ensure quality service.

 Ensuring very high levels of engagement with county-wide enforcement partners through the Norfolk Better Regulation Partnership (NBRP) resulting in the introduction of a joint enforcement protocol and two multi-agency advice packs for the food and accommodation sectors. We have been proactive in driving the government agenda to reduce the regulatory burden on compliant businesses whilst protecting the people of Norfolk.

 Becoming the Regional Fire Representative on the East of England Regulatory Services Partnership (EERSP) which aims to drive significant improvements in regulation by involving all our regulation partners within the region. This has put Norfolk at the forefront of the Better Regulation agenda which is crucial to ensure safety and the economic well being of the region. NFRS is the lead fire service for a national web-based business advice product known as ERWIN that is due to be launched in 2011.

 Ensuring greater efficiency for our petroleum and licensing activity making this statutory service more commercially viable to the county. We have also sought partnerships with environmental service partners in order to identify efficiency savings.

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 A higher level of engagement and support within the holiday accommodation sector regarding compliance with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.

 Advocating greater levels of support for businesses at a national Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA) level.

 A programme of data cleansing and geo-coding to improve the accuracy of our Community Fire Risk Management Information System (CFRMIS) data. This provides a safer basis for implementing a true risk-based audit programme.

 Working with our police partners and neighbourhood teams and through joint working led by our fire investigation team, secured prosecution of a person responsible for a serious spate of deliberate building fires. This led to reductions in risk for both the public and our firefighters.

 Securing a multi-agency prosecution through to a successful conclusion. This led to a major custodial sentence for a property landlord and demonstrates NFRS‟ commitment to ensuring the safety of the people of Norfolk. This case was very significant, attracting national interest and sends a powerful message to landlords who do not take their safety responsibilities seriously.

Key activities

There are many driving forces that have an impact on CFP activity and policy. These originate from a range of national external sources as well as local and internal factors that have given guidance and set direction.

The main drivers include:

 Fire and Rescue Service National Framework

 Chief Fire Officers‟ Association (CFOA) guidance at national and regional level

 Enforcement Concordat 1998 (Cabinet Office)

 Dept of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) Compliance Code

 The Anderson Review of Government Guidance on Regulation – July 2008

 Report on Initial Evaluation of the effectiveness of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order (Fire Research 2/2009) www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 68 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

 Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order and associated guides and documents

 NFRS Safety Plan

 Norfolk Better Regulation Joint Enforcement Policy

 Customer opinion surveys and formal complaint letters

 Combined Area Assessment

 Norfolk Better Regulation partnership (NBRP) and The East of England Regulatory Services Partnership (EERSP)

 Requirement for formal Health and Safety Executive Liaison

 Equality and Diversity (diverse Norfolk community)

 Local Government Review

 National Operational Guidance and reviews following firefighter deaths

Future development

The 2009/11 CFP strategy is currently under review and will evolve to become the new CFP Strategy for 2011-2014. During the review process some key projects will include:

 Reducing the number of very high and high risk rated premises and ensure a re-inspection programme for these properties.

 Ensuring true risk based targets and review service indicators to reflect risk reduction rather than activity.

 Reducing the number of arson-related fires in conjunction with community fire safety and fire investigation team.

 Ensuring fire protection activity is closely linked to operational performance and improves the safety of firefighters.

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 Reducing the number of unwanted fire signals.

 Ensuring quality of service for the enforcement and fire investigation activities within NFRS, through:

. External customer surveys and business liaison groups . Peer review . External verification of services

 Making more effective use of the fire investigation function to reduce fire deaths and injuries in domestic and non-domestic premises.

 Reducing overall regulatory burden on compliant business by supporting the Norfolk Better Regulation Partnership (NBRP) and the East of England Regulatory Services Partnership (EERSP).

 Continuing to build the already strong links with our county and regional enforcement partners through the NBRP, EERSP and CFOA Regional Fire Protection Group.

 Building our business advice service to industry through projects such as ERWIN.

 Implementation of the service and organisational review of staffing resources across NFRS.

 Along with our regional CFOA partners, seeking and developing opportunities for effective collaboration and resource-sharing arrangements to maximise efficiency and skills.

 Further develop our skills and systems in relation to CFP prosecutions whilst maintaining a supportive enforcement team that assists businesses to meet their obligations.

 Ensuring the safety and compliance (within the RRO) of all NFRS properties.

 Ensuring efficiency and value-for-money and being accountable to the rate payers of Norfolk.

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Summary

The Fire Protection Plan is built around five key areas of strategic focus:

To deliver a true risk based audit regime

To ensure our resources are focused at the highest risks. Risks will be judged using national models (Fire Service Emergency Cover (FSEC) relative risk ratings) but also be adjusted to take account of local information. Our CFP audit delivery resources must be flexible enough to respond to the changing profile across the county to make the most effective use of our enforcement teams.

Continue to engage partners and stakeholders in delivery of protection activities

Be guided by all staff, stakeholders and businesses in the delivery of the fire protection service in line with the Enforcement Concordat and the Regulators Compliance Code. Also to work closely with fire and other enforcement partners to build capacity and efficiency and reduce the burden on compliant businesses for the economic well-being and safety of the people of Norfolk.

Build on existing systems to create a strong process for measuring, evaluating and improving the performance of our protection work.

Strengthen the use of CFRMIS and VIEWS and build systems for quality control, consistency and peer review.

Build a strong long term staff and skills development plan for the prevention, protection and response function.

Ensure the service structure will provide the highest levels of expertise possible through the provision of skills within the service. Ensure the maintenance and development of high level expertise to enable the service to provide a supportive regulatory function but with the tenacity to pursue serious breaches of fire safety regulations that endanger the lives of the public and our firefighters.

Ensure fire protection activity is closely linked to operational performance and improves the safety of firefighters.

Lessons learned through enforcement work, fire investigation and working with other enforcement partners should be integrated with operational activity to ensure they improve firefighter safety. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 71

NoResponserfolk Fire analysisand Res overviewcue Auth ority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014 Our response to incidents

o Major incident response o Dealing with calls to emergency incidents Response o Responding to an emergency

incident

o Geographical location of

emergency incidents o General response activity analysis o Safely managing incidents  Specific Response Analysis o Analysis of response performance o ICS performance standards o Analysis of Urban Areas

Response . Norwich . Great Yarmouth . King‟s Lynn . Thetford o Analysis of Rural Areas . Market Towns  Summary

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 72 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Response Analysis Overview

This section of the Safety Plan examines the profile of our incidents in terms of where they occur in the county, the type of emergency incidents we attend and the demand these incidents place on our fire stations, engines and crews. The aim is to identify ways we can improve the delivery and resourcing of our emergency service across the county.

The analysis has drawn on internal expertise but, as this was to be a fundamental reappraisal of how we use our emergency resources in Norfolk, the service commissioned ORH Ltd to undertake specialist modelling to support the generation of options for change. This work has also enabled us to deliver on a commitment in our last Safety Plan to review how we deliver our services in urban areas.

ORH Ltd has been providing consultancy to the emergency services for over twenty three years, developing a specialism in the analysis of fire station location and fire engine deployment. Their work has provided strong quantitative evidence, alongside our internal review work, for use in developing a clear strategic understanding of our current effectiveness and opportunities for improvement. Using sophisticated analytical and modelling methods, the analysis will assist us in planning future station configurations and the deployment of personnel and fire engines. In turn this will enable us to provide an effective, efficient and equitable emergency service across the county.

ORH have analysed 5 years of data relating to attendance at incidents. For the purposes of accurate risk based analysis this excludes:

 Occasions when a fire engine was mobilised but did not actually arrive at the scene of the incident  Occasions when a fire engine undertook follow-up attendances that were not part of the initial attendance ie relief crews and standbys  Occasions when a fire engine was mobilised over the border

This ensures that the analysis remains focused on the outcomes of attending emergency incidents in Norfolk.

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 73 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Our response to incidents

Under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, fire and rescue authorities (FRAs) have a range of statutory duties to:

 Promote fire safety  To prepare for: o fighting fires and protecting people and property from fires o rescuing people from road traffic collisions o and dealing with other specific emergencies, such as flooding or terrorist attack

In addition, all FRAs are able to do other things to respond to the particular needs of their communities and the risks they face, this is achieved by:

 ensuring that fire and rescue authorities can do things that are not specifically set out in the Act but which will help them meet their statutory duties.  giving authorities powers to prepare properly for other risks to life and the environment.  allowing authorities, where they have capacity, to use staff and equipment for any other purpose they believe appropriate.

This framework of powers enables individual fire and rescue authorities to decide in consultation with their communities how and where to deploy their resources and improve their ability to respond to the range of risks set out in their Safety Plans.

The service currently responds to an average of 28 incidents per day from 41 fire stations. Of these daily incidents, around 43% are false alarms, 15% are primary fires involving property and 14% are road traffic collisions (RTCs). Below is a breakdown of the wide variety of incidents attended by the service.

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Typical Incident Types:

Fighting fires Rescues

 In domestic buildings  From ice/unstable ground  Commercial and industrial buildings  From lifts and escalators  In high rise buildings  From sewers  In chimneys  From silos  In rural areas  From trenches/pits

 In farms  From collapsed structures  In refuse  From height  In public entertainment venues  Involving flooding and waterways  In secure accommodation  Of animals  In petrochemical installations  Involving pipelines

Incidents involving transport systems Generic incidents involving

 Road  High voltage electricity – Minor road traffic collision  Acetylene and other compressed gases – Major road traffic collision  Chemicals and other hazardous materials  Rail – passenger or commercial  Biological hazards  Air – commercial, passenger, light aircraft, military  Confined spaces  Marine – inland and coastal  Civil disturbances  Explosives  Natural occurrences – flooding, lightning strikes

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Major incident response

A key function of our emergency response is the capacity to respond to major incidents, such as transport accidents, wide area flooding, environmental contamination, and collapsed buildings. We work with other agencies like the police and health services in the local resilience forum on joint plans to deal with any risks in the area. The forum is responsible for warning and informing the public of these risks, and what to do if they happen.

In addition to dealing with fires, the fire and rescue service has special responsibilities for urban search and rescue, and decontaminating people in the event of chemical or other spillages. We have an Urban Search and Rescue Team (USAR) which is used both in the county and as part of national resilience arrangements in case of an incident of national significance. When buildings collapse as a result of an accident, explosion or earthquake this highly trained team provides the specialist skills that are needed to search the wreckage for survivors.

The service also trains crews to decontaminate people from chemical or other environmental hazards. Through the location of a specialist Incident Response Unit in Norfolk we deliver part of the national capacity to respond to such events whether they result from terrorist activity or industrial or transport accidents. Specialist Hazmat Officers are also trained to identify and monitor hazardous chemicals to ensure that they are dealt with correctly.

Although floods are infrequent, the Environment Agency is forecasting an increase in flooding over the next fifteen years, due to climate change. The impact of flooding may also become more severe due to changes in land use and allowing building on low-lying land. We currently host a High Volume Pump at Thetford as part of national contingency arrangements and are planning developments in our capability and training to deal with flooding both on a local and county wide basis.

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Emergency incident response arrangements

Having highlighted the risk profile of Norfolk in previous sections of the Safety Plan, it is important that our response to actual incidents is examined in detail to determine how well our resources are located and deployed to meet those risks.

This map gives an overview of the current station location and the different duty systems in use at each that are used to respond to emergencies when a call is received.

The next part of this chapter explains what arrangements we have to deal with a call for help when it is received and how we make sure we send the nearest fire engine to any emergency in Norfolk.

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Dealing with calls to emergency incidents Emergency calls can be received through a variety of means from direct telephone calls from members of the public to automatic calls from a business fire alarm system or calls for assistance from other emergency services or agencies.

The diagram below shows how the component parts of dealing with an emergency incident are defined and measured:

 The time of call to the time an engine is assigned to an incident is dealt with by our control room staff. At this point the station is alerted that they are required for an emergency either by on-station tannoy or by pocket alerter for our retained staff.

 The time the engine is assigned to the time the engine is mobile will vary from a short time (less than a minute) for our wholetime staff who are on station to a longer period (up to five minutes) for our retained duty staff who work in local communities and who respond via a pocket alerter when a call occurs.

 From the time the engine is mobile to the time the engine is on scene is the travel time from station to the incident itself. Overall attendance time is measured from the time a station is alerted to the time a fire engine arrives at the scene of an emergency.

ICT plays a vital role in driving down response times, enabling control staff and crews to communicate rapidly and dispatch emergency personnel efficiently.

We have invested considerably in our core command and control system VISION FX from Fortek Computers to ensure our crew and control are kept fully up to speed on the latest information no matter where they are.

We were the first fire and rescue service in England to invest in a fully integrated mobile data system which places computers inside fire engines. Alongside smaller units in officer‟s cars, control are able to stay fully connected with our emergency response vehicles.

The system incorporates automatic vehicle location, and calculates how far the nearest engine is, in minutes, from the incident, which enables the control staff to mobilise the nearest possible engine and so provide a better service to the people of Norfolk. Mobilising instructions can be transmitted directly to the vehicle required in a data format. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 78 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

The crews can also access information from their mobile data terminals such as the location of water hydrants, mapping information and information on high-risk premises.

Data messages can be exchanged between the vehicle and control, which helps eliminate problems caused by radio interference and ensures that messages are received correctly.

The service prides itself on its exemplary performance records and its strategic use of technology to heighten its ability to save lives.

In a recent assessment the Audit Commission commended Norfolk‟s „innovation in its use of technology to effectively deploy resources to incidents‟ noting that the service is „particularly strong in call management and incident support‟ and uses „the latest technology to support the quickest attendance at incidents‟.

The above systems provide a wealth of information regarding incident types and our performance in attending and dealing with incidents across the county and is used in the following analysis to better understand if improvements are possible in current arrangements.

Responding to an emergency incident

As part of our response time to emergencies it is important to examine the time it takes to receive an emergency call and then to mobilise a fire engine to deal with the incident. An analysis of mobilisation times has provided the following information:

 The average-time to deal with a call and alert a fire engine (control activation time) is 80 seconds and is broadly stable by hour of day, varying between around 70 and 90 seconds. Control activation times have improved over the five-year period and are closer to 75 seconds in the last two years since improvements in control practices were implemented in 2006/07.

 The average time taken for crew to leave the station (turnout time) for wholetime crews ranges from 1 minute during the day to over 1 minute 30 seconds at night when crews are allowed to stand down, giving an overall average turnout time of 67 seconds.

 Average turnout times for RDS crews range from less than 4 minutes between 18.00 and 22.00 to around 5 minutes and 30 seconds at night, giving an overall average turnout time of just under 4 and a half minutes. There is a significant variation in RDS turnout times, ranging from 3 minutes at Outwell to in excess of 5 minutes at Dereham and Thetford. There are a number of factors affecting this including road layout, traffic conditions and distance of crew from station at time of alert.

 An analysis of historical trends in turnout times show that both wholetime and day crewed turnout times have improved over the five-year period by 10 seconds and 50 seconds respectively. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 79 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Emergency incident profile by month and time of day

The annual call profile for Norfolk over the last five years is shown below across the months of the year for one engine and two engine calls (one or two fire engines).

Historical demand trends across Norfolk are shown and highlight the seasonal trend with higher activity levels during the summer months due to the increase in field, forest and other land fires. This is particularly noticeable for the hot and dry summer of 2006 when activity levels in July 2006 were 92% higher (770 more incidents) than the previous year. These spikes in activity are referred to as spate conditions and can happen on a countywide scale as happened in 2006 or more regularly on a smaller scale where extreme weather events occur resulting in flash flooding or localised field and forest fires.

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Looking at when calls occur during an average day shows the response activity profile for Norfolk as greatest during the late day and evening period and shows least calls occurring during the early hours of the night. This shows call levels linked to activity levels in the community particularly relating to travelling to and from work, being at work and cooking activities during the evening.

The work undertaken to prepare this analysis has examined trends across all incident types and has enabled the following observations to be drawn.

Overall the number of incidents attended has decreased across Norfolk during the last 4 years (see first table on next page) with the exception of the figures for 05/06 showing an increase. This due to the introduction of a revised approach to attending road collisions in Norfolk, this increase is clearly visible in the RTC analysis table that follows on the next page.

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Table showing all incidents dealt with by NFRS

The table below shows the RTC incident levels during the same period and clearly shows the increase during the 05/06 year due to the revised policy. Call levels have varied during subsequent years but remain much higher than before 2005/6 levels.

Table showing the change in levels of RTC incidents in Norfolk attended by NFRS

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The analysis table below shows the % change in Automatic Fire Alarms (AFA) calls attended by the service. It is of note that the number of these calls receiving two or more fire engines has increased over the last three years (from 26% to 32%), this has driven a review and a planned introduction of revised mobilising arrangements during 2010 to reduce this activity level.

Table showing AFA calls in Norfolk by number of engines attending.

This series of tables illustrates several points which are consistent and important factors in the remainder of the call profile analysis. These are:

 Overall call levels have fallen in Norfolk during the last 4 years.

 A new RTC attendance policy introduced during 2005/6 saw a dramatic increase in calls to this incident type.

 Revised arrangements on AFA management will reduce the overall number of calls attended by all stations during the period of this Safety Plan.

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The chart below depicts the number of AFA calls attended by each fire engine in Norfolk and illustrates the considerable number of calls that are attended by our fire engines in this category. For many station this represents 50% of total activity and as such shows the scope that exits for further call reductions in this area.

Automatic Fire Alarms 2009-2010 500

400

300 480

200

382

380

332

298 Number of NumberTurn-outs of

100 217

201

168

31 31 31

28 30 30 29

28 27 26 26

24 25 25 25

21 22 85 21 23

78

17 16 16 16

14 15 66

12 12 62 11

59 59 2 1

47 48 46

41 41 40

38 35 35 38

34 33

0 34

ERL6

GYA6

DIS74 DIS57

AYL74 HIN17 LST74

ATT74 FAK74 FAK17 LYN74 LYN47 LYN57 ACL47 STA74 ERL74 ERL57

HET47 LOD74 REE47 SPR74 EHA47 HEA17 SAN47 SAN17 TER47 THE74 THE75 GYA74 GYA47 GYA57 HOL74 SHE47

HAR47 DER74 DER57 MAS47 MET74 OUT17 OUT47 WEL47

NOR74 NOR57 DMK74 HUN74 SWA74 WAT74 CRO74 CRO57 GOR47 MAR47

MUN47 NWA47

WRO47 WYM47 WYM17 WWA17

Overall the numbers of AFAs attended by the Great Yarmouth WDS engines are the highest in Norfolk with 860 AFAs attended. Wymondham, Gorleston and Great Yarmouth attend the most AFAs as RDS engines at 78, 66 and 62 AFAs attended respectively in the 2009/10 period (Downham Market and Heacham also attended 59 each during the same period). Wymondham and Dereham attend significant numbers of AFA calls as two fire engine RDS stations (108 and 82)

This analysis is important when considering options for varying the location and use of our fire engines. The service will be reducing AFA calls substantially during the term of the Safety Plan and consequently will need to monitor carefully the varying use of resources across Norfolk and opportunities to improve efficiency as a result.

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Our analysis has revealed the following key facts relating to emergency call levels in Norfolk

 We respond to an average of 10,087 incidents per annum, equivalent to 27.6 incidents per day

 Around 70% of incidents received one fire engine and 30% of incidents received two or more fire engines

 False alarm calls account for 43.4% of all incidents, equivalent to 4,380 incidents per annum or 12.0 incidents per day

 Primary fires account for 15.2% of all incidents, equivalent to 1,525 incidents per annum or 4.2 incidents per day

 Secondary fires account for 15.9% of all incidents, equivalent to 1,599 incidents per annum or 4.4 incidents per day

 RTCs account for 13.7% of all incidents, equivalent to 1,380 incidents per annum or 3.8 incidents per day

 Other special services, such as flooding or rescue of animals accounts for 11.9% of all incidents, equivalent to 1,203 incidents per annum or 3.3 incidents per day.

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Geographical location of emergency incidents

A key element of our analysis is the ability to understand where calls occur in Norfolk and to examine if our resources are best placed to give the quickest response to incidents wherever they happen. Looking at the spread of calls geographically using a variety of mapping tools allows a clear picture of activity spread across Norfolk to emerge. This section of the analysis provides a series of maps showing the geographical distributions of calls across Norfolk.

This first map shows how the general distribution of one fire engine calls is closely aligned to the population distribution in Norfolk and shows as clusters of calls around Norwich, King‟s Lynn and Great Yarmouth with other towns also visible.

The two fire engine call distribution, as shown over, is also aligned to the population distribution, but also contains a number of specific locations with high volumes of calls which are explained by our attendance to premises which generate high numbers of Automatic Fire Alarm calls, examples being major hospital sites in Norfolk. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 86 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

These maps also show that a significant proportion of one and two fire engine incidents are located on the road network.

This is due to the road traffic collisions attended to free people who become trapped in their vehicles.

Our altered response to RTCs from 2006 included many smaller RTCs being attended by a single fire engine.

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To demonstrate this change in policy more clearly the RTC incidents have been plotted on this and the next map. These highlight the number and location of these incidents in the county.

One fire engine is sent to smaller road traffic collisions which are distributed evenly across the strategic road network, minor rural roads and in the urban centres.

Two fire engines will attend larger road collisions (map on next page) which occur more frequently across the strategic road network away from centres of population. This difference is important as it consequently takes a greater amount of time to reach the scene.

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These maps illustrate an important difference between the response pattern relating to building fires and RTCs.

Building fires occur predominantly in populated areas whereas RTCs, particularly larger incidents, occur more frequently away from urban areas.

This difference requires greater travel distances for attending fire engines and therefore increases the time taken to arrive, this is reflected in our performance in meeting the response standard for these incident types.

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To give more local details of response activity, the following series of maps shows the pattern of incidents in the three most urban areas of Great Yarmouth, King‟s Lynn and Norwich.

The map (left) of Great Yarmouth shows the incidents occurring in the Great Yarmouth and Gorleston area.

The more widely spread calls across the housing areas of Great Yarmouth and Gorleston are clearly visible.

The hospital site to the south is also prominent as the largest single concentration of calls to the automatic fire alarms that occur at this location.

As was shown previously, Great Yarmouth has a generally high number of AFA calls attended by the WDS and RDS fire engines, including the Gorleston engine.

These calls will continue to reduce during the term of this Safety Plan with a modest reduction of 20- 30% resulting in an overall call reduction in the Great Yarmouth area of between 198 and 297 calls based on 2009/10 figures.

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This map shows the calls in King‟s Lynn spread across the town, again with similar clusters of calls in the town centre area as was seen in Great Yarmouth.

The hospital site clearly visible to the east is the largest single site for AFA calls.

These calls will continue to reduce during the term of this Safety Plan with a modest reduction of 20- 30% resulting in an call reduction in the King‟s Lynn area of between 106 and 159 calls based on 2009/10 figures.

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The spread of calls in Norwich again shows a general spread with clusters of calls generated predominantly by AFAs within the city centre and to the main hospital site west of Norwich.

These calls will continue to reduce during the term of this Safety Plan with a modest reduction of 20- 30% resulting in an overall call reduction in the Norwich area of between 224 and 336 calls based on 2009/10 figures.

There is also a significant call pattern away from the centre in the suburban housing areas.

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General response activity analysis

This section takes a general, Norfolk-wide view of response activity of our fire engines in relation to our emergency response standards and how and why activity varies across our fire engines. It also looks at how the safe management of incidents is achieved by sending managers of different levels to the range of incidents that occur in Norfolk.

Emergency response standards analysis

Significant work was carried out in 2006 to provide a new set of response standards across Norfolk for incident types. This challenging and ambitious set of standards removed the previous nationally-set standards. The old standards differentiated between rural and urban areas by having a much faster response target and a larger number of fire engines required to respond in urban areas than in rural locations. This was the first change in standards for over 60 years and the implementation of revised standards included a requirement to undertake a review after 4 years to further refine, develop or amend the standards to best reflect the requirements of service delivery in Norfolk.

We set emergency response standards that are required to be achieved on a countywide basis, the table below summarises the emergency response standards established in 2006:

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The graph below shows the performance against these standards:

Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 Category 4

An analysis of incident demand shows that the majority of category 1 incidents are false alarms, these also account for around a quarter of category 3 incidents. Performance is comfortably above target for six of the eight measures, but below target for second fire engine attendance to category 2 incidents and category 3 incidents.

The performance to category 2 incidents is due the issue relating to a second engine having to travel further to larger RTCs and consequently taking longer to arrive.

Category 3 incident second fire engine performance is limited due to the wide distribution of these calls and occur in rural areas served by single fire engine stations. Therefore where a second fire engine is required it will inevitably have to travel substantial distances to support the neighbouring station and take greater time to do so. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 94 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Fire engine workload and utilisation

A key part of the Safety Plan analysis centres around the use of our current resources in terms of crews and fire engines. Norfolk has full- time staff (Wholetime Duty System – WDS) and part-time staff (Retained Duty System – RDS) located across the county with a wide range in workloads for stations and fire engines.

Because our RDS staff have primary employment within their local communities they are only available on a part-time basis to crew fire engines so these stations are located in the rural areas of Norfolk where fewer calls are received. Urban areas generate more emergency calls due to the numbers of people, businesses and infrastructure and therefore our WDS stations are located in these areas.

This means that stations and individual fire engines respond to differing amounts of emergencies each year and it is important to examine these workloads to ensure resources are evenly used to meet the numbers of calls that occur.

This analysis of station and fire engine workload shows that:

 Average wholetime fire engine workload is 942 incidents per year, ranging from 733 at King‟s Lynn to 1,154 at Earlham  Average RDS fire engine workload is 121 incidents per annum, ranging from 45 at Sandringham to 221 at Downham Market

ORH has gathered considerable information regarding the range of utilisation figures used for fire engines, both RDS and WDS, as part of their work with UK fire and rescue services. This provides a useful benchmark to compare the utilisation of Norfolk Fire and Rescue engines at emergency incidents.

The term utilisation refers to the proportion of available time that a fire engine spends actually attending emergency incidents and ORH‟s work elsewhere shows that normal engine utilisation ranges are:

 Up to 22.2% for WDS fire engines

 4.5% to 8.3% for day crewed fire engines and

 0.2% to 4.2% for RDS fire engines

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More detailed analysis is shown in this graph which shows the wide variation in workloads for fire stations in Norfolk.

This shows our urban areas as attending most incidents with Earlham having the greatest workload for a single fire engine in Norfolk for this period.

The relationship between stations in supporting incident attendance is important and gives further insight into the effectiveness of our fire engines.

This further level of analysis was undertaken to show how often, and to where, fire engines are responding to incidents and particularly how much fire engine activity is in support of calls in the areas covered by neighbouring stations.

This is presented over to show how often stations respond to calls within their own areas and how often they support, or are supported by neighbouring stations:

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The graph left shows the proportion of times where one fire engine was required and when that need was met by the local station serving that area.

This chart shows a number of things, such as how reliable the availability of the local fire engine is and how often it is quicker to send another station‟s fire engine. This may be because the home fire engine is unavailable or already committed to another incident.

Sandringham’s performance is particularly poor in this area compared to the other two fire engine RDS stations, this applies to a lesser extent to Wymondham.

It is also evident that Gorleston provides the first fire engine to calls in the Gorleston area on a very low proportion of occasions due to the close proximity of Great Yarmouth WDS fire engines.

Of note is the level of calls attended by Norwich, Sprowston and Earlham at a lower level that those attended by other WDS stations at King‟s Lynn and Great Yarmouth, this is due to the close proximity of stations within the Norwich area.

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The chart shows the proportion of times where two fire engines were required for an incident and at least one of these was provided from the station serving the area where the incident occurred. Again it is of note that Sandringham are performing poorly in this area especially as two fire engines are located at the station.

Gorleston again shows as meeting a very low proportion of these calls compared to all other stations in Norfolk.

This analysis shows that there is significant variation in workloads for our stations, both wholetime and retained, and differences in response patterns both between similar types of stations and between the different areas of Norfolk.

The station and fire engine workloads information is important in supporting the options to improve efficiency included in this Safety Plan.

Where opportunities exist to improve workload share between fire engines or change the type of engine required to deal with the workload this has been highlighted and examined carefully.

Particularly areas of interest are the deployment of resources within the Great Yarmouth, King‟s Lynn and Norwich areas and examining the value that the service gets from second fire engines on larger RDS stations.

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Fire engine availability

For a number of reasons there are periods of time when our fire engines may be unavailable to attend emergency incidents. This may be due to a crew being unavailable or where the fire engine has developed a defect or requires maintenance.

The service has invested considerably in a mobile phone based system called RAPPEL to support greater availability management information for RDS stations and has also invested in 8 rural support officers (RSOs) as part of a rural service review project in 2009.

The role of the RSO‟s is to support the availability of RDS stations by promoting recruitment of new staff in the business community whilst also forming part of a crew where numbers are depleted.

The analysis has shown that, on average, the fire engines in our fleet were available for 92.3% of the time over the last financial year. Further analysis shows that fire engine availability varies by duty system as follows:

 All 8 wholetime fire engines combined – 99.0% available  Thetford‟s day crewed fire engine – 99.6% available  All 45 RDS fire engines combined – 90.9% available It is important to identify those stations where the fire engine is unavailable for periods of time in excess of the average and the analysis has shown that there is a significant range in the unavailability of RDS fire engines in particular. This ranges from less than 1% for RDS fire engines at nine RDS stations to the greatest degree of unavailability of 36.9% occurring at West Walton.

There are many factors which affect the ability of RDS firefighters to be available for calls including willingness of local employers to release them to attend a call, availability of employment close to the fire station, personal time available to support the fire service and a willingness to provide substantial out of hours cover as well as full time primary employment.

These issues are experienced across the UK with regard to the RDS duty system and present real challenges to the day to day availability of rural fire engines to attend emergency incidents.

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This shows the amount of time, as a percentage, that all of our fire engines were unavailable to attend emergency incidents.

This shows significant unavailability within our two fire engine RDS stations at Sandringham (SAN17) and, Fakenham (FAK17), Dereham (DER57) and Diss (DISS57) as well as a number of single fire engine stations across Norfolk such as West Walton (WWA17) and others.

The service continues to develop approaches to improve the availability of RDS engines in key areas, these include the recent introduction of retained support officers and has commenced a process to introduce new RDS contracts of employment.

This service has recently adopted new call signs for fire engines, the graph left was produced using the older call signs.

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Safely managing incidents

A critical element to dealing with incidents of all types and sizes is ensuring a suitably qualified and experience manager is on scene to control operations, this is done through the Incident Command System (ICS).The ICS constitutes the doctrine of UKs fire and rescue services in the context of operational incident management, leadership and the functional command and control processes that flow from it.

The development of a safe system of work that embraces the model of the ICS should be seen as the service‟s overall organisational system for managing operational risk. The approach advocated by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) in HSG 65 to the design of organisational structures and processes for managing safely and successfully, provides a useful framework for this. The table below shows the adoption of the 4 ICS levels in Norfolk and how these relate to service management roles:

Incident Incident Command System Level Incident Types Commander Attendance Crew or watch 1 pump – crew manager. Level 1 All minor incidents. manager 2 pumps – watch manager. Risk to life or major injury. Higher Station 3 or 4 pumps – Station level of supervision required. Manager Level 2 Manager or Potential to escalate is higher than 5 or 6 pumps – Group Group Manager Level 1. Manager 7 or 8 pumps - Area Large or complex incidents. Manager. Level 3 Multiple engines Area Manager 9 or 10 pumps - Area Required. Manager. Major incidents and those Duty Brigade Brigade Manager. Level 4 requiring significant Manager . resources.

Level 1 incident commanders are provided as part of the fire engine crew and their performance in reaching incidents is contained as part of the emergency response standards previously detailed. As such, the further analysis carried out focused on level two, three and four.

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Specific response analysis

The previous general response analysis section has identified areas requiring more specific and detailed analysis. These form the basis for the safety plan change programme and relate to performance against our emergency response standards and the issues that arise from response performance within the urban and rural areas of Norfolk.

This analysis includes the modelling of alternative options to ensure the impacts of varying response arrangements can be accurately predicted to ensure that the high standards of safety in Norfolk are maintained or improved by implementation of alternative response options.

In this regard it is important to outline the context for this further analysis:

 An integrated modelling approach was used by ORH Ltd which relies on sophisticated optimisation and simulation techniques.

 A five-year sample of incident data was used to populate and validate the models.

 A detailed analysis of service delivery over the last five years quantifies the demand met, the performance achieved and the resources available.

 Additional information was collected on planned housing developments to ensure that recommendations for future station locations took into account major changes to infrastructure and population distribution based on the best information available at the time of writing the report.

 The levels of calls attended during the last five years has fallen consistently and has meant that our fire engines are less busy each year leading to a less efficient use of resources overall. This provides opportunities to investigate possible over provision of resources and to relocate some of this to support service improvements in other areas of the county.

The results from the specific response analysis are presented below into three categories:

1 Analysis of Emergency Response Standard (ERS) and Incident Command System (ICS) performance 2 Analysis of urban centres 3 Analysis of rural areas

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1 Analysis of response performance

The reviews undertaken of ERS and ICS standards have confirmed that the standards set in 2006 were ambitious and challenging and that performance overall has been good. We have reviewed the Emergency Response Standards and believe they need changing to reflect past performance. In particular we looked at the reasons why the second fire engine was not meeting the 80% target for „other - life risk’ and „fire - other’ incidents and this is discussed below. a) Standards relating to ‘Other - life risk’ category This standard relates to non-fire-related emergencies where life is at risk, this being predominantly road traffic collisions (RTCs), but also persons trapped in machinery, rescues from water and trapped animals. The first fire engine attending this type of incident has the greatest impact on the outcome of the rescue. At RTCs they provide immediate casualty care and scene safety whilst also beginning the process of extracting casualties therefore the performance should be scrutinised at strategic level. The second engine provides essential support to dealing with the incident but we believe our reporting should be locally focused on maintaining existing performance levels. b) Standards relating to ‘Fire - Other’ category This standard relates to fires that do not involve a risk to life, such as rubbish fires, fires in derelict buildings and rural land fires. On most occasions the first attending fire engine meets the standard arriving at the incident within 13 minutes. However, where a second fire engine is needed the performance standard is met less often. These emergencies occur evenly across Norfolk and therefore, in rural areas, will require a second fire engine to travel long distances to provide support. This means that the realistic prospect of improvement by strategic monitoring of this part of the emergency response standard is low given the geography and station locations across Norfolk.

We believe our reporting should be locally focused on maintaining existing performance levels for second engines.

Both the areas of ERS under-performance have consistently shown to be due to the particular incident types and geographic location in the county combined with the response from rural RDS stations. The prospect of improvement is low in the areas of second engine response to category 2 and 3 incidents and as such the reporting arrangements relating to the standards will be varied as part of the Safety Plan implementation.

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Example to illustrate the impact of standard changes:

Originally, the response to a serious road traffic collision on the outskirts Swaffham was two fire engines and one level 2 officer and these were dispatched as follows:

 One fire engine from Swaffham  One fire engine from Watton  One officer from Thetford

The original ERS standards required that the service measure the time taken by the two fire engines to reach the scene but not the officer. It is likely that Swaffham would arrive within the standard for first fire engine and Watton would fail to meet the standard for second fire engine due to the travel distance involved. The travel time of the officer would have been monitored but not published as part of our reporting arrangements.

When the standards for second engines at category two and three incidents are removed and ICS standards introduced the impact on the same incident will be as follows; the response will remain unchanged at two fire engines and one level two officer and these would continue to be dispatched in exactly the same way as before:

 One fire engine from Swaffham  One fire engine from Watton  One officer from Thetford

Swaffham and Watton engines and the officer will continue to be mobilised in the same way, mobilising arrangements would remain unchanged, all would travel on blue lights and arrive in exactly the same time as was originally expected.

The service will continue to record and monitor response times of all engines; however, the revised ERS standards require that the service only report the time taken by the first fire engine and the officer to reach the scene.

The time taken for the second engine to reach the scene will be monitored and if an unexpected delay were to occur this will be reported to the local station manager for action.

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ICS performance standards

Our response standards for officer attendance (Station Manager and above at Levels 2 to 4) were monitored at local level only. As these managers are critical to managing incidents safely new standards will be developed and introduced to the strategic reporting arrangements as part of the revised emergency response standards during the life of this Safety Plan:

Level Availability Standard

One Incident Commander on immediate availability in each of these areas  Norwich (Central Norfolk)

 Great Yarmouth (East Norfolk) Level 2  King‟s Lynn (West Norfolk)

 Fakenham (North Norfolk)  Thetford (South Norfolk) One Incident Commander available within the county at all times (Duty Area Level 3 Manager).

One Incident Commander to be available at all times (Duty Brigade Manager). Level 4

Safety Plan Actions

 Withdraw the current standard for second fire engine performance for ‘Other - Life risk’ incidents

 Withdraw the current standard for second fire engine performance for ‘Fire - Other’ incidents

 Introduce ICS standards as part of Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service’s suite of emergency response standards during the life of this Safety Plan

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2 Analysis of urban centres a) Great Yarmouth

Emergency response in Great Yarmouth

Analysis of our performance in attending emergencies involving a risk to life in the Great Yarmouth area over a 3 year period (2006/07-2008/09) shows fire engine attendance time performance is very good when compared to the county average. Great Yarmouth performance is shown in blue on the graph to the left and shows performance across all standards of above 99% where the target to be met is 80%.

Great Yarmouth has a relatively stable call profile which rose during 2008/9.

As with other urban stations, but particularly so in Great Yarmouth, the proportion of calls is dominated by false alarms.

Opportunities for improvement

The current fire engine deployment position for the Great Yarmouth area involves four fire engines (two wholetime fire engines and two RDS fire engines) deployed across two stations: Great Yarmouth and Gorleston.

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The results of the modelling carried out consistently showed that two stations were required in the Great Yarmouth area.

It was therefore decided to model options that maintained both stations, but examined the impact of redeploying and/or reducing the number of fire engines across both stations and differing the level of provision during the day and night as per the following table:

Option Time Great Yarmouth Fire Station Gorleston Fire Station Current Day 2 WDS + 1 RDS 1 RDS Position Night 2 WDS + 1 RDS 1 RDS Day 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS 1 Night 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS Day 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS 2 Night 1 RDS 1 WDS Day 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS 3 Night 2 RDS 1 WDS Day 1 WDS 1 WDS 4 Night 1 WDS 1 WDS Day 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS 5 Night 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 RDS Table: fire engine Deployment Options in Great Yarmouth

The impact of moving from the original position to each option is measured by the impact it would have on countywide emergency response performance against our emergency response standards and in the case of the above options can be summarised as follows:

 First fire engine performance improves by between 0.2% and 0.6% in all options as the wholetime engine will be closer to the calls that occur in the Gorleston area.

 Second fire engine performance falls by less than 0.5% in two options (1 and 5) and by between 1.0% and 1.3% in three options (2, 3 and 4). This due to the travel distance back into Great Yarmouth from Gorleston when the engine is required for a two fire engine call.

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To give a more focused assessment of local impact and the areas where incidents are affected, the following describes the extent of those impacts in terms of a range of indicators:

 Resulting workloads are considered and fire engine utilisation stays within normal ranges in all options.

 First fire engine range cover improves by around one minute in two options (one and four) due to the relocation of the wholetime engine to Gorleston, and deteriorates by less than one minute in three options (two, three and five) due to the removal of the wholetime crewed engine during the night-time period.

 Second fire engine range cover deteriorates in all five options, however, remains better than average countywide performance in option one.

 Aggregate range cover improves by around one minute in two options (one and four) and deteriorates by less than a minute in the three remaining options (two, three and five).

Although the average attendance times for fire engines attending incidents in Great Yarmouth was very good, the analysis and modelling carried out shows that there was scope for improving both how we manage our resources in delivering an emergency service in Great Yarmouth and how quickly fire engines attend emergencies in Gorleston with option one above delivering the best combination of cover improvements.

Gorleston and Great Yarmouth RDS fire engines are mainly used when we have large fires or emergencies that require more than two fire engines, a specialist vehicle, or when our full time fire engines from Great Yarmouth are at another emergency.

The graph at the beginning of the Great Yarmouth analysis shows workloads of Great Yarmouth and Gorleston on call (RDS) fire engines with regard to emergency incidents.

As can be seen the RDS fire engines in Gorleston and Great Yarmouth are utilised significantly less to attend emergency incidents than the WDS fire engines.

By upgrading the Gorleston fire station to be staffed full-time, we can improve the time it takes for the first fire engine to attend emergencies and life risk calls in the Gorleston.

To enable us to achieve this improvement we will need to move one full-time fire engine from Great Yarmouth to Gorleston and monitor the ongoing effectiveness of the Gorleston RDS unit during the life of this Safety Plan.

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Impact on emergency response standards (ERS) in the Great Yarmouth area

Analysis of the potential impact of upgrading Gorleston fire station and removing the RDS fire engine shows an improvement in the average range for the first fire engine to attend all emergencies in this area. The change in average range times is shown below:

Current average range for the attendance of New average range for the attendance of fire fire engines from the current fire stations in engines after upgrading Gorleston and Great Yarmouth and Gorleston (mins) removing the on call fire engine (mins) First fire engine Second fire engine First fire engine Second fire engine 5.85 6.34 4.78 7.81

As can be seen from the analysis there will be an increase in the average range for the time it takes the second fire engine to attend an emergency, although it will remain comfortably within the 15 minutes required by our emergency response standards.

Changing our response to future emergencies in the Great Yarmouth area

 The potential removal of one RDS crewed fire engine from the Great Yarmouth district would have a limited affect on our pre- determined attendance for high risk premises. There are a number of high risk premises and potential emergencies that require more resources than the proposed three fire engines for Great Yarmouth and, in common with our existing arrangements, neighbouring fire engines will be mobilised to support the attending crews when needed.

 By upgrading the Gorleston fire station to be staffed full-time, we can improve the time it takes for the first fire engine to attend emergencies and life-risk calls in the Gorleston.

 It has been previously highlighted how frequently calls in the Gorleston area are met by engines other than the Gorleston fire engine and this would continue under this proposal.

 The significance of the AFA calls in the Great Yarmouth area and the proposed reduction will provide confidence that the calls currently attended by Gorleston fire engine will be accommodated by remaining fire engines.

www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 110 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014  Performance across the Great Yarmouth area will remain comfortably above the emergency response standards target levels by a significant margin, partly due to the high levels of current performance and partly due to the overall improvement offered by this proposal.

There are currently no pre-planned responses to potential emergencies identified in Norfolk‟s Community Risk Register that will be negatively affected by the reduction of one fire engine in the Great Yarmouth District.

Safety Plan Action

Change provision to Great Yarmouth/Gorleston by redeploying wholetime staff and one appliance to Gorleston station with crewing requirements met from existing staff resources. Defer the removal of the Retained (RDS) appliance and crew following further evaluation within the life of this Safety Plan and further report to Panel and Cabinet.

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Analysis of our performance in attending emergencies involving a risk to life in the King‟s Lynn area indicates scope for improvement when compared to other large urban centres in the county. King‟s Lynn is shown as blue in the chart to the left and falls some way below performance in the Great Yarmouth and Norwich areas although performance still exceeds the 80% target by some margin across all measures.

The slightly longer attendance times can be explained by the current location of the fire station on Kilham‟s Way, on the north side of the town. When emergencies occur on major roads such as the A47 or in surrounding villages, fire engines have to travel through the town to reach them.

The current fire engine deployment for the King‟s Lynn area involves three fire engines (two WDS fire engines and one RDS fire engine) based at one station.

As can be seen King‟s Lynn has a reducing call profile from a high in 2006/7 when the new RTC mobilisation policy was implemented with levels of calls in 08/09 returning to levels experienced in 2005/6.

As with other urban stations the proportion of calls is dominated by false alarms.

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Opportunities for improvement

The results of the modelling analysis carried out showed that on almost all occasions, a two-response configuration in the King‟s Lynn area forms part of an optimum configuration that reduces attendance times across the county.

Based on this evidence, it was decided to model options for re-deploying fire engines currently based at King‟s Lynn station across two response locations: the existing station and a new site located in an optimum position to the east of King‟s Lynn.

The deployment of fire engines across the two sites varies by option to inform the decision around the best deployment of three fire engines across these two locations.

Option Time King‟s Lynn fire station New additional fire station

Current Day 2 WDS + 1 RDS n/a position Night 2 WDS + 1 RDS n/a Day 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS 1 Night 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS Day 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS 2 Night 1 RDS 1 WDS Day 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS 3 Night 2 RDS 1 WDS Day 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 WDS 4 Night 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 RDS

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The impact of moving from the original position to each option is measured by the impact it would have on countywide emergency response performance against our emergency response standards and in the case of the above options can be summarised as follows:

 First fire engine performance improves by between 0.8% and 1.2% in all options due to the relocation of a fire engine to the east of King‟s Lynn.  Second fire engine performance falls by 0.1% and 0.6% in all options.  Aggregate performance improves by between 0.7% and 1.0% in all options.

To give a more focused assessment of local impact and the areas where incidents are affected, the following describes the extent of those impacts in terms of a range of indicators:

 Fire engine utilisation stays within the normal ranges in all options.  First fire engine range cover improves by between 1.4 and 3.9 minutes for three options (1, 2 and 4) due to relocating the fire engine but deteriorates by 1.4 minutes for Option 3 where a WDS fire engine is removed at night.  Second fire engine range cover deteriorates by 0.5 minutes for Option 1 due to the relocation of a fire engine to the east of King‟s Lynn and by between 1.9 and 3.3 minutes under the other three options where a WDS engine is removed for the night time period.  Aggregate range cover improves in three options (1, 2 and 4) but deteriorates by 1.4 minutes in Option 3.

The choice of preferred option needs to consider planned housing developments in King‟s Lynn although modern housing provides little increase in fire call levels and houses are built with intrinsic fire detection. There are plans to build an additional 7,100 houses on large scale development sites in King‟s Lynn by 2026 to accommodate an estimated 15,500 people.

The modelling has identified the preferred location for a second response location on the outskirts of King‟s Lynn, within easy access onto the A149 and A47 (see map on page 116). This location for a fire engine would significantly improve the time it takes for the first fire engine to attend emergencies in the town, on the surrounding road network and in surrounding villages.

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The map below shows the analysis undertaken to support identification of the optimum location for a new service delivery base in King‟s Lynn and highlights the preferred location as the Queen Elizabeth Way roundabout to the east of King‟s Lynn, but also shows other areas where a second station would be possible but would provide reduced benefits in terms of emergency response standard improvements due to the lack of access roads into King‟s Lynn.

Map of King‟s Lynn showing optimum site for new operation base.

Red identifies prime location through to dark blue which represents poor locations.

To achieve better response from 2 sites capital funding for a new station or service delivery point will need to be identified from a range of options including developer funding. The development of King‟s Lynn in the short to medium term may assist with developer funding opportunities.

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Impact on emergency response standards (ERS) in King’s Lynn

Current average range for the attendance of New average range for the attendance of fire fire engines from the current station in engines from two fire stations in King’s Lynn King’s Lynn (mins) (mins) First fire engine Second fire engine First fire engine Second fire engine 9.61 8.82 5.76 9.31

It is evident that there would be a slight increase in the average range of attendance times for the second fire engine however; this remains comfortably within the 15 minutes required by our emergency response standards.

Planning our response to future emergencies in King’s Lynn  As can be seen for the new average range of attendance times by having two response locations in King’s Lynn, a new site on the outskirts of the town will make a significant difference to how quickly the first fire engine attends an emergency.  In preparing for how we respond to emergencies across the county we pre-plan the number of fire engine and other fire engines that will attend, we call this our pre-determined attendance or PDA. The introduction of a second response location will not have any effect on our PDAs for the King’s Lynn area.  The provision of an alternative work location will help us with our contingency arrangements, for example if something happened to our existing fire station at Kilham’s Way, such as flooding, we could operate from the second location on the outskirts of town.

There are currently no pre-planned responses to potential emergencies identified in Norfolk‟s Community Risk Register that will be negatively affected by the introduction of an additional operational base in King‟s Lynn.

Safety Plan action Enhance service provision to King’s Lynn by establishing an additional service delivery point in King’s Lynn East (subject to any capital funding approval if required) with crewing requirements met from existing staffing resources.

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c) Norwich Emergency response in Norwich

Analysis of our performance in attending emergencies involving a risk to life shows that Norwich consistently performs well when compared to other large urban centres in the county and shows performance of 94% and above compared to the ERS target of 80%.

As with other urban stations the proportion of calls are dominated by false alarms.

The graph top left shows the declining rate of calls that are attended by Norwich engines with a significant reduction shown across the 5 years of the analysis.

The chart below confirms that the annual numbers of calls are also falling in Norwich. Incidents on Norwich, Earlham & Sprowston Station grounds 4000 3575 3365 3394 3500 3223 2876 3000 2309 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10

This decline in calls must be considered against the original resourcing level in Norwich of five fire engines. Norwich was safely protected by three fire engines and at overall higher levels of calls prior to the opening of the new fire station in North Earlham in early 2006 www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 117 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Opportunities for improvement

The original fire engine deployment for the Norwich area assumed that the two WDS fire engines currently based at the central Norwich station would have been re-deployed to the new station being built at Carrow, and that there would be a total of five fire engines (four WDS and one RDS) based at three stations.

The results of the modelling runs suggested that a three station configuration was an efficient arrangement for Norwich. Because of extensive planned housing to the North of Sprowston, it was decided to focus modelling runs on re-deploying the current fire engines between North Earlham and the new fire station at Carrow and between night and day.

Option Time Carrow Earlham Current Day 2 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS position Night 2 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS Day 2 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS 1 Night 1 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS Day 1 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS 2 Night 1 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS Day 2 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS 3 Night 2 WDS 1 RDS Day 2 WDS 1 WDS 4 Night 2 WDS 1 WDS Day 2 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS 5 Night 1 WDS 1 RDS Day 1 WDS 1 WDS + 1 RDS 6 Night 1 WDS 1 RDS Day 2 WDS 1 WDS 7 Night 1 WDS 1 WDS Day 1 WDS 1 WDS 8 Night 1 WDS 1 WDS

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The impact of moving from the original position to each option is measured by the impact it would have on countywide emergency response performance against our emergency response standards and in the case of the above options can be summarised as follows:

 First fire engine performance falls by between 0.0% and 0.7% in the individual options and by between 0.3% and 1.3% in the combined options.

 Second fire engine performance falls by between 0.1% and 1.0% in the individual options and by between 0.7% and 2.2% in the combined options.

To give a more focused assessment of local impact and the areas where incidents are affected, the following describes the extent of those impacts in terms of a range of indicators:

 Fire engine utilisation stays within the normal ranges in all eight options although the modelling suggests that the utilisation of the second engine if moved to Carrow and no changes are made would be at very low levels for a WDS engine at 3.0% and would be less than half that of other WDS engines in Norfolk.

 First fire engine range cover is only affected in one individual option (option three, plus 2.0 minutes) and two combined options (options five and six; plus 2.0 minutes and plus 1.0 minutes respectively).

 Second fire engine range cover falls by between 1.5 minutes and 2.7 minutes across all eight options.

 Aggregate range cover falls by between 1.6 minutes and 2.7 minutes across all eight options.

Analysis of the call profile in the Norwich area indicates the potential improvements we can make to the use of our resources in delivering an emergency service.

In particular option two (one WDS fire engine at Carrow) shows there would be no impact in the average time range it would take for the first fire engine to attend an emergency in Norwich, but would result in a slight increase in the time it takes for the second fire engine to attend.

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The increase in time it will take for the second fire engine to attend an emergency will however remain comfortably within the 15 minute response time required as shown below:

Expected average range for the attendance of Expected average range for the attendance of two fire engines from the new fire station at one fire engine from Carrow (mins) Carrow (mins) First fire engine Second fire engine First fire engine Second fire engine 5.53 5.58 5.53 8.26

The crewing arrangements for Carrow would not require the same level of staff if one fire engine is removed and the following table reflects the changes that would be associated with a single fire engine transferring to Carrow:

Number of WDS fire engines Current configuration (staff numbers) Bethel Street fire station 2 (52) Number of full time fire engines Proposed configuration (staff numbers) Carrow fire station 1 (28)

Total staffing changes - 24 WDS

The change therefore will include the removal of 24 Firefighter posts from the Norwich area.

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A key point that has emerged from the analysis is regarding the utilisation of the second engine if it were to be deployed to Carrow. The modelling undertaken by ORH indicates that the utilisation of this engine would fall to just over 3% taking this WDS engine utilisation to within just over one percentage point of our busiest RDS engines and see it operating at less than half of the utilisation of other WDS engines in the County.

Planning our response to future emergencies in Norwich

 The level of calls that are attended by all Norwich engines show a consistent reduction shown across the 5 years of the analysis.

 This decline in calls must be considered against the original resourcing level in Norwich which is five fire engines. Norwich was safely protected by three fire engines and at overall higher levels of calls prior to the opening of the new fire station in North Earlham in early 2006.

 The reduction in AFA calls during the period of this safety plan will accelerate the falling call profile in Norwich and will ensure that the workload increase of the remaining fire engines stays comfortably within acceptable utilisation ranges.

 The reduction in fire engines from five to four in Norwich will not affect our PDAs. Where we have contingency plans in place for larger emergencies, we will mobilise fire engines from surrounding areas to support Norwich as we already do.

 Performance across the Norwich area will remain comfortably above the emergency response standards target levels by a significant margin, partly due to the high levels of current performance and partly due to the small overall change resulting from this proposal.

There are currently no pre-planned responses to potential emergencies identified in Norfolk‟s Community Risk Register that will be affected by the reduction in fire engines in Norwich.

Safety Plan action

Deploy a single wholetime (WDS) fire fighting appliance at Carrow.

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Analysis of our performance in attending emergencies involving a risk to life shows that Thetford performs well, with performance comfortably above the requirement of our emergency response standards.

Opportunities for improvement

Computer modelling analysed a number of options to test whether a different configuration of crewing the fire engines during the day and night would make significant improvements.

What was clear from the analysis was the strategic importance of the Thetford fire engines in providing a second fire engine for emergencies that occur in neighbouring fire station catchments.

It was found that altering the current distribution of fire engines between night and day did not indicate any areas of improvement.

Safety Plan action We are not proposing to change the current configuration of fire engines in Thetford.

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3 Analysis of rural areas

Market towns with a two fire engine RDS station

Currently, there are six stations with two RDS fire engines deployed. These are: Cromer, Dereham, Diss, Fakenham, Sandringham and Wymondham. (Excluding our day-crewed station at Thetford.)

The work completed highlighted that the second fire engines on these stations are broadly characterised by poor availability and low utilisation and as such are subject close scrutiny for their ongoing value for money.

The analysis shows that the impact on ERS performance of removing all six fire engines is broadly the same as the sum of removing each fire engine individually. It is therefore possible to calculate the impact of removing these six fire engines by simply summing the individual impacts. Consideration was given by the cross party member working group to the feasibility of removing the second fire engine at each of these stations which, as can be seen below, has a relatively minor impact on ERS standards.

At the countywide level, the impact of removing all six RDS fire engines reduces ERS performance as follows:

 First fire engine performance falls by between 0.7% and 0.8%  Second fire engine performance falls by between 2.5% and 3.0%

A ranking of fire engines according to their countywide second fire engine performance impact based on a three analysis of incidents shows the following:

 Sandringham = Rank 1 (smallest impact)  Wymondham = Rank 2  Cromer = Rank 3  Diss = Rank 4  Fakenham = Rank 5  Dereham = Rank 6 (largest impact) These rankings are closely associated with the reduction in average attendance time impacts in the local districts caused by removing the six engines. District-level average second fire engine attendance times are worsened by half a minute or less for Sandringham and Wymondham, between 50 seconds and 1 minute for Diss and Fakenham, and slightly higher for Cromer and Dereham (1 minute and 27 seconds maximum). www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 123 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

The modelling results shown left were presented as pessimistic because they are based on removing the fire engines completely without any alternative replacement vehicle.

Changes using alternative rural firefighting vehicles would see performance impacts that were potentially much smaller or zero. The choice of preferred option is not affected by planned future housing developments in these areas. This chart shows the average annual workload for each fire engine in Norfolk

This comparison of the workload of fire engines in urban (WDS) and rural (RDS) areas highlights the low level of calls attended by RDS fire engines and particularly the second fire engine on two pump stations in terms of their workload compared with others. (SAN47, WYM47, DIS74, FAK74, CRO57 and DER74).

Note: these refer to previous vehicle call signs in use at time of writing the report.

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This chart shows the differences in total activity levels for the two fire engine RDS stations that form the basis of our market town analysis:

350

300

250 2006/07 200 2007/08 150 2008/09 100 2009/10 50

0 Cromer Dereham Diss Fakenham Sandringham Wymondham

Graph showing the total number of emergency incidents attended by station by financial year

Fakenham and Wymondham and, to a lesser extent, Dereham have support engines that attend large fires and emergencies across the county and this is reflected in the figures above.

It has been previously highlighted that Wymondham and Dereham attend a high level of AFA calls (108 and 82 respectively in 2009/10) and this, along with lesser reductions at all stations (annual range is from 53 at Sandringham to 68 at Fakenham) will reduce call levels on these stations significantly across the period of the Safety Plan.

By further breaking down the incidents we can see how often both fire engines on each station are mobilised to emergencies. The graph below shows the percentage of available time each of the two fire engines on each station are utilised at emergency incidents:

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Dereham

Fakenham

Wymondham Fire engine 1 Diss Fire engine 2 Cromer

Sandringham

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

Graph showing the percentage time both fire engines are used operationally (3 year sample 2006/07-2008/09)

Opportunity for improvement

Norfolk‟s Community Risk Register highlights the risk to the county from extreme weather conditions such as wildfires (experienced in summer 2006), snow and ice (winter 2009/10) and flooding (2007 near event and annual flash flooding).

With the current low utilisation of the second fire engine and projected continued reduction in utilisation, there is an opportunity to use a proportion of our existing staff on these stations to provide new and needed capability for local areas and to support incidents across the rest of the county.

We will therefore replace the second fire engine on all two fire engine stations with a new four wheel drive rural firefighting fire engine. These new fire engines will be able to operate off road helping to fight wildfire across the county, transport staff and equipment in heavy snow and during flooding and be able to transport equipment off-road at major emergencies such as a rail or aircraft crash.

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The crewing arrangements for these vehicles would not require the same level of staff on these stations and would need to be reviewed to meet local requirements as part of the introduction of the rural fire engines

The delay in an alternative second fire engines attending an incident in these areas is a significant factor in deciding the necessary firefighting capabilities of the replacement rural fire engines.

For example, Fakenham is a large town with higher risks than surrounding villages and would require a replacement rural firefighting vehicle that could attend all fire types due to the large travel distances to neighbouring stations, whereas Wymondham would not require this capability as an alternative second fire engine could come from nearby Hethersett.

Sandringham‟s rural fire engine would need to be suited to operating in woods and open countryside whereas a new rural fire engine for Diss or Dereham would need to be more flexible allowing it to respond in both the countryside and in more urban conditions.

Because there are predicted differences in response arrangements following the change to rural fire engines it is proposed to develop vehicle options for deployment in replacement of existing second fire engines on these stations.

If removal of the fire engine would not allow our ERS standards to be met for life-risk incidents then the replacement rural fire engine will need to be capable of undertaking firefighting and rescue work at these incident types.

Type of emergency the rural firefighting fire engine will attend

Primary fires Secondary fires RTC and major Wildfires Extreme weather (property) (rubbish) incidents off road events Sandringham x     Wymondham x     Cromer x     Diss      Fakenham      Dereham     

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It is envisaged that these new rural engines will provide a flexible response to meet both local risks and to address the countywide requirement to deal more effectively with spate conditions and severe weather events. To do this they will share the following standard set of capabilities:

 Off-road capability giving the ability to transport staff and equipment safely across fields, through forests and during severe weather such as snow and ice to deal with incidents.

 The ability to “pump and drive” effectively meaning they can attack field fires whilst driving on the field and thereby lessen the need for large scale deployment of firefighters to undertake this activity on foot.

 To provide support capability for a major incident in Norfolk by coming together as a fleet of specialist transport vehicles if required.

 To extend the ability of the service to deal more directly with rescue work that occurs beyond the limits of the road network such as railway or aircraft incidents or other rescue work in rural environments.

 To extend the capability of the service to use CAFS in a rural environment.

The opportunities within the design of the vehicles could provide additional opportunities to deal with specific local risks more effectively, for example:

 The addition of a Hi-Ab or winching facility to assist with animal rescues.  Additional specialist rescue equipment for industrial, railway or aircraft risks.  Ability to operate within the beach/dune/estuary environment of coastal risks areas.  Additional foam capability for targeted response to flammable liquid risks.

Impact on emergency response standards (ERS)

The impact at district level can be seen in the table over. In the actual towns, residents will not see a change in the time it takes for the first fire engine to attend a building fire.

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Typical response for Typical effect on Where will the second Typical effect on first second fire engine second fire engine fire engine be sent Station fire engine attendance attendance for building attendance at road from for life risk fires times fires responding to the traffic collisions in the town? centre of town Sandringham No change No change Within 15 minutes Heacham Wymondham No change No change Within 15 minutes Hethersett Cromer No change No change Within 15 minutes Sheringham Diss No change No change No change Diss Fakenham No change No change No change Fakenham Dereham No change No change No change Dereham

Planning our response to future emergencies in our two fire engine RDS Stations

 These stations have call profiles that suggest the second fire engine is not providing value for money compared with other fire engines in the county.

 AFA reduction will further reduce the viability of these fire engines during the life of this Safety Plan.

 The service has identified other areas of capability that could be introduced or improved by the introduction of rural firefighting vehicles into these stations especially as the stations will have the space, facilities and crew to support their operation.

Safety Plan action

Remove second pumping appliances from six, two pump RDS stations and introduce rural fire fighting appliances to meet the identified risk requirements as replacements, delivered in accordance with the Service’s Fleet Replacement Strategy. Crewing arrangements will be reviewed and establishments agreed to meet the needs of the station and appliance availability.

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Summary By utilising specialist consultants we have undertaken the most significant analysis of use of our fire engines and crews in Norfolk for many years. This analysis has enabled the construction of accurate computer models which have been applied by ORH with the experience they have accrued in many other emergency service environments as part of previous contracts they have completed. This has enabled a variety of options to be modelled with confidence and allowed both members and senior managers to test further options against our emergency response standards both across the county and locally to observe the impact prior to agreeing actions for implementation.

The key changes emerging from this work are that:

 Response standards reporting arrangements will be varied to provide a more complete strategic set of ERS indicators without affecting the mobilising arrangements for some second fire engine calls.

 In King‟s Lynn two points of delivery is the most efficient arrangement and there are significant benefits to response performance to be had by deploying an existing WDS fire engine to a new service delivery point to the east of King‟s Lynn.

 In Great Yarmouth two points of delivery is also the most efficient arrangement and there are additional benefits to be had by deploying an existing WDS fire engine to Gorleston. The monitoring of the Gorleston fire engine performance will ensure ongoing efficient use of resources.

 The Norwich analysis points to a falling call profile and a provision of resources which has increased in recent years leaving the position where the deployment of one fire engine to Carrow will see Norwich well served by 4 fire engines providing a level of service well above ERS limits.

 Second fire engines on two fire engine RDS stations are an ineffective use of resources that set against changes to AFA policy and general falling call profile will continue to fall in utilisation terms. The agreement to replace these vehicles with new capability in Norfolk is an opportunity that has been presented by this thorough analysis of response provision in Norfolk.

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No rfRoadolk Fi rmape and to R eproposalsscue Auth o rity Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

 Our seven agreed actions for

change with outcome analysis Proposals for Change

ProposalsChange for

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Road map to proposals

In July 2009, the Fire and Community Protection Overview and Scrutiny Panel agreed to set up a Cross Party Member Working Group to provide appropriate Member engagement as proposals were developed. Over the course of five meetings, a series of options were developed and examined, supported by data from ORH. Final recommendations were established that set out significant change proposals for the service and on 9 March 2010 these were presented to the Fire and Community Protection Overview and Scrutiny Panel.

After considerable debate by members, all seven proposals were endorsed for the cabinet member to take forward to full cabinet. On 6 April 2010 the proposals were endorsed by Cabinet for full public consultation.

The consultation began on 24 May and ran for 12 weeks; details of the process are contained within the next chapter.

The results of the consultation along with amended recommendations were presented to the Fire and Community Protection Overview and Scrutiny Panel in September and then to Cabinet in October 2010.

Final ratification for the Safety Plan 2011-14 was given at Full Council meeting in November 2010.

The implementation actions are summarised below along with an outcome analysis of the performance changes.

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Safety Plan Actions

Changes to Emergency Response Standards (ERS)

Action 1 Withdraw the current standard for 2nd fire engine performance for „Other - Life risk’ incidents.

Action 2 Withdraw the current standard for 2nd fire engine performance for „Fire - Other’ incidents.

Action 3 Introduce incident command system performance standards as part of Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service‟s suite of emergency response standards.

Outcome analysis

Performance

 No impact on mobilisation of fire engines to incidents.  Monitoring of 2nd fire engine performance for „Fire - Other’ incidents and 2nd fire engine performance for „Other - Life risk’ incidents devolved to local managers.  ICS monitoring introduced at strategic level.

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Changes in Great Yarmouth and Gorleston

Action 4 Change provision to Great Yarmouth/Gorleston by redeploying wholetime staff and one appliance to Gorleston station with crewing requirements met from existing staff resources. Defer the removal of the Retained (RDS) appliance and crew following further evaluation within the life of this Safety Plan and further report to Panel and Cabinet.

Outcome analysis

Performance

 The removal of one fire engine from the Great Yarmouth district will have a limited affect on our PDA for high risk premises. There are a number of high risk premises and potential emergencies that require more resources than the proposed three fire engines for Great Yarmouth and, in common with our existing arrangements, neighbouring fire engines will be mobilised to support the attending crews when needed.

 By upgrading the Gorleston fire station to be staffed full-time, we will improve the time it takes for the first fire engine to attend emergencies and life-risk calls in the Gorleston.

 It has been previously highlighted how frequently calls in the Gorleston areas are met by engines other than the Gorleston fire engine and this would continue after these changes.

 Performance across the Great Yarmouth area will remain comfortably above the emergency response standards target levels by a significant margin, partly due to the high levels of current performance and partly due to the overall improvement offered by this proposal.

The overall performance of the 2nd fire engine to incidents will be slightly slower under the revised arrangements due to the deployment to Gorleston; however, the response time will still be within our emergency response standard requirement:

Current average range for the attendance of fire New average range for the attendance of fire engines from the current fire engines in Great engines after upgrading Gorleston and Yarmouth and Gorleston (mins) removing the on-call fire engine (mins)

First fire engine Second fire engine First fire engine Second fire engine

5.85 6.34 4.78 7.81

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Changes in King’s Lynn

Action 5 Enhance service provision to King‟s Lynn by establishing an additional service delivery point in King‟s Lynn East (subject to any capital funding approval if required) with crewing requirements met from existing staffing resources.

Outcome analysis

Performance

 In preparing for how we respond to emergencies across the county we pre-plan the number of fire engine and other fire engines that will attend, we call this our pre-determined attendance or PDA. The introduction of a second response location will not have any effect on our PDAs for the King‟s Lynn area.

 The provision of an alternative work location will help us with our contingency arrangements, for example if something happened to our existing fire station at Kilham‟s Way, such as flooding, we could operate from the second location on the outskirts of town.

It is evident that there would be a slight increase in the average range of attendance times for the second fire engine however; this remains comfortably within the 15 minutes required by our emergency response standards.

Current average range for the attendance of New average range for the attendance of fire fire engines from the current fire station in engines from two fire stations in King’s Lynn King’s Lynn (mins) (mins)

First fire engine Second fire engine First fire engine Second fire engine

9.61 8.82 5.76 9.31

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Changes in Norwich

Action 6 Deploy a single wholetime (WDS) fire fighting appliance at Carrow.

Outcome analysis

Performance

 The level of calls that are attended by all Norwich engines show a significant reduction shown across the 5 years of the analysis

 This decline in calls was considered against the resourcing level in Norwich of five fire engines. Norwich was safely protected by three fire engines and at overall lower levels of calls prior to the opening of the new fire station in North Earlham in early 2006.

 The reduction in AFA calls during the period of this safety plan will accelerate the falling call profile in Norwich and will ensure that the workload increase of the remaining fire engines stays comfortably within acceptable utilisation ranges.

 The reduction in fire engines from five to four in Norwich will not affect our PDAs. Where we have contingency plans in place for larger emergencies, we will mobilise fire engines from surrounding areas to support Norwich as we already do.

 Performance across the Norwich area will remain above the emergency response standards target levels by a significant margin, partly due to the high levels of current performance and partly due to the small overall change resulting from this proposal.

This shows there will be a slight increase in the time it takes for the second fire engine to attend. However, this will remain well within our emergency response standard requirements.

Current average range for the attendance of New average range for the attendance of two fire engines from the new fire station at one fire engine from Carrow (mins) Carrow (mins)

First fire engine Second fire engine First fire engine Second fire engine

5.53 5.58 5.53 8.26

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Establishment Number of full time fire engines Current configuration (staff numbers) Bethel Street fire station 2 (52) Number of full time fire engines Proposed configuration (staff numbers) Carrow fire station 1 (28)

Total staffing changes - 24 WDS

Financial Appliance Annual cost 1 Fire engine £28k pa 24 WDS posts @ £30k £720k pa Total saving £748k

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Changes to Retained fire stations that have two fire engines

Action 7 Remove second pumping appliances from six, two pump RDS stations and introduce rural fire fighting appliances to meet the identified risk requirements as replacements, delivered in accordance with the Service‟s Fleet Replacement Strategy. Crewing arrangements will be reviewed and establishments agreed to meet the needs of the station and appliance availability.

Outcome analysis

Performance

 These stations have call profiles that suggest the second fire engine is not providing value for money compared with other fire engines in the county.

 AFA reduction will further reduce the viability of these fire engines during the life of this Safety Plan

 The service has identified other areas of capability that can be introduced or improved by the introduction of rural firefighting vehicles into these stations especially as the stations will have the space, facilities and crew to support their operation.

Type of emergency the new rural firefighting fire engine will attend by station RTC and major Primary fires Secondary fires Extreme incidents Wildfires (property) (rubbish) weather events off-road Sandringham x     Wymondham x     Cromer x     Diss      Fakenham      Dereham     

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 Communications and Consultation

Strategy

 Available documentation Consultation Process

 How will we consult?

 Evaluation and Feedback ConsultationProcess

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Communications and consultation strategy

Consultation is a key part of integrated risk management planning and it is vital that our consultation is relevant and proportional to the change proposed.

We wanted to...

...engage with the people of Norfolk, our employees and a wide cross-section of Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority‟s stakeholders to obtain their views and opinions of the proposed Safety Plan 2011–2014.

What we achieved:

 To develop ownership and participation in the Safety Plan among our key audiences  To use the views and opinions to inform and develop the fire and rescue authority‟s Safety Plan  To develop closer links between the Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority and the people of Norfolk  To consult using a clear, accessible format in plain language  Good quality responses by using a variety of consultation methods  Identify learning points for future consultations  To fulfil our statutory duties  Raise no unrealistic expectations  We will strive to ensure an equal and ethnically diverse involvement across the whole community using methods to enable access for hard to reach groups including non-English speaking and those with a disability.  Encouraging, valuing and building on feedback

Principal areas for consultation

1 The draft Safety Plan. 2 Specific changes in service delivery. www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 140 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Key messages used

 This is your chance to have your say.  This is your chance to find out more about how your fire and rescue service performs.  The Safety Plan is about Making Norfolk Safer, whether you live in, work in or visit Norfolk. It is about improving the ways in which we provide our services.  Your views count. The opinions of Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority stakeholders matter to us are valued by us and will be used to inform the final agreed Safety Plan.

What was achieved? The wide-ranging consultation, which began on Monday May 24, sought the views of the people of Norfolk, elected Members, fire and rescue staff, staff representative bodies, town and parish councils, partners and other key stakeholders. It officially closed on August 15 following 12 weeks of consultation activity.

The scope of the consultation was as follows:

External  Letter and questionnaire to key stakeholders.  Public events.  Consultation via Internet www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk.  Consultation via Internet www.norfolk.gov.uk.  Consultation with the assistance of the Norfolk Coalition of Disabled People.  Copies of the Safety Plan were made available through libraries and Customer Information Centres.

Internal  Consultation via the Intranet.  Consultation via the Internet.  Series of face to face staff meetings.  Consultations with Trade Unions (Fire Brigades Union and Retained Firefighters Union). www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk Page 141 Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

The activity during the consultation period can be summarised as follows:

Method Quantity Letters and questionnaires sent. 1,800 Staff meetings held. 73 Representative body meetings held. 7 Public meetings held. 13 Stakeholder meetings held. 6 E-communications channels established 5

Results of the Consultation By the close of the consultation period 317 responses had been received, including 120 of these from online sources. This was the most comprehensive and most successful consultation exercise ever carried out by the Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority.

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Glossary

Glossary

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Glossary

AFA: Automatic Fire Alarm

ALP: Aerial Ladder Platform - a vehicle performing a similar function to a Hydraulic Platform

Appliance: A fire engine or „special‟

BVPI: Best Value Performance Indicators

CAFS: Compresses air foam system. A system used in firefighting to deliver fire retardant foam for the purpose of extinguishing a fire or protecting unburned areas from becoming involved in flame.

Call Signs A method of identifying emergency resources (fire engines, special vehicles and officers)

CFOA: Chief Fire Officers‟ Association

CFS: Community Fire Safety

CDRP: Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership

Day-Crewing: A station covered by wholetime firefighters during the day and RDS crew at night

Emergency Special Service: Incidents including RTCs, extrications, lift rescues, lock ins/outs, hazardous materials or chemicals, ladder/aerial engine rescues, water rescues and any other incident not falling into the previous categories with confirmed fatalities, casualties or rescues or first-aid rendered by fire personnel.

FAGI: False Alarm Good Intent

FAGM: False Alarm Good intent Mechanical eg AFA

FAM: False Alarm Malicious

FDR1: A fire in buildings or vehicles (not derelict) etc

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FDR3: Secondary fire not in buildings, not involving casualties and attended by less than five fire engines

Fire Appliance: Fire engine

FSEC: Fire Service Emergency Cover

HMFSI: Her Majesty‟s Fire Service Inspectorate

HP: Hydraulic Platform - a vehicle providing safer access to areas (particularly at height) than by use of a ladder

HR: Human Resources

Incident: A term used for a fire, RTC, SSE etc

IPDS: Integrated Personal Development System

New Dimension: Measures to deal with a large-scale terrorist incident

ODPM: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

On-call: Paid volunteers who, just like wholetime firefighters, are trained to deal with many situations. The only difference is they aren't based at a Fire Station – they head there when needed in an emergency.

PDA: Pre-Determined Attendance – A pre-planned number of fire engines or specials for a call to a particular premises or type of incident pumps fire engines.

RDS Retained duty system where the crew are available as and when required and respond to the station in an emergency. (Also known as „on-call‟).

Primary Fire A fire for which a “Fire Damage Report” is required. This includes, for example, fires in buildings fit for occupation; caravans; non-derelict vehicles; outdoor storage, plant and machinery; agricultural and forestry premises and property; outdoor structures such as post-boxes, tunnels, bridges etc. This also includes secondary fires if they involve casualties, rescues or escapes; spread from one secondary fire location to another; or are attended by five or more engines where either the firefighters, engines or equipment were employed in fighting the fire.

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RTC Road traffic collision is an emergency incident involving vehicles where persons are or may be involved. These incident are sub-divided into “RTC Trapped” where information from the original call states that persons are trapped within vehicles involved in the collision and “RTC Person in Vehicle” where information from the original call confirm persons are still in the vehicle but cannot confirm if they are trapped or not.

Riders: The number of firefighters on a fire engine or special engine

Secondary Fire: A fire confined to locations covered by the miscellaneous calls form, (including single derelict buildings, single trees, refuse containers, etc) attended by four or fewer engines and which did not involve casualties, rescues or escapes.

Special: A vehicle that performs a specialist function other than a fire engine

SSA: Special service by arrangement eg cooling animal sheds

Standard: The minimum acceptable level an authority is expected to achieve

WDS: Wholetime duty system 24-7 shift system where the station is crewed continuously

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No rfAppendixolk Fire an d1: R ORHescue Modelling Authority Safety Plan 2011 - 2014

Appendix

Appendix

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Appendix 1: ORH modelling

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