Minutes:
The item was introduced by Ben Brook, who reminded members they had requested additional information on extended response times to incidents. This related to an incident that represented a threat or danger to life or property, where there was a target to respond within ten minutes. Ben Brook said there was an overall target to attend all incident types within ten minutes 75 per cent of the time. Currently this was being met 67 per cent of the time, and the 75 per cent target had not been met for a number of years. Members were told there were no national standards requiring a response to an incident within a specific time period. Until 2004 incidents were categorised A-D, with A being an incident involving a fire within a highly urban area that required a response within five minutes.
Ben Brook said the number of appliances that were available, and where they were positioned to have the best impact, were the main two factors within WFRS’s control. Prevention work was an indirect factor, but there were other factors outside of WFRS’s control such as traffic and weather conditions; an incident being in a rural or difficult to get to location; an incorrect address or inadequate location information being received; or simultaneous incidents occurring. During October 2024 wholetime appliances had been available 98 per cent of the time. An appliance may be unavailable due to a mechanical fault that needed fixing, or because of staff sickness. On-call availability was 36.3 per cent, and was harder to predict because staff could book off their availability on an hourly basis at short notice. However, appliances would be moved around the county based on cover to meet risk on a day-to-day basis. A new Dynamic Covering Tool system to assist with this was due to go live in the new year.
WFRS attended 4,398 incidents during 2023/24, with an average of 7.2 incidents during the day and 4.8 incidents overnight. This figure was the smallest of any Fire and Rescue Service in the country. Ben Brook said there was a greater number of extended responses during the day, and the distance an appliance had to travel was the biggest factor. There did not appear to be any geographical correlation leading to an extended response incident. In total there were 220 extended response times, which represented around five per cent of all incidents. However, there did not appear to be any direct correlation between response time and the outcome and the majority of property fires were contained to its room of origin. Members were reminded extended response time data only applied to life and property incidents. Other types of incident included primary fires, which could be a shed or car fire.
Responding to a question from Councillor Will Roberts, Ben Brook said the target response time had been chosen by WFRS and was in line with other Fire and Rescue Services. He added that WFRS had a good historical record on doing good work on prevention and protection.
Responding to a question from Councillor Sinclair, Ben Brook said the movement of appliances to provide cover was based on professional judgement and looking at historical incidents over the past five years. Although there was no specific evidence base used, there was no significant change in risk levels so these were relatively straightforward to predict. The Dynamic Cover Tool that was due to be implemented would model the levels of risk using the data and track traffic incidents that may impact on response times.
It was noted there would be a further update on extended response times later in the municipal year. Councillor Sinclair said it would be helpful if a future report could include a bar chart that showed a breakdown of the response times in minutes, along with an explanation of any significant outliers. He said this could help to provide assurances to residents.