Archived decisions

Appendix A

(to `Our Plan')

Our Plan

(Incorporating the Integrated Risk Management Plan)

We'd like to know what you think......

Welcome

Welcome to the draft of Our Plan, which explains how the Fire and Rescue Authority will organise and deliver its fire and rescue service over the next three years.

This plan incorporates our Integrated Risk Management Plan and includes important objectives that we intend to undertake to reduce risk in our local communities and to make Hampshire a safer place to live, work and visit.

This plan has been produced for consultation with our staff and people in our local communities so that you know what we are planning to do. We would really like to know what you think as we believe that we learn the most by encouraging people to offer their honest thoughts and views.

If you wish to make comment on any part of this plan, you will find our contact details on page [insert number]. You will also see details on the back details of our planned consultation events. We welcome you to attend the `open' events to discuss any of the points in this plan that are important to you or you can call, write or email us.

Chief Officer John Bonney Chairman Michael Cartwright

Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority

What are we planning to do?

On these pages you will see our objectives. The objectives show what action we intend to take over the next three years to make Hampshire a safer place to live, work and visit. These objectives are proposals on the actions we feel we should be undertaking based on research and evidence. They are written in the way they would be written in Our Plan that will be printed next year. It is important to realise they are all subject to consultation and agreement by the Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority. For example, if we have written that we will relocate our firefighters from one station to another, this is only a proposal at this stage and is subject to thorough consultation.

We would like to know what you think about these objectives, especially the ones that may directly affect you.

Year one objectives

01 Reducing preventable incidents (NEW)

What and why?

We will focus our resources on the reduction and impact of the number of preventable incidents to which we currently respond. This includes incidents involving acetylene cylinders or incidents when people are stuck inside defective lifts.

Acetylene cylinders are highly dangerous and incidents cause widespread disruption to business and local communities that could undoubtedly be avoided. Lift rescues tie up emergency resources for long period of time, which could be avoided allowing our emergency response resources to be more effective in the delivery of our community safety campaigns.

How and when?

Following our success in reducing preventable calls from automatic fire detection systems, we will use similar approaches to tackle the high volume of calls we receive to incidents involving people who have become stuck inside defective lifts. We will do this in conjunction with building occupiers and owners to reduce the demand on our resources for this type of call by 25% by, March 2009.

In industry and small businesses we will encourage the use of alternatives to acetylene cylinders for cutting and welding wherever possible. Through targeted deployment of our Business Education Team we aim to reduce the incidence of the high impact fires involving theses type of cylinders to zero by 2011.

02 Working with the voluntary sector to widen our reach (NEW)

What and why?

Evidence tells us that there is a large untapped pool of people who would like to volunteer their time and services to support our work. We will therefore build on our existing community engagement strategy by recruiting a voluntary workforce to support key areas of service delivery activity.

Unlocking this currently untapped resource will enable us to better reach individuals and groups within our community, and allow them to contribute to our range of risk reduction initiatives.

How and when?

We will develop a voluntary sector strategy, undertake research to identify how to recruit a volunteer workforce and employ them on a range of fire safety activities.

We will research how best to identify potential volunteers and what activities they can realistically undertake by July 2008. We will advertise for volunteers by October 2008 and will implement a voluntary services programme by March 2009.

03 Introducing Diversity Liaison Officers to our Service (NEW)

What and why?

We will employ Diversity Liaison Officers to work from our city stations (Portsmouth and Southampton) to engage people living in local communities and ensure the way we deliver our service meets the needs of the minority groups in the area.

How and when?

We will establish a total of ten Diversity Liaison Officers, each one being employed to work on the city stations. They will work on a shift system and be on call for incidents involving minority communities.

We will establish this new team over the next three years, which will support the Service's aim to provide the highest quality service to the whole community and contribute to achieving level 4 in the Local Government Equality standard.

04 Understanding the needs of vulnerable people (NEW)

What and why?

We will improve the way we deliver our service by introducing a network of `Advocates' to the Service. The Advocates will represent each of our identified `at risk' and vulnerable groups within the Hampshire community. This will further enhance our understanding of local communities and their particular needs, as well as reducing risk in their lives, homes and businesses.

How and when?

We will engage the services of an Advocate to represent the hard to reach and at risk groups within the community. We will recruit at least three Advocates by September 08, and look to build further capacity within the Service in line with the needs of the community throughout 2009.

05 Improving our emergency cover in Havant (UPDATED)

What and why?

We will change the shift system used at Havant Fire Station. This will improve our response times to emergencies in this area as well as increasing our ability to deliver community safety initiatives.

How and when?

Within our existing resources we will increase the number of full time staff at Havant Fire Station in October 2008.

06 Reducing our impact on the environment (NEW)

What and why?

We want to reduce the impact we have on the environment in everything we do. As a responsible public authority whose primary aim is to make life safer, we are committed to playing our part in protecting the environment.

How and when?

In April 2007, we began a two-year wide-ranging best value review to identify how we might realistically reduce our impact on the environment. We will take steps to quickly implement any initiatives that are considered to have high positive impact. We will recommend and prioritise more challenging courses of action that will need the investment of resources (and longer time scales) to become part of our everyday practice.

07 Promoting fire protection systems (UPDATED)

What and why?

We will build on our existing strategy to promote the benefits of fire protection initiatives, particularly automatic water suppression systems (AWSS), which includes sprinkler systems, for both business and domestic premises.

This will reduce the loss of life and the impact of fire on the wider community.

How and when?

We will extend our existing sprinkler strategy to include all types of risk, including both domestic and commercial buildings. We will support this strategy with detailed action plans focussing on three key areas; domestic and residential property, large single storey retail buildings and those premises that represent a community asset, particularly school buildings.

These action plans will include initiatives to secure landmark installations of sprinklers that can be used to supplement the work of our Business Education Team and Home Fire Safety specialists to influence planning considerations for future developments within our community. The action plans will be in place by October 2008, followed by formal agreements with planning authorities on the use of water suppression systems by April 2010.

08 Improving safety in the home (UPDATED)

What and why?

We will further develop our home fire safety strategy to focus our delivery of visits towards those members of the community who are statistically shown to be most at risk. Our experiences have shown us that we can be more effective in reducing risk by targeting our resources towards those sections of the community that need our help most.

We will work with our partners and other agencies to improve safety in the home on a wider scale than just fire safety.

How and when?

We will alter our home fire safety visit referral system to give a priority to homes in Hampshire where we feel we can provide more help for those vulnerable groups, such as; the elderly, families with young children, households where occupants have disabilities, low incomes, single occupancy or those where English is not the first spoken language.

From April 2008, for the next twelve months, we will utilise a variety of delivery solutions to deliver 20,000 home fire safety visits across Hampshire.

However, during 2008 we will review the number of visits we programme each year from 2009 onwards, in line with the development of our home safety strategy for working with other agencies, the number of visits may reduce.

09 Improving road safety (UPDATED)

What and why?

To build upon our stated aim to reduce the number of people killed or injured in road traffic collisions by 40% by 2010, we will develop a focussed road safety strategy to work closely with other agencies and become fully engaged in the government's road safety work.

Every day around 10 people are killed on Britain's roads and around 30,000 people a year are seriously injured. The Government and the Audit Commission provide clear expectations for fire and rescue services to make best use of all available local resources to reduce these tragic figures.

How and when?

We are already working very hard to reduce road traffic collisions and take a multi-agency approach to road safety through the Hampshire Safer Roads partnership and the Road Safety Councils. Work within these partnerships will continue, but we will take more of a leading role by putting into place a programme of road safety education initiatives over the next twelve months.  

We will work closely with other agencies to introduce a Road Safety Task Force, similar in principle, to our successful Arson Task Force, and will be looking to intervene when young people have become involved, or have been identified as likely to become involved, in road crime.

From April 2008 we will put in place a pilot for the education of all sixth form students in Hampshire.  We will evaluate this and other youth engagement initiatives, throughout 2008.

By April 2009 we will have developed the framework to introduce a multi agency Road Safety Task Force.  

10 Relocating our resources in Portsmouth (UPDATED)

What and why?

The results of the year-long trial at Copnor Fire Station indicate that we can redeploy our fire fighting resources whilst still maintaining the same levels of emergency cover and to improve efficiency in the Portsmouth area. Personnel and equipment will therefore be moved from Copnor Fire Station to Cosham or Southsea Fire Stations.

How and when?

As in previous moves, we will involve our staff in the movement of our resources and will commence the closure of Copnor Fire Station from 2 April 2008.

11 Relocating Winchester Fire Station (UPDATED) (DH)

What and why?

We will develop a new fire station building at Winnall, Winchester which is operationally, strategically, and environmentally a better location than the existing site. From October 2007 Winchester Fire Station will operate a duty system that will significantly improve emergency cover in the City and surrounding area, but the current site and building are not capable of accommodating the long-term needs of a modern, continuously-crewed, and strategically important fire station.

How and when?

The vehicle workshops was relocated to our Headquarters site at Eastleigh in January 2008. This made the site available for the development of a new fire station in early 2009.

12 Developing regional working (UPDATED)

What and why?

We will continue to plan an active and influential role in the South East Regional Management Board as we recognise that working with other fire and rescue services in our region can achieve savings through economies of scale and by sharing best practice.

How and when?

We will work with Kent and Isle of Wight fire and rescue services to manage the South East Fire Improvement Partnerships' regional funding.

Hampshire will play a significant role in progressing three major projects in the region:

1. Assessment and Development Centres for Senior Fire Officers

2. Regional Fire Control

3. A peer review of diversity activities and action planning

We will also aim to support the development of the regional procurement strategy and will continue to contribute to the funding of a regional Procurement Manager.

13 Delivering community safety through our Retained Duty System staff (NEW from Ideas Week and Group Plans)

What and why?

Our Retained Duty System (RDS) fire fighting staff are closely engaged with their local communities. We will capitalise on this relationship and specialist knowledge by using these members of staff to develop and deliver targeted risk reduction activities within their local areas. 

Using our RDS staff to introduce locally developed schemes and initiatives, including home fire safety visits, will lead to safer communities in Hampshire and also, optimise the use of resources on all of our fire stations within the county.

How and when?

The capacity within our retained duty stations and sections to deliver community safety initiatives vary from station to station. Where there is capacity, we will utilise it to the full and will identify ways that we can reward our staff for delivering this wider range of duties.

By April 2008 all retained sections will be able to contribute to the delivery of home fire safety visits. From April 2009 onwards we will have developed the means to deliver local risk reduction schemes and initiatives, in line with station and group planning activity.

14 Reviewing our work with young people (NEW from Ideas Week and Group Plans)

What and why?

To ensure our contact with young people is having a positive effect, we will undertake a review of our youth engagement strategy and evaluate the delivery of local youth engagement initiatives, such as the Young Firefighters Association (YFA) and the more recent Local Intervention Fire Education (LIFE) scheme.

The fire and rescue service is well respected by members of the local community, particularly young people. We have used this good standing as an opportunity to positively influence young people to become good citizens and to educate them about emergency safety. We feel the time in now right to build upon this good work and where appropriate, learn from other high achieving organisations in our field.

How and when?

We will utilise our current youth engagement team and contacts in the community to undertake a review our youth engagement strategy and local initiatives from April 2008. We will develop an updated strategy for implementation in April 2009.

15 Mainstreaming equality

What and why?

We are committed to embedding equality and diversity into everything we do, including policy development, service delivery and employment. Implementing the Equality Standard and making progress against its five levels of achievement is therefore a high level priority for us. Our aim for last year was to achieve Level 3.

Our objective is to deliver real and meaningful outcomes that make a difference to the communities we serve through our service provision and our employment practices. We believe that making continued progress against the Equality Standard will help us further enhance our reputation as an organisation that both lives and practices its values of equality and diversity.

How and when?

In 2008 we will carry out a review of our current equalities policies and resources. The review will include a close look at how our Local Diversity Group is working. This is our scrutiny and monitoring body for equality and diversity.

An action plan will be produced to address any issues or gaps that may be identified. The Local Diversity Group will be responsible for implementing the action plan. As a measure of our progress we aim to achieve Level 4 of the Equality Standard for Local Government by the end 2010.

Year two objectives

16 Building our network of Community Safety Officers (NEW from Ideas Week and Group Plans)

What and why?

Building upon successful initiatives within the Portsmouth and Waterloovile area, we will extend the use of Community Safety Officers across the Service.

Our existing Community Safety Officers have been extremely successful in delivering on a wide range of risk reduction activities within the south of the county, such as; home fire safety visits, environmental scanning, arson reduction and youth engagement. This has greatly reduced risk in our local communities.

How and when?

Over the next twelve months our group managers will assess the level of risk in each of our delivery groups and to identify those areas of the county where the need is greatest. During this period we will seek appropriate funding opportunities, either internally or in partnership with our agencies, to establish the introduction of these posts in line with need.

By April 2009 we will commence the phasing in of these positions, based on the areas of greatest need, and by 2010 establish a Community Safety Officer post within our delivery groups within the county.

17 Development of Cosham Fire Station (NEW)

What and why?

We will develop a design specification for a new fire station to replace the existing Station in Wayte Street, Cosham. The fire station building no longer meets the requirements of a modern fire and rescue service.

How and when?

Following research undertaken in 200708 to determine the most suitable location for a new fire station in the Cosham area, we will work with Portsmouth City Council to secure the King George V site for the new fire station.

Subject to securing this site, a design specification for a new fire station will be produced in 2009/2010. If this preferred site is not made available a design specification for a new fire station on the existing Cosham site will be produced in 2009/2010.

Year three objectives

18 Learning from our presence at Popley Fields Community Centre (UPDATED) (CH)

What and why?

We will review and develop our initiative at the Popley Fields Community Centre as we believe the reduction in arson and anti-social behaviour in the area is directly influenced by our presence at the Centre. The benefits of integration with the local community that we have learnt through this initiative will inform the development of a model for use to reduce risk in other parts of the county.

How and when?

Over the next twelve months we will review similar opportunities within the county where this model could be used. We will also be undertaking a consultation process with our staff and the local community of Popley to further evaluate the benefits of our existing arrangements.

The review will commence in April 2008, with outcomes being reported to the Service Management Team in April 2009.

Here's how you can tell us what you think...

You are invited to attend one of the events listed below. These have been set up to give you the opportunity to tell us what you think about our plan.

If you are not able to attend one of the events outlined in this consultation document, you can also let us have your comments

By email: [email protected]

By telephone: 023 8062 6850

By letter:

Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service

Leigh Road

Eastleigh

Hampshire SO50 9SJ

Through our website: www.website.gov.uk

This publication can be made available in large print, Braille and other languages. Please contact Marketing and Communications on 023 8062 6812 or email on [email protected]