62
Members were provided with a summary of the Service’s Quarter 1 performance against a comprehensive set of Performance Indicators agreed by the Senior Management Board.
There was particular discussion around various aspects relating to false alarm calls and was noted that the number of malicious fire calls was extremely low.
In relation to retained availability, Members requested that future reports include information about the number of calls each station has attended.
[Councillor Adams entered the meeting at 10.58am].
RESOLVED that Members note the following headlines drawn from Appendix 1 of the report relating to performance in Quarter 1, 2016-17:
i) a total of 1,678 incidents were attended in Q1, an increase of 7.3% (114 incidents) over the same Quarter of 2015-16, and 4.0% (67 incidents) higher than the average for the last five years. However, the overall 5 year trend remained relatively consistent;
ii) the majority of the increase in Q1 is accounted for by a rise in the numbers of Special Service and False Alarm incidents, while the number of Fire incidents was down:
a. Special Services: an increase of 19.9% (65 incidents) is mainly accounted for by increases in the number of animal assistance (13 incidents), flooding (11) Road Traffic Collisions (9) and water rescues (6).
b. False Alarms: an increase of 11.2% (81 incidents) is mainly because of automatic activations at a number of sheltered housing, nursing homes and hospitals and 13 incidents following the installation of a new alarm system at a block of flats in Kidderminster;
c. Fires: a decrease of 6.2% (32 incidents) over the previous year is largely accounted for by a fall in the number of Secondary Fires (down by 46 incidents) with fewer outdoor fires in a wetter than usual late spring/early summer period;
iii) the number of Fires and Special Service incidents continues to show a five-year downward trend, and False Alarms show a slight upward trend. While the figures are relatively consistent over the last five years, trends will continue to be analysed and monitored;
iv) overall Staff Sickness levels are 1.31 days lost per head, which remains within tolerance levels for Quarter 1 and below the five-year average of 1.63 days;
v) the Service attended 60.9% of Building Fires within 10 minutes in Q1 compared with 62.3% in the same period in 2015-16. The average time for the first fire appliance attendance at all building fires remained below 10 minutes (09:48); and
vi) the overall availability of the first On-Call (Retained) fire appliance remains high at 94.4%, a slight decrease of 0.5% in Q1 compared to the same period in 2015-16.