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The Assistant Chief Fire Officer presented the Service's annual performance for 2018/19.
Members were assured that the number of false alarm incidents were good intent rather than malicious and that the majority of staff sickness was due to long term sickness.
There was concern from Members regarding the response times but were reassured that officers were working with the crews to overcome these issues, particularly in regard to booking the appliance in at incidents.
There was discussion regarding the Day Crew Plus system and the Chief Fire Officer explained to Members that the consultation results were being finalised and the recommendations would be put forward to the Fire Authority at a future meeting. He explained that a local agreement was not available at the present time and although staff and the Service wanted to continue with the system, it was not possible due to the threat of legal action.
There was also concern regarding the mobilising of the boat at Hereford due to 2 appliances needed each time. The Chief Fire Officer assured Members that the new boats now only required 1 appliance to mobilise the boat.
Finally, Members requested that a breakdown of road traffic incidents into Counties and also data when appliances attend incidents over the border be included in future reports.
RESOLVED that Members note the following headlines drawn from Appendix 1 relating to performance in Quarters 1-4, 2018-19:
i) A total of 7,501 incidents were attended in Q1-Q4, an increase of 8.22% (570 incidents) over the same Quarters of 2017-18, and 11.13% (751 incidents) higher than the average for the last five years. The overall five year trend shows a gradual increase in the total number of incidents.
ii) The majority of the increase in Q1-Q4 is accounted for by a rise in the numbers of Fire and Special Service incidents, while the number of False Alarm incidents was also up but at a lower rate:
a. Fires: an increase of 14.96% was mainly accounted for by a rise in the number of Secondary Fires (28.74%).
b. Special Services: an increase of 9.63% (168 incidents) was mainly accounted for by increases in the number of Other Special Services (111), Assisting other agencies (56) and Lift release (7) incidents.
c. False Alarms: an increase of 3.59% (118 incidents), the most common automatic activations are at a number of sheltered housing, nursing homes and hospitals.
iii) Overall Staff Sickness level for Q1-Q4 2018-19 was 8.51 days lost per head and was above the 5-year average of 6.71.
iv) The Service attended 54.41% (358 incidents) of Primary Building Fires within 10 minutes in Quarters 1-4, compared with 58.73% in the same period in 2017-18. The average time for the first fire appliance attendance at all Primary Building Fires was 10 minutes and 23 seconds.
v) The overall availability of the first On-Call (Retained) fire appliance remains high at 84.75%; however, this has decreased by 4.86% when compared to the same period in 2017-18.