At the recent meeting of the Fire & Rescue Service Scrutiny Committee, Councillors failed to insist that Surrey County Council honour their agreement to meet specified performance standards in their fire control. Instead of answering all '999' calls within 7 seconds, they have dropped the standard to let them take longer than 10 seconds to answer one in twenty emergency calls. The standard for the time taken to notify fire crews of emergencies was also cut.
No justification was given for this performance cut, just a misleading link to a target figure in a working agreement between all the emergency services and British Telecom. It was claimed that now the fire control is handling emergency calls for three authorities, they need to align West Sussex with East Sussex and Surrey Fire & Rescue Services. Sadly, that is simply an excuse to drop adequate West Sussex standards to suit the inadequate standards of others. This is not about fire control personnel not performing well, they do, it is a senior management and Cabinet Member failure.
West Sussex residents deserve high standards, not Surrey's low standards.
Consultation results withheld from Scrutiny Committee
The committee was told that the results of the public consultation on the Community Risk Management Plan had been discussed by the Chairman, the Cabinet Member, and the Chief Fire Officer. Yet no explanation was given for not publishing the results, or for not providing them to the Scrutiny Committee. Keeping the committee in the dark stops them doing their job properly.
Consultation results should be published now.
Rural areas are not low risk
There was a worrying contradiction with the Chief Fire Officer talking about rural areas being 'low risk', but also referring to the problem of fire deaths in rural areas. She claimed the trend was for victims to be deceased before the alarm is raised, yet no evidence has been produced to substantiate that. Of course, sometimes, that is the case but there are also instances where it is not, which makes a quick response from fire crews vital if lives are to be saved.
She is quite right that it is better to stop fires starting with the use of prevention activities, but the reality is they cannot stop every life-threatening fire. Research has shown that the optimum response time, to save lives and to confine the fire to the room of origin, is between 5 and 10 minutes. Opportunities to do that diminish rapidly over 10 minutes, yet County Councillors have only made provision to arrive within 10 minutes for just 2% of the County. For 37% of West Sussex, it is 12 minutes, and for 61% it is a staggering 14 minutes.
Yet, in the last quarter, they failed to arrive within these lengthy times at over 13% of critical fires.
Just a few examples of the many risks in rural areas - historic buildings, nursing homes, boarding schools, business and industrial parks, food production centres, hotels, and million pound plus homes. There are also many more modest family homes, caravans, both holiday and residential, properties occupied by those who are vulnerable, including those who cannot escape a fire without assistance, areas of deprivation, fuel depots, chemical storage, firework manufacturing, farms, heathland, woodland, areas of outstanding natural beauty, and sites of special scientific interest. All are in danger when fire breaks out.
Why rural lives, business, property, and environment don't get a quick and effective response
West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service's ability to provide a quick and effective response continues to diminish, and that is fundamentally the fault of County Council cuts to frontline resources. In addition to the removal of eleven frontline fire engines and crews, they fail to ensure the remaining 35 fire engines, at 24 fire stations, can be crewed all the time. This map overlay shows the only 10 fire engines, at 8 fire stations, that have had crews available for more than 95% of the time. The other 25 fire engines only had crews available for between 15% and 91% of the time.
It really should be no surprise that rural response has become so poor.
When the Chief Fire Officer talks about 'low risk', she is really referring to areas that have fewer fires. However, they pose no less of a risk to those who live and work there than fires in urban areas. The actual risk to lives and property may depend on a building's construction, occupancy, and fire safety measures, but it does not depend on geographic location. However, once a fire does break out, in any part of West Sussex, the speed of response can significantly alter the risk to lives and property.
