Cumbria 2021/22

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service is good at understanding risk.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service was good in its 2018/19 assessment.

Each fire and rescue service should identify and assess all foreseeable fire and rescue-related risks that could affect its communities. Arrangements should be put in place through the service’s prevention, protection and response capabilities to prevent or mitigate these risks for the public.

We set out our detailed findings below. These are the basis for our judgment of the service’s performance in this area.

The service uses a wide range of sources to identify risk

The service has assessed an appropriate range of risks and threats after a thorough integrated risk management planning process. When assessing risk, it has considered relevant information collected from a broad range of internal and external sources and data sets. For example, it uses flood data from the Environment Agency and road traffic collisions data from the police force. It can also access the county council’s joint strategic needs assessment, which shows demographic profiles for its communities.

The service has an effective integrated risk management plan, but it could improve the way it engages with communities to build its risk profile

After assessing relevant risks, the service has recorded its findings in an easily understood integrated risk management plan (IRMP). This plan describes how prevention, protection and response activity is to be effectively resourced to mitigate or reduce the risks and threats the community faces, both now and in the future.

The three departmental strategies for prevention, protection and response support the IRMP. They explain the service’s plans in more detail. But we found evidence that these strategies aren’t effectively driving day-to-day activity.

At the time of our inspection, the service had agreed to extend its current IRMP for a year because of local government reform in Cumbria. We found the service had consulted with parish councils, staff and the public. But this consultation didn’t result in many responses and the service didn’t evaluate the consultation process. It is important that services obtain the public’s views when developing their IRMP. The service plans to do more engagement with local community groups when developing its new plan.

The service has good processes in place to share risk information across the organisation

The service routinely collects and updates the information it has about the people, places and threats it has identified as being at greatest risk.

This information is readily available for the service’s prevention, protection and response staff, which helps it to identify, reduce and mitigate risk effectively. The service uses a risk document to gather risk information from all areas of the service. It uses the document to update the risk information available to firefighters on mobile data terminals. Where appropriate, the service passes risk information to other organisations such as the police and local authorities.

The service uses local and national learning to inform its understanding of risk

The service records and communicates risk information effectively. It also routinely updates risk assessments and uses feedback from local and national operational activity to inform its planning assumptions.

The service has responded proactively to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry

During this round of inspections, we sampled how each fire and rescue service has responded to the recommendations and learning from Phase 1 of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service has responded positively and proactively to learning from this tragedy. At the time of our inspection, the service had assessed the risk of every high-rise building in its service area.

It has carried out a fire safety audit and collected and passed relevant risk information to its prevention, protection and response teams about buildings identified as high risk.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service requires improvement at preventing fires and other risks.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service was good in its 2018/19 assessment.

Fire and rescue services must promote fire safety, including giving fire safety advice. To identify people at greatest risk from fire, services should work closely with other organisations in the public and voluntary sector, and with the police and ambulance services. They should provide intelligence and risk information with these other organisations when they identify vulnerability or exploitation.

We set out our detailed findings below. These are the basis for our judgment of the service’s performance in this area.

The service’s prevention strategy doesn’t target those most at risk

The service doesn’t have a clear, risk-based approach to directing prevention activity towards the people most at risk from fire and other emergencies.

Despite the service carrying out one of the highest numbers of home visits nationally, it doesn’t always give them to those most at risk. It provides the same level of prevention to everyone, regardless of need. This means it doesn’t prioritise those most at risk, so vulnerable people and others may not be getting the support they need.

Firefighters in stations aren’t always clear about what visits they should be completing or the need to prioritise those at most risk from fire. For example, in one of our station visits, we found that a very high-risk individual hadn’t received any contact from the service within six months of being identified as high risk.

Staff have received training on how to carry out safe and well visits

Staff told us they have the confidence to make safe and well visits. These checks cover an appropriate range of hazards that can put vulnerable people at greater risk from fire and other emergencies. We did find that many firefighters were less confident using the IT system to identify where they should carry out the visits. Some firefighters create their own visit lists on paper, meaning some new high-risk referrals are missed.

Staff can confidently respond to safeguarding concerns

We were pleased to see that since our 2019 inspection, the service has provided safeguarding training to staff. Staff we interviewed told us about occasions when they had identified safeguarding problems. They told us they feel confident and trained to act appropriately and promptly.

The service works well with others to reduce the number of fires and other risks

The service works with a wide range of other organisations such as Cumbria Constabulary and local community safety partnerships to prevent fires and other emergencies.

We found good evidence that it routinely refers people at greatest risk to organisations that may be better able to meet their needs. These organisations include social services and healthcare bodies. Arrangements are also in place to receive referrals from others, and the service acts appropriately on the referrals it receives.

The service routinely exchanges information with other public sector organisations about people and groups at greatest risk. It uses the information to challenge planning assumptions and target prevention activity. It has carried out some youth work with partners, leading to better relationships with young people.

The service works well with partners to tackle fire setting

The service has a range of suitable and effective interventions to target and educate people of different ages who show signs of fire-setting behaviour. This includes running the Young Firefighters Scheme and working with the police to identify potential fire setters. It also works in partnership with the county council on Halloween and Bonfire Night to address potential burn sites, such as areas subject to fly tipping.

When appropriate, it routinely shares information with organisations such as the police to support the prosecution of arsonists.

The service has a partnership approach to improving road safety

The service has a focus on road safety through enhanced co-operation with the Cumbria Road Safety Partnership. Members of the partnership told us they use data to develop collaborative strategies to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on the county’s roads.

The service has made limited progress on evaluating its prevention activity

We found limited evidence that, since our 2019 inspection, the service has improved the way it evaluates how effective its activity is. We also found limited evidence that it makes sure all its communities get equal access to prevention activity that meets their needs. For example, it hasn’t reviewed the quality of the referrals it receives from partners or the effectiveness of the other activities it provides to the community. As a result, it is missing opportunities to improve the service it gives the public.

The service has a specialist prevention team, but this team lacks capacity to do any quality assurance or development work to improve prevention.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service is good at protecting the public through fire regulation.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service was good in its 2018/19 assessment.

All fire and rescue services should assess fire risks in certain buildings and, when necessary, require building owners to comply with fire safety legislation. Each service decides how many assessments it does each year. But it must have a locally determined, risk-based inspection programme for enforcing the legislation.

We set out our detailed findings below. These are the basis for our judgment of the service’s performance in this area.

The service has a protection strategy that is linked to its integrated risk management plan

The service’s protection strategy is clearly linked to the risk it has identified in its IRMP.

Staff across the service are involved in this activity, with information effectively exchanged as needed. For example, firefighters are now carrying out business engagement visits. The service then uses information to adjust planning assumptions and direct activity between its protection, prevention and response functions. This means resources are properly aligned to risk.

Since our 2019 inspection, the service has also invested in extra resources within the protection department.

The service’s protection activity is focused on the highest risk

The service’s RBIP is focused on the service’s highest-risk buildings. We found the service had recently reviewed its RBIP and had identified its highest-risk premises. It has aligned its resources to those risks and to completing its RBIP.

The audits we reviewed were completed in the timescales the service has set itself.

The service has carried out audits at all high-rise buildings

The service doesn’t have any buildings in its area that use the type of cladding similar to that found on Grenfell Tower. At the time of our inspection, Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service had only identified three high-rise buildings as part of its audits and had visited them all. Information gathered during these audits is made available to response teams and control operators, helping them respond more effectively in an emergency.

The service completes audits in a systematic and consistent way

We reviewed a range of audits of different premises across the service. This included audits as part of the service’s RBIP, after fires at premises where fire safety legislation applies, where enforcement action had been taken and at high-rise, high‑risk buildings.

The audits we reviewed were completed to a high standard in a consistent, systematic way, and in line with the service’s policies. Relevant information from the audits is made available to operational teams and control room operators.

The service quality assures and evaluates its protection activity

Quality assurance of protection activity takes place in a proportionate way. We found that both auditors and protection managers quality assure inspection activity.

The service has good evaluation tools in place to measure the effectiveness of its activity and to make sure all sections of its communities get appropriate access to the protection services that meet their needs.

The service should make sure it keeps the capability and capacity to prosecute

The service consistently uses its full range of enforcement powers, and when appropriate, prosecutes those who don’t comply with fire safety regulations. It takes a balanced approach to education and enforcement.

In the year ending 31 March 2021, the service issued:

• 0 alteration notices;
• 146 informal notifications;
• 9 enforcement notices;
• 5 prohibition notices; and
• 0 prosecutions.

At the time of our inspection, it hadn’t undertaken any recorded prosecutions since 2018. It completed 1 prosecution in the 5 years from 2016/17 to 2020/21.

The service has sufficient resources to provide protection activity

Since our 2019 inspection, the service has increased resources in the protection department. At the time of this inspection, the service had enough qualified protection staff to meet the requirements of its RBIP. But the protection department is working at full capacity. This means the service should assure itself it can deal with any complex enforcement cases that may arise without compromising its RBIP.

Staff get the right training and work to appropriate accreditation. Protection officers complete a Level 4, which meets the requirements in the National Fire Chiefs Council guidelines.

We were pleased to note that the service now has protection officers available to give 24/7 cover to support out-of-hours enforcement requirements.

The service works closely with other organisations to regulate fire safety

The service works closely with other enforcement agencies to regulate fire safety and routinely exchanges risk information with them. Examples we found during our inspection include:

• joint work with housing services, the county council and the Care Quality Commission on visits to residential care homes;
• work with Border Force on the harbouring of illegal migrants; and
• work with Trading Standards on faulty white goods.

The service responds to building consultations on time

The service generally responds to building consultations on time, so consistently meets its statutory responsibility to comment on fire safety arrangements at new and altered buildings. In the year ending 31 March 2021, it responded to 95.5 percent of consultations within the required timescales.

The service has improved the way it engages with businesses

In our 2019 inspection we found that the service didn’t engage effectively with local businesses on an informal level. We are pleased to find that the service has taken action to improve this.

The service proactively engages with local businesses and other organisations to promote compliance with fire safety legislation. Firefighters now carry out operational business engagement visits and the service’s equalities lead has also worked with business owners on fire safety.

The service takes action to reduce unwanted fire signals

An effective risk-based approach is in place to manage the number of unwanted fire signals. The service’s policy includes challenging any 999 calls associated with a fire alarm, and working with businesses that are repeat offenders. It gets fewer calls because of this work. In the year ending 31 December 2021, the service attended 1,587 false alarms. This represents 3.2 incidents per 1,000 people in Cumbria. This compares with an average rate of 4.0 per 1,000 people in England.

Fewer unwanted calls means that fire engines are available to respond to a genuine incident rather than responding to a false one. It also reduces the risk to the public if fewer fire engines travel at high speed on the roads.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service requires improvement at responding to fires and other emergencies.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service was good in its 2018/19 assessment.

Fire and rescue services must be able to respond to a range of incidents such as fires, road traffic collisions and other emergencies in their area.

We set out our detailed findings below. These are the basis for our judgment of the service’s performance in this area.

Response resources are in the right places to meet risk and demand

The service’s response strategy is linked to the risks identified in its IRMP. Its fire engines and response staff, as well as its working patterns, are designed and located to help the service to respond flexibly to fires and other emergencies with the appropriate resources.

The service completed a detailed fire cover review in 2017 to consider station location, and again in 2021 to consider incident types by location. This has allowed it to better understand how many fire engines it needs and assure itself they are in the right places to best respond to emergencies.

The service doesn’t meet its target response time for house fires

There are no national response standards of performance for the public. But the service has set out its own response standards in its IRMP. It aims to respond to house fires within 10 minutes of receiving a 999 call and within 15 minutes for all other incidents.

The service doesn’t always meet its standards. In 2021/22, the service aimed to attend 80 percent of primary property fires within 10 minutes, but only achieved this on 76 percent of the time. The service also aimed to attend 80 percent of all other incidents within 15 minutes, and achieved this 87 percent of the time.

Overall availability across the service is above national average, but some stations need improvement

Overall availability is good when compared with other fire and rescue services nationally. But we are concerned that at 2 on-call stations, availability is less than 1 percent during some periods. The service should consider the contribution these stations are making to fire cover.

Staff have a good understanding of how to command incidents safely

The service has trained incident commanders who are assessed regularly and properly. The service assesses their command competence every two years. This helps the service to safely, assertively and effectively manage the whole range of incidents that it could face, from small and routine ones to complex multi-agency incidents.

As part of our inspection, we interviewed incident commanders from across the service. The incident commanders we interviewed are familiar with risk assessing, decision-making and recording information at incidents in line with national best practice, as well as the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles (JESIP).

But some staff we interviewed couldn’t explain what operational discretion was and how to use it at an incident. The service should consider how it can give more guidance in this area.

Fire control is involved in the service’s command and training

We are pleased to see the service’s fire control staff integrated into the service’s command and training activity. We found that control staff would like to be more involved in multi-agency exercises. Staff at North West Fire Control said the introduction of video conferencing as a result of COVID-19 has meant they get more involved in training with Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service.

Fire control can give fire survival guidance to multiple callers

The control room staff we interviewed were confident they could provide fire survival guidance to many callers simultaneously. This was identified as learning for fire services after the Grenfell Tower fire. Fire control has arrangements in place to communicate with other control rooms and for calls to be diverted when needed.

Fire control also has good systems in place to exchange real-time risk information with incident commanders, other responding organisations, and other supporting fire and rescue services. Maintaining good situational awareness helps the service to communicate effectively with the public, providing them with accurate and tailored advice.

Staff can easily access risk information

We sampled a range of risk information, including what is in place for firefighters responding to incidents at high-risk, high-rise buildings and what information is held by fire control.

The information we reviewed was up to date and detailed. It could be easily accessed and understood by staff. Encouragingly, it had been completed with input from the service’s prevention, protection and response functions when appropriate.

We also saw examples of the service giving temporary risk information to staff, such as for the Appleby Horse Fair, which takes place annually in the county. All short-term risk information is available via mobile data terminals on the fire engines.

But the service could improve the way it shares risk information with other organisations, particularly with North West Fire Control, the central fire control for four fire services.

The service hasn’t improved the way it evaluates operational performance

As part of the inspection, we reviewed a range of emergency incidents and training events. These included large fires, exercises and incidents relating to Storm Arwen, which was declared a major incident.

We are disappointed to find that the service still doesn’t consistently follow its policies to assure itself that staff command incidents in line with operational guidance. As a result, internal risk information isn’t always updated after an incident. This was an area of improvement we identified in our last report.

The service doesn’t always act on learning it has, or should have, identified from incidents. This means it isn’t routinely improving its service to the public. The service doesn’t routinely carry out or record debriefs, and when it does so, they often lack important details. The service’s internal audit also highlighted this issue in two earlier reports. Of the seven recommendations from those reports, two high-priority recommendations are still outstanding, as well as one medium-priority recommendation.

We found only limited evidence that the service contributes to and acts on learning from other fire and rescue services or operational learning gathered from other emergency service partners.

The service is effective at keeping the public informed about incidents

The service has good systems in place to inform the public about ongoing incidents and help keep them safe during and after incidents. It uses various social media channels to issue live updates about significant incidents. A 24/7 arrangement with Cumbria Constabulary means communications continue out of hours.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service is good at responding to major and multi‑agency incidents.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service was good in its 2018/19 assessment.

All fire and rescue services must be able to respond effectively to multi-agency and cross-border incidents. This means working with other fire and rescue services (known as intraoperability) and emergency services (known as interoperability).

We set out our detailed findings below. These are the basis for our judgment of the service’s performance in this area.

The service is prepared for major and multi-agency incidents

The service has effectively anticipated and considered the reasonably foreseeable risks and threats it may face. These risks are listed in both local and national risk registers as part of its integrated risk management planning. Examples include wide‑scale flooding and wildfires.

Firefighters have access to risk information from neighbouring services. This is provided through mobile data terminals on fire engines and now includes premises up to 10 km from the county’s borders. This addresses an area for improvement we identified in our 2019 inspection.

The service has plans in place to respond to multi-agency incidents

We reviewed the arrangements the service has in place to respond to different major incidents, including incidents in high-rise buildings and wide-area flooding.

The service has good arrangements in place, which are well understood by staff. We found they know their responsibilities, including how to request specialist resources and national assets if needed.

The service works well with other fire and rescue services

The service supports other fire and rescue services responding to emergency incidents. For example, it has mutual aid agreements with neighbouring fire and rescue services. It is intraoperable with these services and can form part of a multi‑agency response.

The service has successfully deployed to other services and has used national assets. For example, it has supported Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service to tackle large wildfires.

The service needs to improve cross-border exercising

Cross-border exercise plans help services work more effectively together to keep the public safe. They are determined locally by stations. Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service has limited cross-border exercise plans with neighbouring fire and rescue services. We found that many stations haven’t taken part in cross-border exercises, so they haven’t understood the foreseeable risks involved in working with neighbouring services.

Staff understanding of JESIP has improved since our 2019 inspection

The incident commanders we interviewed had been trained in and were familiar with JESIP. These national principles support all emergency services working together at incidents.

The service gave us strong evidence that it consistently follows these principles and staff showed a good understanding of them. We were pleased to find that since our 2019 inspection, the service has introduced new JESIP training to all firefighters, and their two-yearly assessments evaluate their understanding of these principles.

The service is an active member of the Cumbria Local Resilience Forum

The service has good arrangements in place to respond to emergencies with other partners that make up the Cumbria Local Resilience Forum. At the time of our inspection, the service’s chief fire officer was the chair of the local resilience forum executive board. The arrangements include planning for incidents such as extreme weather and for events such as the Appleby Horse Fair. The service’s communication team takes part in the warning and informing group. This helps all partners give a co‑ordinated message.

The service needs to improve how it uses national learning

The service has limited awareness of joint operational learning updates from other fire services and national operational learning from other organisations. We found no evidence of any recent national or joint learning submissions. As a result, the service hasn’t done enough to improve its services for the public in line with recognised best practice.