East Sussex 2021/22

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service is good at understanding risk.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service required improvement 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 is good at identifying 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 datasets. For example, Mosaic data is combined with data about fires in homes and dwellings to create an initial fire-risk rating for each household across the service. The operational risk review, strategic assessment of risk and station profiles help the service plan its prevention, protection and response activities.

The service has consulted and undertaken constructive dialogue with communities and other groups. For example, 3VA (an organisation which covers several voluntary groups), local health authorities specifically relating to dementia and ageing population, GP surgeries, local councils, child safety services and other organisations, to both understand the risk and explain how it intends to mitigate it.

The service has an effective integrated risk management plan

After assessing relevant risks, the service has recorded its findings in an easily understood 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 service’s IRMP sets out its commitments to the public:

• Deliver high-performing services.
• Engage with its communities.
• Have a safe and valued workforce.
• Make effective use of its resources.

Progress against the IRMP priorities is reported to the senior leadership team and taken to the fire authority.

The service gathers, maintains and shares a good range of risk information

The service routinely collects and updates the information it has about the people, places, and threats it has identified as being at greatest risk. It has processes in place to gather site-specific risk information, which is stored on an easy-to-use system that prioritises visits according to 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. Staff can access the information using mobile data terminals on fire engines, which store risk information directly onto the device, so aren’t affected by signal failures. Where appropriate, risk information is passed on to other organisations such as police and healthcare providers through fatal fire reviews.

The service should improve the way it builds an understanding of risk from operational activity

We found limited evidence that the service learns from and acts on feedback from either local or national operational activity. The system for recording learning from training, exercises and incidents is not effective.

Similarly, we found limited evidence that this information was being used to regularly update risk assessments or inform the assumptions made in the IRMP.

However, the service has introduced a new monitoring and tracking process for operational learning, and we look forward to seeing the improvements this brings in the future.

The service has responded positively 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.

East Sussex 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 each 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 and all high-rise buildings that have cladding similar to the cladding on Grenfell Tower.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service is good at preventing fires and other risks.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service required improvement 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 and thematic plans align with its integrated risk management plan priorities

The service’s prevention strategy is clearly linked to the risks identified in its IRMP. The prevention strategy 2021–26 focuses on 5 key themes to deliver its activity:

• Reduce risk in the home and wider community by recording and accessing risk information.
• Develop a competent and sustainable prevention and protection function and workforce.
• Prevent deaths and injuries by undertaking home safety and safe and well visits.
• Protect vulnerable communities by meeting its safeguarding
• Develop community engagement with a focus on EDI.

The service’s teams work well together and with other relevant organisations on prevention, and the service shares relevant information when needed. Information is used to adjust planning assumptions and direct activity between the service’s prevention, protection and response functions. For example, following a fatal fire review, which involved various partners including police, ambulance services, safeguarding leads from the local authority and GP surgeries, the service now receives data from some GP surgeries in the county to offer home safety visits to high‑risk individuals. This has also led to a befriending scheme to provide lonely or isolated individuals with company, which is provided by volunteers.

Positive changes made in prevention during the pandemic have been maintained

We considered how the service had adapted its prevention work during our COVID-19 specific inspection in November 2020. At that time, we found it had adapted its public prevention work appropriately.

Since then, we are encouraged to find that the service has learnt from this and continues to offer virtual support for education in schools and virtual home safety visits, making them more accessible.

The service has improved how it targets its home safety visits at the people most at risk

Prevention activity is clearly prioritised using a risk-based approach towards people most at risk from fire and other emergencies. The service has identified a range of vulnerabilities and risk factors such as mental health, drug and alcohol use, and smoking within the home to help target its activity.

The service takes account of a broad range of information and data to target its prevention activity at vulnerable individuals and groups. This includes health and social data, local authorities, and referrals from organisations it works with such as local GP surgeries and SGN (Southern Gas Networks).

The service takes a “making every contact count” approach. This means that if the service receives a referral from SGN that gas safety equipment is needed in a home, staff would carry out additional work at the time of home safety visits, for example fitting child safety equipment, making referrals for gas cut-off switches or fitting child locks for cupboards.

The service is also supporting the work of local authorities and receiving funding to complete home safety visits for Ukraine refugees, which is supported by volunteers.

The service provides a range of interventions that it adapts to the level of risk in its communities. The service provides home safety visits face to face, virtually and via telephone. The programme is supported by a dedicated prevention team, wholetime and on-call operational firefighters.

The service sets its own time frames for contacting and carrying out home safety visits. For example, for an individual categorised as very high risk, it should receive contact within 24 hours and have the home safety visit completed within 48 hours. At the time of inspection, the service was working to a small backlog and didn’t always meet its time frames. However, it has plans in place to ensure this work is prioritised.

Staff receive good training to competently carry out home safety visits

Staff told us they have the right skills and confidence to carry out home safety visits. These checks cover an appropriate range of hazards that can put vulnerable people at greater risk from fire and other emergencies.

Operational firefighters are appropriately trained to complete home safety visits. At the time of inspection operational staff had recently completed face-to-face prevention training, which is also supported by online training materials.

Dedicated prevention staff can complete all types of visits, including very high risk, where there are often complex needs and referrals to be made.

Quality assurance is carried out and recorded to ensure staff are working to a consistent standard.

Staff are confident in responding to safeguarding concerns

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. All staff must complete a mandatory safeguarding essentials and modern slavery/human trafficking course. Staff were able to clearly communicate the signs of vulnerability and how to make necessary referrals.

The service works well with partners to prevent fires and other emergencies

The service works with a wide range of other organisations such as adult and children social care services, health partners, Sussex Police, Royal National Lifeboat Institution, SGN, and Sussex Safer Roads Partnership to prevent fires and other emergencies.

We found good evidence that it routinely refers people at greatest risk to other organisations which may be better able to meet their needs. Arrangements are in place to receive referrals from various partners, including gas suppliers, oxygen providers, and adult social care. 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. For example, through working closely with GP surgeries across the service area it can identify vulnerable individuals using information which wouldn’t normally be part of datasets the service uses. The service uses this information to offer home safety visits. These home visits have led to unexpected benefits for health services: a reduction in hospital admissions and frequent surgery visits.

This process came from a fatal fire review, which the service holds, which includes partners. Learning is identified and shared where appropriate.

The service has processes in place to tackle fire-setting behaviour

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 the Firewise initiative, which provides advice and guidance to school and parents about children who play with fire.

When appropriate, it routinely shares information with other relevant organisations, such as Sussex Police and children’s services. The service fire investigation team supports the prosecution of arsonists and has worked with Sussex Police to gather evidence and intelligence from local communities.

The service carries out some evaluation of prevention activities

The service has good evaluation tools in place. These tools measure how effective its work is so that it knows what works, and that its communities get prevention activity that meets their needs. For example, evaluation of virtual lessons around railways found that awareness of the dangers associated with railways has increased 70 percent.

The service has a library of prevention initiatives which include an element of evaluation as part of the process. Staff complete this process to inform and improve the initiatives.

Prevention activities take account of feedback from the public, other organisations, and other parts of the service. For example, the service has used a text messaging service to ask for feedback following home safety visits. The service also amended the training provided to staff following feedback about sensitive subject matters. Warnings are now provided to staff, so they are fully informed beforehand.

Feedback from the public is used by the service to inform its planning assumptions and amend future activity, so it is focused on what the community needs and what works.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service requires improvement at protecting the public through fire regulation.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service required improvement 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.

There is a good link between the protection strategy and the 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, and exchange information effectively as needed. For example, operational staff are involved in completing fire safety audits on low-risk premises. The service also plans to train some operational managers to Level 3 standard for fire safety to help with high-risk audits.

Information is then used to adjust planning assumptions and direct activity between the service’s protection, prevention and response functions. This means resources are properly aligned to risk.

The service adapted its protection activity well during the pandemic

We considered how the service had adapted its protection activity during our COVID‑19-specific inspection in November 2020. At that time, we found it had adapted its protection work well. Since then, we are encouraged to find that protection activity has continued and wholetime operational staff and specialist protection staff are continuing to carry out face-to-face visits.

The service has improved the way it identifies the highest-risk buildings

The service’s risk based inspection plan (RBIP) is now focused on the service’s highest-risk buildings. The service now uses six risk categories to be sure it is targeting the highest risk. The service’s new risk reduction model was introduced in April 2022, so there is still work to do to fully populate the database. Flexibility has been built into the approach to dynamically target current risks.

However, at the time of inspection, we found that the service wasn’t consistently auditing the buildings it had targeted in the timescales it sets. For example, we found that some high-risk premises hadn’t been inspected for more than ten years. The service’s previous method of identifying the highest-risk premises, caused some high-risk premises to be excluded from the inspection programme.

Audits of high-rise buildings have been completed

Audits have been carried out at all high-rise buildings the service has identified as using cladding that is similar to the cladding on Grenfell Tower. Information gathered during these audits is made available to response teams, enabling them to respond more effectively in an emergency.

Due to the significant number of high-rise buildings within the service area, we do not underestimate the workload which has been required to respond to this.

Fire safety audits are completed to a good standard

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 good standard and in line with the service’s policies. Relevant information from the audits is made available to operational teams.

The service completes quality assurance of its protection activity

Quality assurance of protection activity takes place in a proportionate way. All audits completed by operational crews are quality assured with random monthly checks happening for protection staff.

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 isn’t using the full range of its enforcement powers

The service doesn’t use its full range of enforcement powers consistently. We found limited evidence of the service prosecuting those who don’t comply with fire safety regulations. The service has recognised this and restructured the protection team to ensure the most experienced team members take the lead on legal case work. They have also provided some training to the rest of the team.

There is a planned uplift in resources which may provide opportunity to improve in this area.

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

• 0 alteration notices;
• 21 informal notifications;
• 4 enforcement notices;
• 9 prohibition notices; and
• 0 prosecutions.

The service has sufficient resources to meet current targets

The service has enough qualified protection staff to meet the requirements of the service’s RBIP. The service has sufficient resources to achieve the targets for the coming year, visit 1,500 premises and respond to 100 percent of building consultations within the agreed timescales. This helps the service to provide the range of audit and enforcement activity needed.

However, the service recognises it would benefit from having more expertise in fire engineering and those with legal experience to help compensate for staff retiring from and leaving the service.

An area for improvement from our last inspection was having effective arrangements in place for providing specialist protection advice out of hours.

We are pleased to see the service has introduced a rota system to provide specialist fire protection advice around the clock (24/7), so we have removed this area for improvement.

Fire protection staff are trained appropriately

Staff get the right training and work to the appropriate accreditation. The service has completely adopted the National Fire Chiefs Council’s (NFCC) Competency Framework for staff, including non-specialist staff, in line with national best practice.

The service works well with others to carry out joint action

The service works closely with other enforcement agencies to regulate fire safety, and routinely exchanges risk information with them. For example, the fire protection team carries out annual engagement with partners around planned fire safety activity. They determine where joint action could take place. A memorandum of understanding has been drafted with East Sussex housing to update the ways of working between the two organisations, which includes training of staff, exchange of risk information, and joint visits.

The service also shares environmental risk information with the Environment Agency and together they carry out joint visits at waste sites.

The service doesn’t always respond to building consultation on time

The service doesn’t always respond to building consultations on time, so doesn’t consistently meet its statutory responsibility to comment on fire safety arrangements at new and altered buildings.

For the financial year 2020/21, the service completed 93.2 percent of building consultation in the required time frame. This has increased year on year since 2016/2017.

The service works well with businesses

The service proactively engages with local businesses and other organisations to promote compliance with fire safety legislation. The service uses social media and radio to engage with businesses. It also has a ‘Safer Businesses’ section on the East Sussex Fire and Rescue website clearly identifying what businesses need to know and what they need to do.

The service is making progress against the burden of unwanted fire signals

In response to an area for improvement, the service has made some changes to the unwanted fire signals policy. These changes came into effect in April 2022. The new policy outlines that the service will no longer routinely attend commercial premises between the hours of 9am and 5pm, unless a fire is confirmed.

The service has seen some progress and a reduction in attendances to date. It is receiving monthly reports and will carry out a review of the changes at six months to evaluate the benefits.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service is good at responding to fires and other emergencies.

East Sussex 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.

The service aligns resources to the risk identified in its integrated risk management plan

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.

For example, the dynamic cover tool used in fire control provides a real-time heat map of where risks are within the county. Staff will make necessary arrangements to ensure cover in these risk areas is maintained.

The service consistently meets its response standards

There are no national response standards of performance for the public. But the service has set out its own response standards in its IRMP. The service set an attendance standard for the first immediate response engine arriving within 10 minutes 70 percent of the time. It also sets an attendance standard for the first on‑call fire engine of 15 minutes 70 percent of the time. The service consistently meets these targets.

The service consistently meets its standards. Home Office data shows that in the year to 31 December 2021, the service’s average response time to primary fires was 8 minutes 57 seconds. This is almost a minute faster than the average for significantly rural services.

The service has plans in place to improve their appliance availability

The service currently meets its target for having 15 immediate response appliances available.

The service has recognised as part of its 2020/25 IRMP it needs to improve its appliance availability (overall annual availability 71 percent, wholetime availability 98 percent and on-call availability 51 percent during 2021/22) to meet its future standard of 18 immediate response appliances. The service has plans to introduce a flexible crewing pool in April 2023 to assist with this and we look forward to seeing the progress in the future.

Staff command incidents safely

The service has trained incident commanders who are assessed 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.

The service also has an effective process for supporting new incident commanders when in development, mobilising an additional officer to act as a mentor.

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).

Control staff aren’t always involved in operational learning and debriefs

Control staff are sometimes involved in the service’s exercises. But control staff aren’t always involved in debriefs or assurance activity. This means they don’t always have opportunities to learn from others or contribute to shared learning. It was also evident that lessons learned from incidents and exercises weren’t always effectively communicated to control staff.

Fire control can give fire survival guidance to multiple callers, but the service should test its ability to communicate information to incident commanders

The control room staff we interviewed are confident they could provide fire survival guidance to many callers simultaneously. This was identified as learning for fire services after the Grenfell Tower fire.

The service should review the arrangements in place for exchanging real-time risk information with incident commanders, other responding partners and other supporting fire and rescue services or the public. At the time of inspection operational staff were completing training for incidents in tall buildings and these haven’t yet been fully tested or exercised with fire control. Poor situational awareness limits the effectiveness of the advice the service can provide the public.

The service has improved access to up-to-date risk information

An area of improvement identified from our previous inspection was ensuring that firefighters have good access to relevant and up-to-date 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 firefighters. Information is regularly updated on the mobile data terminals and information is stored directly onto devices to prevent problems accessing information when there is signal failure. Encouragingly, it had been completed with input from the service’s prevention, protection and response functions when appropriate.

While the service has improved access for operational firefighters, it could improve the amount of risk information it shares with joint fire control, which supports three services.

We understand the service has now made this process automated using its risk management system.

Evaluating operational performance is inconsistent

As part of the inspection, we reviewed a range of emergency incidents and training events. These included significant domestic and commercial fires and road traffic collisions.

Of these incidents, we were disappointed to see the lack of involvement from operational firefighters and fire control, contributing to learning from significant incidents. There was also no learning obtained from external partners who were present.

There is also a lack of operational assurance in place to be sure that staff command incidents in line with operational guidance.

We were disappointed to find that 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. For example, actions identified following incidents weren’t recorded or assigned to a responsible individual for follow-up.

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.

However, we are encouraged to see that the service has introduced a new system to record, monitor, and track learning from operational incidents, training and exercises and we look forward to seeing how this improves.

The service is good at keeping the public informed of incidents

The service has good systems in place to inform the public about ongoing incidents and help keep them safe during and after incidents. This includes the use of social media and its own website. There is 24/7 access to the communications team who help provide support and guidance when required. The service is also an active member of the warn and inform group within the Sussex Resilience Forum.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service is good at responding to major and multi-agency incidents.

East Sussex 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. For example, it has plans in place to deal with large-scale flooding and a higher-tier Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) site.

It is also familiar with the significant risks that could be faced by neighbouring fire and rescue services that might reasonably be asked to respond in an emergency. These include marauding terrorist attack (MTA) exercises with West Sussex Fire and Rescue and exercising with Surrey Fire and Rescue in the use of smoke hoods and evacuations.

Firefighters have full access to risk information from West Sussex Fire and Rescue and Surrey Fire and Rescue Service. They also share risk information up to 5 km over the border with Kent Fire and Rescue Service.

The service needs to improve understanding of marauding terrorist attacks

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

The service has arrangements in place, but they aren’t well understood by all staff. It was identified during our last inspection that the service should ensure there are procedures in place for MTAs and they are understood by staff. While we found that these plans were exercised and there is training for MTA incidents, they aren’t aligned to nationally agreed principles.

However, the incident commanders we spoke to were confident in their ability to manage multi-agency incidents and work with other emergency organisations.

The service works well with other fire services

The service supports other fire and rescue services responding to emergency incidents. For example, the service shares a control room with West Sussex Fire and Rescue and Surrey Fire and Rescue. Emergency calls can be taken by any member of staff for any service and mobilisations can be carried out without the request of resources from another service. It is intraoperable with these services and can form part of a multi-agency response.

The service has established working groups with West Sussex, Surrey and Kent Fire and Rescue. The services have identified four areas to focus on for operational alignment.

The service has successfully deployed to other services and has used national assets. For example, providing the high-volume pump for wide-area flooding.

Some cross-border exercising takes place

The service has a cross-border exercise plan with neighbouring fire and rescue services so they can work effectively together to keep the public safe. Exercises are set up locally by individual stations located near the border. The plan includes the risks of major events at which the service could foreseeably provide support or request assistance from neighbouring services.

Exercises have reduced during the pandemic, which means only some learning from these exercises is used to inform risk information and service plans.

The service aims to include cross-border exercises as part of the month-end returns completed by all stations.

There is a good understanding of Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles

The incident commanders we interviewed had been trained in and were familiar with JESIP.

The service could provide us with strong evidence that it consistently follows these principles. This includes training being available to all levels of the service, access to the JESIP app and aide-mémoires in command packs, and a good understanding demonstrated by incident commanders.

The service works well with partner organisations

The service has good arrangements in place to respond to emergencies with other partners that make up the Sussex Resilience Forum. These arrangements include working with other organisations to prepare multi-agency response plans for high-risk sites, such as Tradebe waste disposal.

The service is a valued partner and is represented in the Sussex Resilience Forum’s strategic and tactical co-ordinating groups and subgroups. The service takes part in regular training events with other members of the local resilience forum and uses the learning to develop planning assumptions about responding to major and multi‑agency incidents.

National learning is shared with staff

The service keeps up to date with national operational learning updates from other fire services and joint organisation learning from other organisations, such as the police service and ambulance trusts. This learning is used to inform planning assumptions that have been made with other partners. Learning is shared with staff in the service’s Assurance in Action newsletter.