Royal Berkshire 2021/22

Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service is good at promoting the right values and culture.

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

Fire and rescue services should have positive and inclusive cultures, modelled by the behaviours of their senior leaders. Health and safety should be promoted effectively, and staff should have access to a range of well-being support that can be tailored to their individual needs.

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 culture that promotes positive behaviours and values

We are encouraged by the cultural improvements the service has made since our previous inspection in 2019. The service now has well-defined values that are understood by staff. In our staff survey, conducted between 7 June 2022 and 11 July 2022, 88.9 percent of respondents (200 of 225) said they were aware of the service’s values. This was an area for improvement in our previous inspection.

We saw behaviours that reflected the service’s values at all levels of the service. Staff talked positively about the service’s approach to values and the introduction of the behavioural competency framework. The main staff communications, including the intranet, staff magazine and manager information sheet, are based on the service’s values. The service sent the new behavioural competency framework and employee code of conduct to every employee. Work has also been carried out to show how the service’s values align to the new national Core Code of Ethics.

Senior leaders act as role models. For example, most staff described the senior leadership team as visible and approachable, providing opportunities for feedback. In our staff survey, 76.9 percent of respondents (173 of 225) said that senior leaders consistently model the service’s values.

There is a positive working culture throughout the service, with most staff empowered and willing to challenge poor behaviours when they encounter them. Staff described situations when they had challenged inappropriate language or behaviours and felt well supported by the service. However, we heard that some staff would be reluctant to challenge some behaviours and may still need support to confidently and consistently do so.

Staff have good access to services that support their mental and physical health

The service continues to have well-understood and effective well-being policies in place that are available to staff. A significant range of well-being support is available to support both physical and mental health. For example, the service has an occupational health team, employee assistance programme, links to private healthcare options and promotes the use of the Fire Fighters Charity. Staff spoke positively about the trauma support given automatically following difficult incidents.

There are good provisions in place to promote staff well-being. This includes a well‑being working group to monitor trends and establish opportunities to give sessions on issues such as financial well-being or one-to-one health checks for staff. In our staff survey, 96.4 percent of respondents (217 of 225) said they feel able to access services to support their mental well-being. Some staff still reported delays in accessing health services, but most understand the well-being support processes available and have confidence in them.

The service has a positive health and safety culture

The service continues to have effective and well-understood health and safety policies and procedures in place. The service’s health, safety and well-being strategy focuses on three areas:

• safe and healthy people;
• safe and healthy places; and
• safe and healthy processes.

These policies and procedures are readily available and effectively promoted to all staff. Health and safety or operational bulletins give information and learning for staff, while critical detail is sent by email. In our staff survey, 97.3 percent of respondents (219 of 225) said they feel their personal safety and welfare is treated seriously by the service. Both staff and representative bodies have confidence in the health and safety approach taken by the service.

The service monitors staff who have secondary employment or dual contracts to make sure they comply with the secondary employment policy and don’t work excessive hours. The service sets out its expectations in its policy. Managers described monitoring the hours worked by staff, while considering their health and well-being.

Absence isn’t consistently managed within the service

As part of our inspection, we reviewed some case files to consider how the service manages and supports staff through absence.

The service has an absence policy, but it isn’t widely understood by staff or managers. From the files we reviewed, we saw several inconsistent decisions made as a result of a lack of guidance and managerial discretion being applied. Policy wasn’t always followed and we saw examples of triggers being missed for repeat periods of short-term absence. In addition, some formal review meetings weren’t held.

Overall, the service has seen an increase in staff absences over the last 12 months. Some of these were related to COVID-19. The service identifies that staff absences are having an impact on daily staffing arrangements and fire engine availability.

Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service is good at getting the right people with the right skills.

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

Fire and rescue services should have a workforce plan in place that is linked to their CRMPs, sets out their current and future skills requirements and addresses capability gaps. They should supplement this with a culture of continuous improvement that includes appropriate learning and development throughout the service.

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 good process to plan its workforce requirements

The service has good workforce planning in place. This makes sure skills and capabilities align with what is needed to effectively action the CRMP. However, the service is facing difficulties in recruiting staff promptly to fill current skills gaps. These gaps have been created by external factors, including additional unexpected leavers following changes to the pension scheme, the cost-of-living crisis and competitive external recruitment opportunities. The service needs to do more to improve how it considers its future needs and succession planning.

The service knows it needs a minimum number of operational firefighters to maintain fire engine availability and a good response standard. As described in question 4 in the effectiveness section, the service has maintained a good response standard even with recent reduced availability.

Workforce and succession planning is subject to consistent scrutiny in the form of regular meetings to discuss requirements. The workforce planning group meets quarterly to review the skills and profile of the workforce expected in the year ahead. To support managers in daily staffing needs, a response resourcing group has been developed. This approach means the service can identify gaps in workforce capabilities and resilience.

The service has a good process to monitor operational skills and capabilities

Operational staff told us that they could access the training they need to be effective in their role. The service’s training plans make sure they can maintain competence and capability effectively. We reviewed the service’s training records and found that staff were qualified in the core skills needed for their role, such as water safety, breathing apparatus and incident command.

The service monitors staff competence on an electronic operational training package. This provides managers with a dashboard and colour coded system to review staff compliance. We are pleased with progress the service has made in ensuring that all staff use the system consistently. This was an area for improvement identified in our previous inspection in 2019. The service also regularly updates its understanding of staff’s skills and risk-critical safety capabilities in line with national operational guidance.

The service promotes a positive learning and improvement culture

A culture of continuous improvement is promoted throughout the service and staff are encouraged to learn and develop. For example, the service has adopted the apprentice firefighter route for new recruits and introduced development assessment pathways for all operational staff. The development assessment pathways determine the training courses needed to be competent in current and future roles. They have been extended to roles in the protection team. The service plans to include other roles in future.

We are pleased to see that the service has a range of resources in place. This includes a new online learning system that all staff can easily access, including on-call staff. All staff have regular refresher training in topics including safeguarding, media, health and safety, and EDI. The service has also invested in leadership development courses from an external specialist for its managers. The service continues to develop staff through its annual training bursary scheme.

Most staff told us that they can access a range of learning and development resources. In response to our staff survey, 87.6 percent of respondents (197 of 225) said they had received sufficient training to do their job effectively. In addition, 87.1 percent (196 of 225) agreed that they were satisfied with the level of learning and development available to them.

Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service is good at ensuring fairness and promoting diversity.

Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service was required improvement in its 2018/19 assessment.

Creating a more representative workforce will provide huge benefits for fire and rescue services. This includes greater access to talent and different ways of thinking, and improved understanding of and engagement with their local communities. Each service should make sure that EDI is firmly understood and demonstrated throughout the organisation. This includes successfully taking steps to remove inequality and making progress to improve fairness, diversity and inclusion at all levels of the service. It should proactively seek and respond to feedback from staff and make sure any action taken is meaningful.

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 encouraging and acting on staff feedback

The service has developed several ways to engage with staff on issues and decisions that affect them. This includes methods to build all-staff awareness of fairness and diversity. It also includes targeted work with people to determine matters that affect different staff groups. Feedback and challenge are encouraged by senior leaders visiting stations, through a private, confidential reporting line or annual staff surveys.

The actions being taken to address matters raised are communicated and have been positively received by staff. This was an area for improvement in our previous inspection of the service in 2019. The service has published the results and agreed action plans following annual staff surveys. In our staff survey, 71.1 percent of respondents (160 of 225) said they were confident in the system for providing feedback to all levels. In addition, 77.3 percent of respondents (174 of 225) said they would be able to challenge ideas without any detriment. Representative bodies and staff associations reported that the service engages with them well.

The service is good at tackling bullying, harassment and discrimination

Staff have a good understanding of what bullying, harassment and discrimination are and the negative effect on colleagues and the organisation.

In response to our staff survey, 4.4 percent of respondents (10 of 225) told us they had been subject to harassment and 6.7 percent (15 of 225) to discrimination over the past 12 months. Of these staff, most did not think that their concerns had been dealt with appropriately.

Most staff are confident in the service’s approach to tackling bullying, harassment, discrimination, grievances and disciplinary matters. The service has updated its grievance procedures, which we identified as an area for improvement in our previous inspection. The service has made sure all staff are trained and clear about what to do if they encounter inappropriate behaviour.

The service could do more to improve its operational workforce diversity

The service knows it needs to go further to increase its operational workforce diversity. Limited development of its recruitment campaigns in 2021 meant wholetime firefighter recruitment rounds haven’t been directed at or accessible to under-represented groups. The service told us it had to rush these recruitment rounds due to a delay during the pandemic.

The service needs to encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds into operational roles. There has been slow progress to improve both the diversity of ethnic backgrounds and genders for operational staff in the service. None of the new wholetime firefighter recruits were women or from an ethnic minority background. Some success has been seen in on-call station areas due to localised promotional activities leading more women to join the service recently.

The service has improved its recruitment and retention processes

There is an open, fair and honest recruitment process for staff or those wishing to work for the fire and rescue service. The service has an effective system to understand and remove the risk of disproportionality in recruitment processes. Staff on interview panels receive unconscious bias and behavioural interview training.

The service has put a lot of effort into developing its wholetime recruitment processes so that they are fair and understood by potential applicants. Following its recruitment campaigns in 2021, the service evaluated its processes to understand where and why applicants might have dropped out. Additional support opportunities are being trialled by the service and include ongoing fitness sessions and interview skills and preparation support. We look forward to seeing the impact of this work.

The recruitment policies for all service roles are comprehensive. Recruitment opportunities are advertised both internally and externally.

The service has made some improvements in increasing staff diversity at all levels of the organisation. Of the whole workforce, 4.4 percent are from an ethnic minority background and 23.8 percent are women. This is higher than the proportion of women in the workforce across all fire and rescue services in England, which is 18 percent, and an improvement on HMICFRS data from 2017.

The service has acted positively to improve diversity. For example, it has expanded its internship opportunities to attract young people from more diverse backgrounds and provided permanent full-time employment to some of its previous Leonard Cheshire interns. This has been supported by the workforce.

The service promotes equality, diversity and inclusion with its workforce

The service has improved its approach to EDI. Staff spoke positively about the service’s focus and direction in understanding what more it could do. The service is making sure that it can offer the right services to its communities and support staff with protected characteristics.

Staff receive regular training in EDI. The EDI forum, disability network and separate steering group meet regularly to ensure progress against the service’s objectives. Police and other staff networks have been consulted to widen their understanding of supportive action. The service is good at providing reasonable adjustments and supporting staff with a disability.

In our staff survey, 91.6 percent of respondents (206 of 225) said they were treated fairly at work. In addition, 79.6 percent (179 of 225) agreed that they are given the same opportunity to develop as others.

The service has an effective process in place to assess and improve equality as needed. A comprehensive guidance document supports staff to consider the impact that a change in policy, practice or procedure might have on any of the protected characteristics. All completed equality impact assessments are stored and made available on the service’s intranet.

Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service is good at managing performance and developing leaders.

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

Fire and rescue services should have robust and meaningful performance management arrangements in place for their staff. All staff should be supported to meet their potential, and there should be a focus on developing staff and improving diversity into leadership roles.

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 good performance management process and should ensure consistency in its use

There is a good performance management system in place, which allows the service to develop and assess the individual performance of all staff. Each staff member has individual goals and objectives that reflect the service’s behavioural competency framework. There are regular performance assessments and completion rates are high. Data from the service shows that in the year ending 31 March 2021, almost 100 percent of staff had completed a performance development review.

Staff don’t always think the system is fair or meaningful. For example, some staff felt that their manager hadn’t given the same level of thought to the process that they had themselves. In our staff survey, 16.7 percent of respondents (37 of 221) reported that they don’t find performance reviews useful.

The service has improved its promotion and progression processes

The service has put considerable effort into developing its promotion and progression processes so that they are fair and understood by staff. Most staff said they were happy with the changes and that they felt the new process was and would be fair. The promotion and progression policies are comprehensive and cover opportunities in all roles.

The service has some effective succession planning processes in place. These processes allow it to effectively manage the career pathways of its staff, including some roles requiring specialist skills. The processes include development assessment pathways that have been clearly communicated. Staff are supported to access the process. At the time of inspection, the pathways didn’t cover all roles in the service and there were initial problems adapting the process to roles in control.

Selection processes are managed consistently using an initial blind sift. This is followed by interviews based on the behavioural competency framework and according to the level of leadership needed. Temporary promotions are used appropriately to fill short-term resourcing gaps.

The service is developing leaders and could do more to identify high-potential staff at all levels

The service has some talent management schemes in place to develop leaders and high-potential staff. A middle and senior-leadership development course has been well received by staff.

The service should consider putting in place more formal arrangements to identify and support members of staff to become senior leaders. There are clear gaps in its succession planning. As such, the area for improvement identified in our previous inspection in 2019 remains. The service should put in place an open and fair process to identify, develop and support high-potential staff and aspiring leaders.