Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service causes of concern revisit letter

This letter was sent by HMI Zoë Billingham to Darren Dovey, Chief Fire Officer of Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service and Stephen Mold, Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner on 19 March 2021. 

In December 2020, you gave us your updated action plans for responding to your causes of concern, which we have reviewed. This letter sets out our assessment of these plans and next steps.

The focus of these plans was the causes of concern we gave after our inspection of the service in November 2018. These were:

1. The service’s fire engine availability is regularly less than the minimum number of engines needed to give fire cover to the public of Northamptonshire. And control room supervisors don’t routinely notify the officer on duty when fire engine availability falls below the minimum level as outlined in the operational response mobilising policy. The service has no formal process to manage this situation when the officer on duty has been notified.
2. The service can’t assure itself that its firefighters have all safety-critical skills needed to respond to emergency incidents. Training records on the central training database were out of date. Also, line managers weren’t keeping competence records up to date.

We have revisited the service twice to review progress, in June 2019 and March 2020. From these revisits we are satisfied that the service has made positive progress in relation to the causes of concern we identified. After each revisit we gave you a summary of our findings, which were published on our website. We said we would continue to monitor progress through updates from the service and data returns.

After reviewing your plans, it is clear the service now has established procedures in place to make sure it has appropriate oversight on fire engine availability. Action is also being taken to increase fire engine availability, which we note was much improved during the pandemic, in part because some on-call firefighters were furloughed or no longer engaged in their primary employment. This improvement needs to be sustained.

We also recognise the service’s increased focus on recruitment, selection and staff training. Regular audits of training and competence records make sure that staff meet the required standard or revalidation timescales. Updated guidance and improved ways of working assure the service that risk-critical training is reported on, and action is taken if needed.

The tangible improvements we have seen since our 2018 inspection have mitigated the risks to public safety. The service also has access to, and uses more efficiently, better performance data and management information.

There continue to be effective governance arrangements within the service and through the police, fire and crime commissioner to scrutinise progress.

Overall, we are pleased that Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service has improved how it manages its fire engine availability, and how it maintains and assures itself about the competence of its staff. We recognise the considerable work that has been carried out to support these improvements. As a result, we now consider sufficient action has been taken to close these causes of concern. But we will continue to consider these matters during our scheduled inspection of the service in 2021.

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Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service causes of concern revisit