Agenda item

2025-30 CRMP Listening and Engagement Consultation Outcomes

“That the report be submitted to 11 October 2023 Fire Authority meeting for information and noting”.

The report considered by the Executive Committee is attached at item 13(b).

(b)       2025-30 CRMP Listening and Engagement Consultation Outcomes

The Corporate Planning Manager advised Members that this Consultation was carried out as part of wider consultation and engagement activities with other key stakeholders, including the Authority’s own staff and partner organisations, the findings from which would be included in summary form in the draft CRMP ahead of the formal public consultation stage.

Officers carried out initial consultations at an early stage in the CRMP development process in order to comply with the National Framework and Fire Standard requirements and, also, those long established by the Gunning Principles, as they set out the legal tests that define what constitutes a legitimate consultation. Including, for example, that proposals were consulted on when they were still at a formative stage, to ensure that decisions had not been subject to pre-determination; and, that there was sufficient information to enable intelligent consideration resulting in an informed response.

These requirements tend to favour qualitative methods of consultation when dealing with complex issues, hence the use of independently and expertly facilitated focus groups that allowed participants to discuss and consider CRMP related issues and proposals in depth.

Members would see in the report a diverse and broadly representative sample of the population was recruited to participate in the consultation. Because of this, Opinion Research Services, who carried out the consultation, advised that the outcomes were broadly indicative of how the public at large would incline if engagement with a much larger proportion of the population was undertaken.

The Corporate Planning Manager advised Members that the consultation was structured into two main parts, firstly, an exploration of the participants’ perceptions of risk in their communities and of BFRS as a Service, covering things like their awareness of what it does, whether it was value for money etc. As with previous consultations of this type, fire was seldom mentioned spontaneously as something that the participants worry about on a day to day basis, even though they knew that the consultation had been commissioned by the fire and rescue service. However, there was a good exploration of some topical fire risks later on in the discussions such as wildfire and those related to lithium-ion batteries.

The second part explored some of the challenges that the Service faced and potential ways that it might respond to them. These included key issues raised by the HMICFRS in their Round 2 inspection report including the future of on-call services, automatic fire alarms and workforce diversity.

The Chairman asked about workforce diversity and setting out the perception challenge that the Service had, both around the importance of diversity and how it attracted different parts of the community that it serves, as well as informing the CRMP process. It was important to include it in the ongoing communication and recruitment activity.

The Head of Human Resources advised that with regard to recruitment, the Workforce Planning Group met on a monthly basis, and now the Service had reached the establishment target, were looking at what to focus on next. The five key areas were diversity, communication, recruitment, succession and talent management and retention.

The Chairman asked about on call availability and the future of the on call service, and stated he was surprised that options were being explored with residents as it did not need to go through formal consultation. The Chairman felt there were things the Service could be doing now and asked officers what they could be getting on with as there was significant challenge with on call availability.

The Head of Protection, Assurance and Development advised there were currently on call trials which were trialling different things at different stations. At some stations the traditional on call model was extremely challenging, and the trials were making the most of the number of on call firefighters rather than the number of on call stations. The CRMP was key to future delivery, but Officers were doing work in the meantime to seek improvements around response.

The Chairman asked for a report on the on call strategy to be brought to a future Executive Committee meeting and then Fire Authority meeting.

A Member asked in terms of recruitment of diversity, in Milton Keynes 46% were from a diverse background how was the Service targeting young people from different backgrounds.

The Head of Human Resources advised that the current recruitment campaign was focused on women. Previously work was done on the South Asian community. When a recruitment campaign was undertaken, reports were run on who was applying, their protected characteristics and when they were falling out of the application process. This gave information on what needed to be targeted.

RESOLVED –

That the report be noted.