Agenda item

To consider Item 12

The Chairman advised Members that yesterday, he and the Chief Fire Officer had attended their first Fire Performance Oversight Group meeting. The Chairman felt that the Chief Fire Officer and Deputy Chief Fire Officer had done an excellent job in setting out the action and progress. It had been a very good supportive session. The Service had received support from the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), the Home Office and the Local Government Association. The headline feedback was that the Inspectorate were very impressed with the way the Service had responded to the report and the progress being made and they explicitly noted the Fire Authority’s support in terms of the transformation budget.

The Chief Fire Officer advised Members that the Inspectorate noted the good progress and acknowledged the huge amount of work to get to the position the Service was now in. Whilst the Service remained in the engaged process, the Inspectorate were really pleased with the direction of travel and were very complimentary about the fact that it was clear the Service was focused, had a really good plan in place, and knew what needed to be done next.

The Head of Technology, Transformation and PMO advised Members that in October 2023, the Service received its 2023-2025 Round 3 HMICFRS Inspection report. The Round 3 report was presented to the Extraordinary Fire Authority meeting on 24 October, with input from HMI Roy Wilsher. An HMICFRS Action Plan was developed and submitted to HMICFRS on 15 November and presented to the Authority on the 6 December. This report showed high level progress against the Action Plan. Four actions were completed as at the end of December 2023. A more detailed update would be presented to the Overview and Audit Committee. In November 2023, HMICFRS informed the Service that it would be entering the supportive engage process. The focus of the engage process was to assist the Service in finding ways to improve and resolve the identified causes of concern and provide a better service for the public.

To ensure focus on the HMICFRS action plan and to support the engage process, the Service had set up a HMICFRS Improvement Board chaired by the Chief Fire Officer. The terms of reference could be found at Appendix 1. Alongside delivering the Action Plan and preparing for the Fire Performance Oversight Group, officers were starting to focus on the HMICFRS Revisit in May 2024.

Officers had continued to engage with a wide range of key partners and peers to provide scrutiny over the last 8 months and the Service thanked them for their continued support.

The Chairman advised that he had seen some press comment on the progress of the equality, diversity and inclusion actions, specifically the 12 that had not yet been started, why was this and what does it relate to.

The Head of Human Resources advised Members that when the plan was put together, officers needed to map out that not everything could be done at the same time. To be realistic, dates were added. Although some of the things had not yet been started, the work towards them had been started. Where they were not yet started, it did not mean they were delayed. The more significant actions were prioritised in the plan.

The Chief Fire Officer advised Members that there were a lot of actions within the Action Plan and some of the actions that looked like they have not been started could actually be consolidated into other subheadings, because the work had been done, it had just not been recognised or had not been included in the plan yet. Buckinghamshire Council had very kindly given the Service a Secondee for one day a week, to help consolidate some of those plans.

The Chief Fire Officer also advised that the Service had been given the opportunity with some transformation money to look to put in a more fulltime position to support some of the ED&I and people and culture work that the Service wanted to do.

RESOLVED –

That the Authority note the BFRS HMICFRS 2023 update.