Approval of Fire and Rescue Service new Emergency Response Standards.

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A decision made (23/10/2008) regarding: Approval of Fire and Rescue Service new Emergency Response Standards.

Decision Reference: MD-HA-2008-0073
Decision Summary Title :	Fire & Rescue Service New Emergency Response Standards		Date of Decision Summary:	17 October 2008
Decision Summary Author:	Chief Fire Officer Mark James		Decision Summary: Public or Exempt?	Public
Type of Report: Oral or Written?	Written		Person Giving Oral Report:
Written Report Title :	States of Jersey Fire & Rescue Service – New Emergency Response Standards		Date of Written Report:	17 October 2008
Written Report Author:	Chief Fire Officer Mark James		Written Report : Public or Exempt?	Public
Subject: Approval of the Fire & Rescue Service new Emergency Response Standards
Decision(s): The Minister approved the setting of new Fire & Rescue Service Emergency Response Standards for fires and other emergency incidents in Jersey based on the Service’s Island Risk Profile and UK ‘best practice’ response standards.
Reason(s) for Decision: New standards have been developed as part of the Service’s Integrated Risk Management Plan 2007 – 2009 and following the withdrawal of the old UK national standards in 2004. The Service has determined new standards in relation to the Island Risk Profile Parish categorisation to reduce the risk to “as low as reasonably practicable”. The new response standards not only cover emergency response times to fires but also other life threatening incidents that the Service responses to such as Road Traffic Collisions, Sea Rescue and Cliff Rescues.
Resource Implications: The new emergency response standards will not require any additional resources nor will they result in any reduction in our current emergency response levels or capability.
Action required: The Chief Fire Officer to arrange for the new standards to be adopted and measured to ensure continuous improvement.
Signature:		Position: Minister for Home Affairs
Date Signed:		Date of Decision (If different from Date Signed):

Approval of Fire and Rescue Service new Emergency Response Standards.

Report

To: Senator W Kinnard, Minister for Home Affairs

Deputy A Lewis, Assistant Minister for Home Affairs

Steven Austin-Vautier, Chief Officer, Home Affairs

From: Chief Fire Officer Mark James

Date: 17th October 2008

Subject: Fire & Rescue Service New Emergency Response Standards

Purpose

1.1 The purpose of this report is to advise the Minister that the Fire & Rescue Service has determined new emergency response standards for fires and other emergency incidents based on the Service’s Island Risk Profile and UK ‘best practice’ response standards. This report will also provide additional information in supporting the decision making process in relation to adopting the new standards for the Fire & Rescue Service.

Background

2.1 Until 2003, Fire & Rescue Service emergency response standards where based on the UK National Standards of Fire Cover. These national standards were based on a simple property index that guided fire services to identify resource needs by a process of categorising buildings. It is now widely accepted that these standards no longer accurately reflect the true fire risk created by modern society. These standards were based on property details alone (primarily commercial) and did not reflect life risk from fire. This created a situation where the very areas that the fire service was most likely to have to undertake rescues i.e. residential properties, received less priority than commercial buildings. In addition, the standards related only to fire related incidents and therefore set no standard for attendance at other emergency incidents such as road traffic collisions.

2.2 Following the introduction of Integrated Risk Management Planning in 2003, Fire and Rescue Services were advised to develop their own standards and the national standards were withdrawn in 2004. Since the States of Jersey Fire & Rescue Service did not have any means of community fire risk assessment they adopted an interim policy to maintain existing standards of fire cover by setting an Island response standard to fires only of one fire appliance within 8 minutes for 80% of the fires attended. This measure did not include call handling or mobilising time; it purely measured the travel time for a fire appliance only.

3.0 Matching Risk to Emergency Response Standards

3.1 For the new standards to be based upon the risk to life it is not possible, nor appropriate, to have a single standard that covers the whole of the Island. Risk to life in an area is inextricably linked to the number of people at risk in that area. Therefore a method of categorising the risk in various parts of the Island was needed to define new response standards.

3.2 To achieve this, the Service embarked on a project in 2007 to fire risk profile the Island by bringing together various sources of risk information such as UK statistics and research, local social demographic information and local fire statistics on the type and number of incidents that have occurred. The Island Fire Risk Profile was finalised and published in April 2008. This has enabled the Fire & Rescue Service to determine new local emergency response for Jersey, a fundamental element of the Service’s IRMP

4.0 Determining New Emergency Response Standards

4.1 Although there are no prescriptive response standards for the Fire & Rescue Service, since the removal of the UK National Standards of Fire Cover, the Fire Service Emergency Cover Toolkit makes recommendations for the operational resources required for the initial response and the response times for each risk category that have become a ‘best practice for UK fire & rescue services, as follows.

High Fire Rate category areas within 10 minutes
Medium Fire Rate category areas within15 minutes
Low Fire Rate category areas within 20 minutes

4.2 The Island Risk Profile has been used to review our current emergency response standards and determine new standards in relation to the Island Risk Profile Parish categorisation to reduce the risk to “as low as reasonably practicable”. Residents in areas with higher rates of casualty and slower response times tend to have a higher risk of fire injury.

4.3 The new response standards not only cover emergency response times to fires but also other life threatening incidents that the Service responses to such as Road Traffic Collisions, Sea Rescue and Cliff Rescues. We have set response standards for the following types of emergency incident:

A Property Fire - with one or two casualties.
A Road Traffic Collision entailing extrication of a trapped casualty - or similar incident.
An emergency special service incident involving cliff or sea rescue

4.4 These scenarios are regarded to be the “worst cases” that it is reasonable to plan for. It is assumed that if there are adequate resources to handle these “worst case” scenarios, that the same resources should also be able to handle lesser incidents of the same type. For example, an emergency response designed to deal with a property fire would also be able to handle shed fires, skip fires, fires in derelict houses etc.

5.0 The New Emergency Response Standards

5.1 The response times to fires and other emergency incidents are calculated from receipt of the 999 phone call to in-attendance at the incident address and are based on the Parish risk categories, as follows:

5.2 Property Fires

5.2.1 The initial response to a property fire is designed to deal with a worst case scenario fire with the occupants reported trapped by the fire. UK Critical Attendance Standards (CAST) has identified that the time lag between the arrival of the first and second fire appliance should not exceed 3 minutes to allow the continuation of safe operating procedures to fight the fire. The response standard to property fires will therefore be defined for the arrival of the 1st and 2nd fire appliance using a 3-minute time delay.

Property Fires
Risk Areas	Attendance of 1st Appliance in:	Attendance of 2nd Appliance in:
High	< = 10 minutes	13 minutes
Medium	< = 15minutes	18 minutes
Low	< = 20minutes	23 minutes
Target	80%	80%

5.3 Road Traffic Collisions (RTC)

5.3.1 The response times to Road Traffic Collisions (RTC) will mirror the dwelling fire response times, since the RTC risk for each parish is either equal to or lower than the fire risk. The predetermined attendance for an RTC requiring casualty extrication is the nearest located standard fire appliance and the Rescue Unit based in St Helier. Therefore response standard for RTCs is as follows:

Road Traffic Collisions
Risk Areas	Attendance of 1st Appliance in:	Attendance of Rescue Unit in
High Risk	< = 10 minutes	< = 20 minutes
Medium Risk	< = 15minutes	< = 20 minutes
Low Risk	< = 20 minutes	< = 20 minutes
Target	80%	80%

5.4 Sea Rescue & Line/Cliff Rescue

Sea rescues and line rescues can occur anywhere around the shores of the island. The predetermined attendance for a cliff and sea rescues require specialist equipment and trained personnel based in St Helier fire station. Due to the special mobilisation requirements of Cliff/Sea Rescue there is a delayed mobilisation of 5 minutes whilst the crews change appliances and make ready the equipment. The response times are therefore governed by the location of the incident and are defined for each parish coastline as follows:

Sea & Cliff Rescues
Parish risk	Attendance of specialist rescue resource
St Helier, St Saviour, St Lawrence	13 minutes
St Clement, Grouville, St Martin, Trinity, St John, St Mary	18 minutes
St Peter, St Brelade, St Ouen	23 minutes
Target	80%

5.5 It is important to note that these new emergency response standards will not result in any reduction in our current emergency response levels or capability.

6.0 Reducing Risk

6.1 Emergency response is the final resort in terms of reducing risks, and this forms just one element of the fire services wider community risk reduction role. Our new response standards will be viewed in this context, and will act as another indicator to focus our preventative activity. The Service’s new Community Safety Strategy will ensure that the level of community fire safety resources allocated to a Parish or a specific section of the community are commensurate with the risk, i.e. more resources will be allocated to larger communities and areas with higher rates of fire. Our new standards will reflect the success or otherwise of the community safety activities, therefore where risk is reduced, the response standard will reflect this accordingly. Conversely if new risks emerge, or the frequency and severity of incidents increase, an increase in standards of response will follow. The regular review of emergency activity will be an inherent feature of our new standards.

7. Recommendation

7.1 It is recommended that the new Fire & Rescue Service Emergency Response Standards be approved and reviewed regularly to ensure that the response is commensurate with the risks in Jersey.