East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service identifies risk well, but further progress is needed in fire prevention
East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service has made progress since its previous inspection, but needs to improve its fire prevention activity, the fire inspectorate has said.
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Effectiveness, efficiency and people 2023–2025: East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has graded East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service’s performance across 11 areas. It found the service was ‘good’ in six areas, ‘adequate’ in four areas and ‘requires improvement’ in just one area.
HMICFRS said the service works effectively with partners to reduce risk and promote community safety. For example, it has introduced a public advisory group, to better understand gaps in the service. It also routinely collects and updates the information it has about the highest-risk people, places and threats it has identified. This process allows risk to be triaged, higher risks identified, and resources allocated accordingly, to better mitigate that risk.
Inspectors said that the service has a sound understanding of future financial challenges and has carried out a considerable amount of work to find ways to save. It aims to adopt changing technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness and routinely looks for opportunities to work with others to provide better services.
The inspectorate found that the service has improved its approach to equality, diversity and inclusion. It makes sure it can offer the right services to its communities and can support staff with protected characteristics. It has a good strategic direction for this work. HMICFRS also said that service has made good progress to improve its feedback systems, but it needs to make sure that all staff are confident to use them.
Inspectors said that the service should improve its prevention activity and make sure it can effectively carry out home safety visits in a timely manner. During the inspection, HMICFRS was pleased to see that service had already begun to address this.
The inspectorate said that the service also needs to improve its ability to respond to major incidents involving tall buildings. Inspectors found that the service relies too heavily on paper-based systems. This means that staff in the emergency control room, at the incident and in assisting control rooms can’t share, view and update actions in real time.
His Majesty’s Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services Roy Wilsher said:
“I am pleased with the performance of East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service in keeping people safe and secure from fire and other risks in some areas.
“It was positive to see that the service has made progress since our previous inspection. For example, it has improved the way it identifies, assesses and mitigates risks in line with a robust risk mitigation process.
“However, the service needs to improve in other areas to provide a consistently good service. For example, by making sure it offers effective prevention activities to its communities and that it can consistently meet the welfare needs of staff following operational incidents.
“Overall, I am satisfied with East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service’s performance and the improvements it has made since our last inspection. I encourage it to continue to improve in the areas we have highlighted.”
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Effectiveness, efficiency and people 2023–2025: East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service
Notes
- For further information, please contact the HMICFRS Press Office on 0300 071 6781 or HMICPressOffice@hmicfrs.gov.uk.
- This inspection contains our third assessment of the service’s effectiveness and efficiency, and how well it looks after its people. We have measured the service against 11 areas and given a grade for each.
- We haven’t given separate grades for effectiveness, efficiency and people as we did previously. This is to encourage the service to consider our inspection findings as a whole and not focus on just one area.
- We have expanded our previous four-tier system of judgements to five. These changes mean that it isn’t possible to make direct comparisons between grades awarded in this round of inspections with those from previous years.
- A reduction in grade, particularly from good to adequate, doesn’t necessarily mean that there has been a reduction in performance unless we say so in the report.
- Read more information about the 2023-25 assessment framework for fire and rescue service inspections.