​​Avon Fire and Rescue Service inspection – accelerated cause of concern​

Introduction

In our inspections, if we identify a more serious, critical or systemic shortcoming in providing a statutory function, practice, policy or performance, we will report it as a cause of concern. A cause of concern will always be accompanied by one or more recommendations. When we identify causes of concern during our inspections, we normally provide details in the subsequent fire and rescue service (FRS) report.

In some cases, such as in this instance, when we discover significant service failures or risks to public safety, we report our concerns and recommendations earlier. This is called an accelerated cause of concern.

The service needs to improve some of its systems

We’ve decided to issue Avon Fire and Rescue Service with two accelerated causes of concern, as we consider they pose a potential risk to public safety:

• The service doesn’t have an effective system to gather and record relevant and up-to-date risk information to help protect firefighters, the public and property during an emergency.
• The service’s mobilisation system, which records information and dispatches resources to emergency incidents, isn’t reliable and crashes during emergency 999 calls. This unnecessarily delays the mobilisation of resources, and results in the public receiving a slower response to emergencies.

During our 2021 inspection, we highlighted two areas for improvement:

• The service should make sure it gathers and records relevant and up-to-date risk information to help protect firefighters, the public and property during an emergency.
• The service should make sure staff are trained in how to carry out and identify site-specific risk information.

We are disappointed to find the service has made limited progress in addressing these areas for improvement. We recognise that the service has identified an additional 200 premises that require a site-specific risk information (SSRI) record. However, we aren’t confident that all buildings and places of risk have been identified, considering the demographics of the service area.

We found that most staff are still not trained in how to carry out a risk information visit. Worryingly, the service told us that on-call firefighters will complete risk information visits in high-rise residential buildings that have highly flammable cladding, with no training or quality assurance processes in place. Some of the SSRIs we reviewed were limited, inaccurate or out of date. For example, we found high-risk buildings in the area (including high-rise residential buildings) that have no risk information recorded. Concerningly, some operational staff told us it was more of a risk to use the information recorded during their response. They also said they didn’t find it useful, and that they didn’t use it as a result.

We are also concerned with the longstanding issues with the mobilisation system. During emergency 999 calls, the mobilisation system, which records information and dispatches resources to emergency incidents, isn’t reliable and crashes. This causes an unnecessary delay to the mobilisation of resources, and results in the public receiving a slower response to emergencies.

For example, we were concerned to hear that the ambulance service requested an emergency response to a serious road traffic collision. While the fire control operator was recording the information to dispatch resources, the system crashed. This resulted in the fire control operator having to use a different console and restart the whole process as other operators were busy taking other calls. These concerns have placed unnecessary stress on fire control staff. Worryingly, at the time of inspectors discovering these problems, they hadn’t been appropriately escalated and prioritised, and weren’t on the service’s corporate risk register. The service has limited plans in place to address these.

We have outlined the two accelerated causes of concern below:

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​​Avon Fire and Rescue Service inspection – accelerated cause of concern​