COVID-19 inspection: Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service

Letter information

From:
Wendy Williams
Her Majesty’s Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services

To:
Aisling Khan, Chief Fire Executive
Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service

Councillor Robert Francis, Chairman of Council
Isles of Scilly Council

Sent on:
22 January 2021

Introduction

In August 2020, we were commissioned by the Home Secretary to inspect how fire and rescue services in England are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. This letter from HMI Wendy Williams to the Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service sets out our assessment of the effectiveness of the service’s response to the pandemic.

The pandemic is a global event that has affected everyone and every organisation. Fire and rescue services have had to continue to provide a service to the public and, like every other public service, have had to do so within the restrictions imposed.

For this inspection, we were asked by the Home Secretary to consider what is working well and what is being learned; how the fire sector is responding to the COVID-19 crisis; how fire services are dealing with the problems they face; and what changes are likely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recognise that the pandemic is not over and as such this inspection concerns the service’s initial response.

I am grateful for the positive and constructive way your service engaged with our inspection. I am also very grateful to your service for the positive contribution you have made to your community during the pandemic. We inspected your service between 12 and 23 October 2020. This letter summarises our findings.

In relation to your service, the Isles of Scilly Council Operational Incident Cell (OpIC) declared a major incident on 23 March 2020.

In summary, we were pleased to see how the service met its statutory functions during the pandemic, despite its size and location.

Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service is the smallest fire and rescue service in England. Each of the five inhabited islands has a fire station crewed by on-call firefighters. These firefighters respond when there is an emergency but have other jobs when they are not responding to emergencies.

No COVID-19 cases were reported on the islands from the start of the pandemic to 22 September 2020. As a result, the focus has been on maintaining the resilience of the island’s infrastructure. There is a ‘One Island’ public service approach, whereby all departments work together to respond to the pandemic. This multi-agency work is co ordinated by OpIC, a sub-group of the Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Resilience Forum (LRF).

The fire and rescue service supported the inhabitants of the Isles of Scilly well during the pandemic. The service introduced plans to improve resilience and made sure it maintained its emergency response. Working with adult social services, home safety was prioritised for those most at risk. Although building safety visits were delayed, arrangements were put in place to deal with high-risk building problems as required. Online webinars were used to provide business safety advice.

Notably, the service worked closely with the Council of the Isles of Scilly and partners to respond to the challenges the islands faced during the pandemic. Despite limited resources, the service supported OpIC to plan for, and respond to, the pandemic. Firefighters volunteered to help the island’s interim undertaker/mortuary service. The service is now working with the council to consider how its role in the multi-agency forum can be developed.

As all the island’s firefighters are on-call, when not responding to emergencies they return to their main employment. They contribute to maintaining the islands and their infrastructure, undertaking roles including coastguard, paramedic, airport firefighter, farmer and distribution driver.

We recognise that the arrangements for managing the pandemic may carry on for some time, and that the service is now planning for the future. In order to be as efficient and effective as possible, Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service should focus on the following areas:

1. It should determine how it will adopt, for the longer term, the new and innovative ways of working introduced during the pandemic, to secure lasting improvements.
2. It should consider how to make sure all its operational staff continue to have the risk-critical skills and fitness they need. This includes giving them the required training and, where appropriate, assessment or re-validation.
3. It should identify those staff at higher risk from COVID-19, so it can put appropriate wellbeing and support provisions in place.

Preparing for the pandemic

The service undertook a business continuity impact assessment in early March 2020. This highlighted the problems the service was likely to face during the pandemic. It worked with Isles of Scilly OpIC to resolve these problems and develop a business continuity plan for operational response. This plan wasn’t activated. While the service doesn’t have a specific pandemic flu plan, it and the Council of the Isles of Scilly use the Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly local health resilience partnership and LRF’s pandemic flu plan.

The plans were detailed enough to enable the service to make an effective initial response, but understandably they didn’t anticipate and mitigate all the risks presented by COVID-19.

The service has reviewed its plans to reflect the changing situation and what it has learned during the pandemic.

The plans now include further detail on degradation arrangements for response, social distancing, making premises ‘COVID-secure’ and the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE).

Fulfilling statutory functions

The main functions of a fire and rescue service are firefighting, promoting fire safety through prevention and protection (making sure building owners comply with fire safety legislation), rescuing people in road traffic collisions, and responding to emergencies.

The service has continued to provide its core statutory functions throughout the pandemic in line with advice from the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC). This means the service has continued to respond to calls from the public and attend emergencies. It has also continued some prevention activity focused on those at greatest risk from fire. The service has arrangements in place for Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service (CFRS) to provide its protection activities. Most businesses on the island were closed between March and July, but CFRS was available to respond to reports of high-risk problems in this period as needed.

Response

The service told us that between 1 April and 30 June 2020 it attended broadly the same number of incidents as it did during the same period in 2019.

The service introduced a different crewing model as a temporary measure during this period. It reduced the number of firefighters on its fire engines to four. This protected staff health by allowing firefighters to maintain social distancing when travelling to emergencies.

The overall availability of fire engines was the same during the pandemic as it was during the same period in 2019. Between 1 April and 30 June 2020, the service’s average fire engine availability was 100 percent, the same as during the same period in 2019. This was as a result of there being no COVID-19 illness in the service and little need for staff to self-isolate.

The service told us that its average response time to fires remained broadly the same during the pandemic compared with the same period in 2019. This may not be reflected in official statistics recently published by the Home Office, because services don’t all collect and calculate their data the same way.

The service’s emergency control room is provided through a partnership with CFRS. CFRS maintained an effective and resilient service to Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service during the pandemic.

CFRS introduced early isolation measures for its control room, increased the test frequency for its fallback arrangements and re-engaged recently retired staff to boost staff availability.

Prevention

The NFCC issued guidance explaining how services should take a risk-based approach to continuing prevention activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The service introduced its own procedures based on NFCC guidance. Supported by advice from CFRS, this enabled it to maintain its prevention capability while protecting staff and members of the public.

Over the period we reviewed, the service conducted fewer home fire safety checks than normal. The service reviewed those individuals and groups it considered to be at an increased risk from fire as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it introduced a new referral procedure and postponed its routine home fire safety checks. During this time, it responded to referrals from adult social services or a concern raised about a specific person. It adopted a safe operating procedure for face-to-face home fire safety visits by limiting the number of staff who would make visits and providing them with suitable PPE. This allowed the service to focus its limited resources on those it assessed as being at the greatest risk from fire.

Protection

The NFCC issued guidance on how to continue protection activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes maintaining a risk-based approach, completing desktop audits and issuing enforcement notices electronically. Activity included carrying out audits on those premises at greatest risk from fire. Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service has an agreement with CFRS to provide protection services on its behalf. CFRS adopted this guidance.

The service reviewed its definition of high-risk premises with CFRS during the pandemic. It didn’t change its assessment of risk because most businesses, including hotels and guest houses, were closed during lockdown and visitors to the islands had reduced significantly. The service couldn’t do its normal fire safety audits over the period we reviewed because most businesses were closed.

CFRS maintained its ability to visit the islands so it could issue enforcement notices and prohibition notices, but it didn’t need to. CFRS continued to respond to statutory building control consultations and planning applications on behalf of Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service.

CFRS also introduced other measures to reduce social contact, such as providing telephone advice to Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service and partners such as Isles of Scilly Environmental Health and providing business safety webinars to support businesses as they reopened after lockdown.

Staff health and safety and wellbeing

The service focused on employee welfare during the pandemic and provided a range of additional support. It contacted staff and signposted the availability of existing wellbeing support resources such as occupational health and the employee assistance programme, Care First. It also used some welfare resources provided by CFRS. The service could have proactively talked to staff about their needs and assessed if they needed extra tailored support (in particular those with underlying health problems or at higher risk from COVID-19). These members of staff weren’t offered the tailored support that they may have needed.

Mental health support put in place for staff included occupational health, peer support and access to external resources such as the service’s staff support line, Care First. The service has recently started to discuss with staff how it should plan for the potential longer-term effects of COVID-19 on its workforce.

The service re-organised its routine training sessions to take account of the pandemic. This allowed firefighters to continue practical training in smaller groups while maintaining social distancing. This helped the service maintain most firefighting skills. However, some risk-critical training lapsed as COVID-19 restrictions prevented firefighters travelling to Cornwall for the courses. The service is taking steps to make sure that if there are any future lapses, firefighters awaiting training are assessed locally to make sure they are safe.

No firefighter medicals or fitness assessments were due during the first phase of the pandemic.

The service made sure there was a risk assessment for new work and that its staff had the skills and equipment needed to work safely and effectively.

The service provided its workforce with suitable PPE on time and made sure it got value for money. It did so by purchasing its PPE via CFRS, which used several contracts to get value for money.

Staff absence

Absences have decreased compared with the same period in 2019. No days were lost due to sickness between 1 April and 30 June 2020, compared with 63 recorded for the same period in 2019.

The service provided extra guidance so that it could better manage staff wellbeing and health and safety, and make more effective decisions on how to allocate work. This included information about recording absences, self isolation and bereavement. Data was routinely collected on the numbers of staff absent, self-isolating and working from home.

Staff engagement

The service used telephone, email, social media and messaging services when communicating with on-call staff during the pandemic.

The service intends to maintain changes it has made to its ways of working in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including virtual communications and improved signposting to the employee support service.

Working with others, and making changes locally

To protect communities, fire and rescue service staff were encouraged to carry out extra roles beyond their core duties. This was to support other local blue light services and other public service providers that were experiencing high levels of demand, and to offer other support to its communities.

A national ‘tripartite agreement’ was put in place to include the new activities that firefighters could carry out during the pandemic. The agreement was between the NFCC, National Employers and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), and specifies what new roles firefighters could provide during the pandemic. Each service then consulted locally on the specific work it had been asked to support to agree how to address any health and safety requirements, including risk assessments. If public sector partners requested further support outside the tripartite agreement, the specifics would need to be agreed nationally before the work could begin.

As part of the pandemic response, the service took on some extra work besides its core responsibilities. While this work was agreed outside of the tripartite agreement, it followed its principles. The service made sure the work was risk-assessed and complied with health and safety requirements.

The island’s undertaker service was affected during the first phase of the pandemic because all the undertakers had to shield. To continue this essential service, OpIC established an interim undertaker/mortuary capability. Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service was asked to support the interim service. Some of the island’s firefighters were trained and helped in moving the deceased.

As there is no local FBU or other representative body operating on the Isles of Scilly, managers discussed the request with firefighters. Volunteers were sought to do the work. This was agreed, staff were trained and the service was introduced on time for a prompt start, in line with the request from OpIC.

As well as the support the island’s firefighters provided for OpIC, they contributed to the One Island response through their primary employment. They undertake many important roles, including coastguard, paramedic, airport firefighter, farmer and distribution driver.

Activities undertaken during this period to support other organisations were monitored and reviewed. The Council of the Isles of Scilly is reviewing the fire service’s role in the multi-agency forum that replaced OpIC to identify whether the service and its firefighters can further support the islands.

Local resilience forum

To keep the public safe, fire and rescue services work with other organisations to assess the risk of an emergency, and to maintain plans for responding to one. To do so, the service should be an integrated and active member of its LRF. All agencies and partners from the Isles of Scilly are represented on the Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly LRF by the chief executive of the Council of the Isles of Scilly. The council established an OpIC to lead and co-ordinate the island’s response to the challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service was a member of OpIC.

The service was an active member of OpIC during the pandemic. The service told us that the management and co-ordination arrangements introduced by OpIC enabled it to fully engage in the multi-agency response.

The service was a member of the excess deaths team. It could allocate qualified staff to participate in this group without affecting its core duties.

Use of resources

The service’s financial position hasn’t yet been significantly affected by the pandemic.

The service is a small organisation that operates as a department of the Council of the Isles of Scilly. It has its own budget for day-to-day operations, but the extra costs it incurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic were so small they were managed through the council’s budget. As a result, we can’t establish what the service’s extra costs were. The service told us its main extra costs were extra cleaning of fire stations to maintain their COVID-19 security and the provision of PPE.

The service had access to government COVID-19 grant funding, which could be requested from the Council of the Isles of Scilly if needed. The service didn’t need to ask for extra funding.

The service didn’t need to apply to the council to access reserves during this time.

The service didn’t need to use overtime during the pandemic.

Ways of working

The service changed how it operates during the pandemic. For example, it reduced the crewing on its fire engines and response vehicles and reorganised its training sessions. This allowed firefighters to keep safe and maintain social distancing. It helped formalise the OpIC/multi-agency forum and is working to see how its multi-agency role can be developed.

In the first stages of the pandemic, the service couldn’t provide the IT equipment that would have improved remote communication and access to online training resources for firefighters, particularly those on the ‘off islands’. The service has since taken steps to resolve this. It used arrangements with Cornwall Council to make sure that procurement processes for new IT equipment got good value for money.

The service made some use of the resources and guidance available from the NFCC to support its workforce planning, or help with its work supporting partner agencies.

Staffing

The service had enough resources available to respond to the level of demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to reallocate resources where needed to support the work of its partner organisations.

The service put in place arrangements to monitor firefighter availability daily. This meant the service had a clear understanding of its capacity to respond to emergency incidents and support the work of OpIC. When firefighters were called to help the interim undertakers, the service updated the control room to let them know of the impact on operational availability. All firefighters are on call. When not responding to emergency incidents or helping the interim undertaker, they have other supportive roles, including ambulance paramedic, coastguard, farmer and tri-service responder.

The on-call workforce took on extra responsibility, covering the interim undertaker/mortuary service and the excess death team preparations.

Governance of the service’s response

Each fire and rescue service is overseen by a fire and rescue authority. There are several different governance arrangements in place across England, and the size of the authority varies between services. Each authority ultimately has the same function: to set the service’s priorities and budget and make sure that the budget is spent wisely.

Members of the Council of the Isles of Scilly maintained overview and scrutiny of the islands’ response to the pandemic. The full council received weekly and then monthly updates on the work of OpIC and multi-agency forum. These updates included a report from the chief fire executive about the service’s role and its capacity to respond.

The Council of the Isles of Scilly and the service maintained a constructive relationship. The service regularly updated the council about how it was responding to the pandemic and the extra activities of its staff. This included work besides its core responsibilities.

Looking to the future

During the pandemic, services were able to adapt quickly to new ways of working. This meant they could respond to emergencies and take on a greater role in the community by supporting other blue light services and partner agencies. It is now essential that services use their experiences during COVID-19 as a platform for lasting reform and modernisation.

The Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service was an effective member of OpIC, which brought together local response agencies and partners in a co-ordinated One Island response to the pandemic. Its willingness to support planning and provide capacity to help partners was recognised by the council. The service is now working with the council to explore how its role in the multi-agency forum can be developed.

The service recognised that adult social services could provide information about vulnerable people and groups. This became the primary referral route for home safety visits during the pandemic. The service plans to work closer with adult social services so it can help support these vulnerable groups.

The service actively collaborated with other fire and rescue services in the south-west. This included regular meetings between chief fire officers to exchange learning from the pandemic. Services shared good practice and information, including from their experiences of the initial stage of the pandemic. All services evaluated the activities they undertook in the tripartite agreement and the work they carried out in the community. This allowed them to share information on prevention, protection, response activities and staff wellbeing. Those involved in the collaboration produced a case study detailing the activities of each fire and rescue service, and how each one responded to the initial phase of the pandemic.

Next steps

We propose restarting our second round of effectiveness and efficiency fire and rescue inspections in spring 2021, when we will follow up on our findings.

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COVID-19 inspection: Isles of Scilly Fire and Rescue Service