London Fire Service (LFS) has limited resource to respond to terrorist incidents, official inspectors have reported.
In an inspection of LFS as part of a wider England-wide programme of inspections – a second full assessment of fire and rescue services in England – Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found that the brigade has a well-trained specialist team who respond to terrorist incidents. “But we were concerned that, at the time of inspection, the brigade hadn’t trained its non-specialist firefighters to respond to marauding terrorist attacks. This could affect how its firefighters work alongside other blue light responders. If they aren’t following the same procedures, public safety could be compromised. This means the brigade has a limited response to terrorist incidents.”
Inspectors also saw an ‘area for improvement’ in London in that the ‘brigade should make sure it is well-prepared to form part of a multi-agency response to an incident and all relevant staff know how to apply JESIP’, JESIP being a Joint Doctrine: an interoperability framework as a standard approach to multi-agency working. (More on JESIP in the September print edition of Professional Security magazine.)
The inspectors did comment that the fire service generally continues to be well prepared to respond to routine and major emergency incidents. There has been a positive shift in services prioritising fire protection, but some services (six out of 15 inspected in this round) do not prioritise fire prevention activity enough, inspectors said – prevention (whether of fires, or floods or road accidents) having long been the ‘poor relation’ compared with actual fire fighting.
In September 2021, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector wrote a letter to the Commissioner of London Fire Brigade, the inspection report repeated. “This was to express concern that firefighters
were being offered a pay increase to compensate them for performing fire and rescue duties in the case of a marauding terrorist attack, in effect paying them twice. We are yet to be satisfied that these funding proposals are an efficient use of public money.”
In a response to the report London Fire Commissioner Andy Roe said: “Over the past two years London Fire Brigade has been transforming how it works to provide a better service for Londoners.”
In March a Marauding Terrorist Attack Agreement was put in place with the support of the Fire Brigades Union and firefighters began undertaking training, with 91 per cent of frontline staff having already completed a theory package and with practical training and exercising to follow as a priority, the Commissioner said.
Some stats
In 2021, fire and rescue services attended 555,358 incidents. Average response time to primary fires in England in 2021 was eight minutes and 46 seconds – an increase of 11 seconds compared to the previous year. That is mainly ‘drive time’.
Her Majesty’s Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services Roy Wilsher said: “I am in no doubt of the incredible courage firefighters show each and every day and their dedication to keeping the public safe, and I want to thank them and the other emergency staff who worked so hard last week to protect us all during record breaking temperatures. It is encouraging to see many services that received causes of concern in our first round of inspections have taken meaningful steps to improve and act on recommendations.
“We have continued to see a general positive shift in services prioritising protection. The sector needs to continue this focus so the public can experience long-term safety benefits. This must include sustained Government funding to make sure the number of competent fire protection staff continues to increase.
“However, our second full assessment of inspections has continued to identify issues that need urgent attention.
“It’s troubling that some services have failed to act on the causes of concern we issued in 2018 and 2019. We have also issued six new causes of concern, making a total of nine across seven of the 15 services inspected in this phase. Whilst this is fewer than our previous tranche of inspections, it is too many.
“Four of these causes of concern relate to values and culture, and we saw some worrying examples of poor behaviour during our inspections. In two services, these cultures were found to be toxic and that is not good enough. We continue to find too many services haven’t taken enough steps to promote and improve equality, diversity and inclusion. Worryingly, too many services don’t prioritise fire prevention activity enough – this is crucial for public safety.
“While I am calling on services to tackle these issues as a matter of urgency, more needs to be done externally too. I welcome the White Paper on fire reform, published earlier this year, which addressed three of our four outstanding national recommendations, including determining the role of services and firefighters, reviewing terms and conditions, and providing operational independence for Chief Fire Officers.”
This round of ‘effectiveness, efficiency and people’ reports cover: Devon and Somerset, Essex County, Gloucestershire, Humberside, Lancashire, London, Northampton, Norfolk, Nottingham, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Tyne and Wear, West Sussex and West Yorkshire. Each report of the county is available on the HMICFRS website.
