Issue - meetings

RESOLVED:

1.         That Surrey Fire and Rescue expand on its existing call challenge policy through the three Phases, as set out in paragraphs 17-20 of the submitted report.

2.         That authority be delegated to the Chief Fire Officer, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Localities and Community Wellbeing to undertake the reviews of Phases 1 and 2 and make the decision concerning whether to proceed to the subsequent Phase of implementation.

Reasons for Decisions:

Due to the increasing number of call outs to automatic fire alarms that have proven to be false alarms, Surrey Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) is reviewing how it responds to these calls.

This is because when the Service is emergency responding to what turns out to be a false alarm, they are not available to deal with real fire and rescue situations, and it may disrupt training and prevention work. In addition, using resources in this way and responding on ‘blue lights’ creates a risk to crews and to the public.  

The proposal to review how the service responds to automatic fire alarms formed part of the consultation on the draft Public Safety Plan in 2016.  

[The decisions on this item can be called in by the Resident Experience Board]

The Cabinet Member for Localities and  Community Wellbeing said that he hoped that the changes proposed to how the Surrey Fire and Rescue Service (SF&RS) responded to automatic fire alarms would improve resident safety. He said that the proposed changes were set out in paragraphs 17 – 20 of the report.

The Chairman of the Resident Experience Board confirmed that the Board had considered this item in depth and was supportive of the proposed changes.

The Cabinet Associate for Community Safety Services confirmed that SF&RS already did ‘call challenge’ and details of this were set out in the background section of the report. She also drew Members attention to both the risk assessment and the equality impact assessment, which she considered were very thorough and were appended to the report. Finally, she thanked Members of the Resident Experience Board for its scrutiny of this issue and commended the recommendations to Members.

RESOLVED:

1.         That Surrey Fire and Rescue expand on its existing call challenge policy through the three Phases, as set out in paragraphs 17-20 of the submitted report.

2.         That authority be delegated to the Chief Fire Officer, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Localities and Community Wellbeing to undertake the reviews of Phases 1 and 2 and make the decision concerning whether to proceed to the subsequent Phase of implementation.

Reasons for Decisions:

Due to the increasing number of call outs to automatic fire alarms that have proven to be false alarms, Surrey Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) is reviewing how it responds to these calls.

This is because when the Service is emergency responding to what turns out to be a false alarm, they are not available to deal with real fire and rescue situations, and it may disrupt training and prevention work. In addition, using resources in this way and responding on ‘blue lights’ creates a risk to crews and to the public.  

The proposal to review how the service responds to automatic fire alarms formed part of the consultation on the draft Public Safety Plan in 2016.