Agenda item

To receive an update from Councillor Kevin Deanus, Cabinet Member for Fire and Rescue, and Resilience.

RESOLVED:

That the Cabinet Member of the Month update be noted.

A Cabinet Member of the Month update was provided by Kevin Deanus, Cabinet Member for Fire & Rescue and Resilience. The following key points were made:

·         Surrey Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) staff delivered 6,710 Safe and Well Visits to vulnerable residents in the 2024/25 performance year, this represented a 66% improvement in the last two years. Approximately 84% of these had been delivered to the most vulnerable residents. Operational crews had also delivered777 operational risk visits, exceeding our target of 687. The Business Safety (Fire Safety) teams had completed 1650 fire safety audits, which exceeded our 1600 target.

·         SFRS had implemented Safety Cloud® by HAAS Alert, a digital alerting system designed to improve road safety for our crews and the public. This technology is currently running on most of our fire engines, two of our height vehicles and officer cars.

·         As a result of £7m of investment into our fleet, the service would be introducing nine new fire engines this year. The first two are already being used for training and by Salfords Fire Station, the next two are to head to Fordbridge and Camberley fire stations this month. Then, Painshill, Egham, Walton, Chertsey, Reigate and Dorking will welcome one each later this year.

·         Emergency Planning: 2025 had already seen the team lead on a number of incidents and support the planning of key events and works to local/ national infrastructure including the response to the Godstone Sinkhole and M25 closures to upgrade the M25/A3 Wisley Interchange.

·         Surrey County Council proudly re-signed the Armed Forces Covenant in December 2024 reinforcing its enduring commitment to ensuring fair treatment for all members of the Armed Forces community.

·         Trading Standards: During 2024 the Trading Standards Service had started to make greater use of disruptive tactics to tackle criminality rather than only using the investigate/prosecute approach. The joint Service had been developing measures of impact of this disruptive work and conservatively estimate this financial impact at over £2.4 million for the 24-25 year. The Department of Health and Social Care had also agreed to fund two new apprentices in Trading Standards from April 2025 as part of the funding announced linked to changes in tobacco and vapes legislation.

·         Coroners Service: Over the last year, the service had received over 3,000 referrals. Work was now underway to deliver a digital post-mortem service in the county. This would provide the capability for post-mortems to be carried out using a CT Scanner, reducing the number of invasive procedures required.

A Member queried how SFRS defined vulnerable residents and if this was done with the adult social care team. The Cabinet Member stated that identifying those classed as vulnerable was done in partnership with adult social care and a number of other voluntary and statutory organisations. Residents could also refer themselves for a Safe and Well Visit.

The tremendous amount of work being undertaken by Trading Standards was recognised. It was queried if any communications around the positive work being undertaken by Trading Standards was being shared. It was explained that there was a newsletter that was sent monthly by Trading Standards that members had to sign up too with lots of detail around the work being undertaken. The Cabinet Member would check this and ensure members were signed up to this newsletter.

RESOLVED:

That the Cabinet Member of the Month update be noted.