West Sussex fire service making good progress, say inspectors
But they've asked the service to make further improvements
West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service has made progress but needs to improve in some areas, inspectors have said.
The service underwent a ten-week inspection by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) in the spring and the results have just been published.
It highlighted the need for improvement in fire engine availability, senior officer visibility, and the effective monitoring of secondary contracts to support the welfare of its staff.
Overall, though, the report put a smile on quite a few faces.
It has been almost three years since the last full inspection, which saw the service rated ‘requires improvement’ overall – with two areas rated ‘inadequate’.
A lot of work has been carried out since then to bring things up to scratch.
Follow-up inspections in January 2020 and February 2021 saw the service praised for the ‘significant’ and ‘tangible’ improvements which have been made under the guidance of Chief Fire Officer Sabrina Cohen-Hatton.
The latest inspection covered the operational service, the efficiency of the service (including value for money), how well it looks after, trains and develops its people, promotes its values and culture and ensures fairness and diversity for its workforce.
Five areas were rated ‘good’ and six were ‘adequate’.
Ms Cohen-Hatton, said the service had ‘come a long way’ since the 2018 inspection.
She added: “I am delighted to see the hard work and dedication of our staff reflected in this latest report.
“In fact, the publication of this report means that we are now one of the few fire and rescue services with no ratings of ‘requires improvement’, which is something I am immensely proud of.”
In his report, Inspector Roy Wilsher highlighted eight areas which needed improvement.
They included improving the availability of engines crewed by on-call fire-fighters – as of March 31 2023, only 48.6% had been available.
Monitoring to ensure that staff didn’t work excessive hours was also highlighted, as was the need for senior managers to be visible and to demonstrate service values through their own behaviour.
And the service was told to make sure it had an effective way to share fire survival guidance when more than one person had called about an incident and were at risk from flames, heat or smoke and couldn’t get to a place of safety.
Ms Cohen-Hatton said: “While this is a very different picture to our previous reports, we acknowledge that there is still more work to be done and we already have plans in place to address the eight areas for improvement identified by HMICFRS.
“When I joined the service in 2019, one year on from the publication of the first report, I felt a huge sense of responsibility to ensure that our people were not defined by words such as ‘inadequate’, so today is a monumental moment in the rich history of West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service.”