Communities and Local Government

This note sets out the arrangements being made by Communities and Local Government to offer Fire Authorities a risk assessment toolkit, based on the procedures developed during the Pathfinder trials, to help them refine and develop their Integrated Risk Management Plans (IRMPs) and prepare their second and subsequent Action Plans.

The toolkit is based on the Fire Service Emergency Cover (FSEC) methodology and will enable brigades to:

• assess the distribution of risk in their areas,
• record the resources which they decide are required to deal with risk in individual local risk areas, and
• estimate the consequences (measured in terms of loss of life and property) of making a given level of provision of emergency cover resources within their area.

The methodology derives from several years research and was used in the Pathfinder trials over three years in 11 brigades within the United Kingdom. It incorporates a variety of relationships derived from analysis of FDR1 forms and from incidents attended by the fire service over a period of 3-5 years. These relationships relate the likelihood of death or injury and the loss of property to the speed of fire service response to incidents. The methodology also takes account of fire service costs and is able to calculate the costs and benefits associated with particular patterns of local emergency cover. More information about what the toolkit can (and cannot) do will be the subject of a later note.

Brigades will be offered:

• the FSEC toolkit
• assistance with cleansing of their incident data in order to use it with the FSEC toolkit
• training in the use of the FSEC toolkit.

Details of the timetable are given below.

The FSEC toolkit will allow brigades to assess risk in a systematic and robust manner. It makes use of local brigade data about incidents, population and buildings to provide an assessment of risk in the brigade. These risk assessments will be directly comparable across all brigades that use the toolkit.

The FSEC toolkit will not include the resource allocation strategy based on the Tolerability of Risk (ToR) framework used during the Pathfinder trials. Nor will it include the feature which required detailed analysis to determine the total resource requirements at expected incidents (response options). Instead, for each type of risk, brigades will need to decide and input, on the basis of their own judgement, details of the responses and resources required and their deployment locations. Once this information has been input, the software will be able to predict the expected loss of life and property associated with a given deployment.

The FSEC toolkit will include:

• the WINGS Geographical Information System (GIS) and bespoke FSEC software,
• digital maps at various scales,
• 2001 Census Output Areas and data,
• road data,
• Valuation Office data to assist with risk assessment of what is termed 'Other Buildings' e.g. offices, shops, hospitals in the brigade, and
• three year's worth of incident data for the brigade area. This data will be processed and geo-coded where necessary by Communities and Local Government and loaded into the GIS.

The software will be provided either free (bespoke FSEC software), under free licence (WINGS), or on loan (MS Windows and other commercial software purchased by Communities and Local Government) and will be mounted, together with the relevant cleansed incident data, on a PC loaned to individual brigades by Communities and Local Government. Loaned items will remain the property of Communities and Local Government for return to the latter when no longer required.

Accurate geocoded incident data is essential to plot the distribution of risk and to identify risk areas. Incident records for the last three years are needed to obtain a reliable estimate of risk. However, the universal experience from the Pathfinder trials was that geocoding was often inexact, inaccurate, or missing. Fortunately, it is possible to process existing records automatically in order to screen them for inaccuracies by using software able to interpret address information and postcode information. Such processing typically leaves 10 per cent of records to be processed by hand.

Pathfinder brigades typically took 6-9 months to cleanse their data and although the circumstances are somewhat different on this occasion, the aim is to achieve cleansing in a similar timescale (see below).

Communities and Local Government has obtained funds from the Government urban renewal programme to cleanse brigade incident data in England, Wales, Scotland and N Ireland. The objective of the urban renewal initiative is to create a national database of local community information for the United Kingdom, which is being given effect by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). The ONS requires more highly aggregated data than is held on individual brigade incidents, but they are content to fund a data cleansing exercise in order to gain access to the aggregated data - subject, of course, to meeting the requirements of data protection legislation. Further details about this exercise will follow very shortly in another guidance note.

Three levels of free training will be offered to those brigades who wish to use the FSEC toolkit:

a. Overview - a seminar for chief and principal officers with responsibility for the work within brigades. This will cover how the FSEC toolkit links with IRMPs and wider issues.

b. Project planning - a one-day course for project officers and principal officers with responsibility for the work within brigades. This will cover the implementation arrangements e.g. how to organise and run the activities required to use the toolkit and the resource requirements, etc.

c. FSEC toolkit training - a five-day training course on the FSEC toolkit and its practical application. Attendees will be trained on a PC configured with their respective brigade's data and will take the computer and their stored data back to their brigades after the course.

Further details will be given closer to the time.

Coverage

Participation in these arrangements is open to all brigades in England and Wales. (Arrangements are being made with Scotland, who have expressed a wish also to participate.) The work involved in rolling out the FSEC toolkit to the tight timescale set out below is such that no support outwith the national arrangements described here can be given to individual brigades. The support and loan arrangements described above are therefore made to brigades on the basis that they will adhere to the training schedule set out below.

Duration of Support

Several brigades are already using commercially supplied risk assessment software packages. Communities and Local Government will work with their suppliers and any others who are interested to transfer knowledge about the relationships and procedures used in the FSEC toolkit. Thereafter, brigades will be able to use the relationships and procedures through commercial software packages. Helpdesk support will be provided until then.

Pathfinder Brigades

Pathfinder brigades will be familiar with the FSEC procedures and the data requirements of the FSEC toolkit. However, as mentioned above, the version of software now being offered will not incorporate the resource allocation module used during the Pathfinder trials, so familiarisation training will be necessary. (No further support will be given to any early FSEC software previously issued to Pathfinder brigades, following roll-out of the toolkit.)

Most of the Pathfinder brigades only applied the FSEC risk assessment procedures to a part of their brigade area and will need to do additional work, despite their involvement in the Pathfinder trials. Nevertheless, the work for them will be much less than for those brigades who did not take part in the trials.

It is hoped, therefore, that 2-3 Pathfinder brigades will be prepared to work with Communities and Local Government during the roll-out period in order to explore in detail how best the FSEC toolkit can be used to assist the preparation of IRMPs and Action Plans. The lessons learned from this exercise will be used to offer guidance to all brigades as they review their IRMPs and prepare their second round of Action Plans during 2004.

Letters inviting Pathfinder brigades to participate in this exercise will be sent out shortly.

Timetable

The roll-out of the FSEC toolkit will broadly coincide with the completion of IRMPs and annual Action Plans in March, 2004. Roll-out cannot proceed more quickly because of the need for data cleansing, discussed above.

The roll-out should not delay existing plans to develop IRMPs and Action Plans. Senior fire officers have advised that a number of benefits are readily identifiable in most brigades; these will serve to launch the move to IRMPs. As more sophisticated tools such as the FSEC toolkit and enhanced commercial packages become available, they will allow earlier plans to be modified or refined as necessary, and permit more detailed planning to take place.

The major project milestones are shown below:

Formal communication with brigades on the roll-out of the FSEC toolkit will be by notes of guidance and letters issued by the IRMP Project board.

Technical information and day-to-day communications will be by letter, FINDS e-mail, and Internet e-mail to individuals, as appropriate, and issued by, and/or on behalf of, the FSEC Project Board (which reports to the IRMP Project Board).

The FSEC Project Board will shortly open a web site for the roll-out project which will contain key documents, including details of the project plan, which will be updated as necessary as work progresses.

Contact details for members of the FSEC Project Board, and relevant brigade personnel involved in the roll-out, will also be posted on the web site, as well as details of their individual responsibilities.

Brigades wishing to take advantage of the FSEC toolkit are asked to register their intention in writing to John Foster at the address below by 1 October, 2003.