In response to the report Neil Odin, Chief Fire officer, said “I am proud of the hard work our firefighters and support staff do every day to keep the people of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight safe.
“The inspectors have carefully looked at our service and checked every part of what we do. They found areas where we are doing well, recognised improvements we’ve made, and identified some things we still need to work on.
“I am pleased that the report recognises our focus on understanding risks in our communities and helping people stay safe by preventing fires, including the delivery of a record number of home fire safety visits. There is also praise for our volunteers and the work we do with young people.
“Taking care of our firefighters and staff is one of our strengths, with praise from the inspectors for our wellbeing services and the work we have been doing to promote a positive culture. It was also good to see that our efforts to improve the management of fire contaminants which crew may be exposed to in a firefighting situation highlighted as promising practice.
“We are already making progress in the areas for improvement. One of the areas flagged by the inspectors relates to a nightly software update that impacts our mobilisation system. I would like to reassure our communities that this is an administrative issue and does not affect our operational capabilities or response to incidents, a manual fix is in place and has proven to safeguard against any potential impact to mobilisation.
“Another area we are working on is workforce planning and as recommended we are pulling together the work we do across service departments into a coherent service-wide plan to bring together current and future workforce and skills requirements in one place.
“We are making good progress in other areas too, like the changes we have now introduced to reduce the burden of false alarms. Likewise, recruitment and availability of on-call firefighters continues to be a challenge nationally, and we are taking actions to address that such as the introduction of more flexible contracts and new recruitment activity, and we currently have the highest on-call availability across the South-East of England.
“The issue of response times and availability of appliances is raised within the report and is an area we continually monitor and review. We will always seek to respond to emergencies as quickly and as effectively as we can and we ensure our available resources are in the best places to maintain cover for the whole service area. Home Office data shows that in the year ending 30 June 2024, our response time to primary fires was 10 minutes and 1 second. This was faster than the average for significantly rural services
“I am pleased the inspectors noted the financial challenges we face and acknowledged the work we are doing to adapt to ensure have a sustainable and efficient fire service. Public safety will always be our priority, and we will continue working hard to be the best fire and rescue service we can be for our communities.”
The results of the HMICFRS inspection are available to read in the full report
