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The Service adopts a risk based approach to equipment and inventory checks, with a schedule of handover, daily and weekly checks for items depending on the safety critical nature of the equipment.
An electronic asset management system is in place which uses barcodes to identify and trace equipment. Handheld scanners are used to complete the inventory checks and to raise defects where appropriate. These are automatically reported through to the Engineering Team to arrange repair or replacement.
The asset management system has been in place for over a decade, although handheld scanners have been upgraded in the last 2 years to improve the speed and efficiency of the equipment.
Given the length of time that the automated process has been in place it is difficult to quantify the saving in administrative time or cost savings achieved as a consequence. As an indicative figure a full inventory check of a standard fire appliance will take 2 firefighters circa 1 to 1.5 hrs to complete per week.
Limited more frequent checks are undertaken to safety critical equipment such as Breathing Apparatus checks at the start of each shift. This takes approximately 10-15 minutes per set, with each appliance carrying 4 sets.
As part of the 2022/23 internal audit programme, 2 audits have taken place on the arrangements for maintaining fleet and equipment and asset disposals. Both of these audits have provided Reasonable Assurance.
Investment in New Appliances, Fleet and Support Vehichles
The proposed 2023/24 to 2026/27 Capital Programme was included in the 2023/24 Budget Report. The service’s vehicle replacement programme has been delayed over the last 3 years due to supply chain issues following Covid- 19. Over the next 2 years the replacement programme has been increased to take account of this. It includes:
£5.6m to replace 17 Pumping Appliances.
£3m to replace the 2 Aerial Ladder Platforms and other specialist vehicles.
£374k to replace a number of light vehicles, including 5 Hybrid vehicles which will be more efficient to run.
A rural vehicle to better support forestry fire-fighting activities as a result of learning from the wildfires in summer 2022.
The vehicle maintenance costs have increased by £35k in recent years partially due to the unexpected delays in the vehicle replacement programme (see section 5.7). It is expected that costs will reduce once the new fleet is operational.
Animal Rescue Unit Savings
In the FY 2022/23 the Service took the decision to remove the dedicated Animal Rescue Unit which was staffed by On Call Firefighters and deploy the capability via the Wholetime Technical Rescue Unit. This will result in a saving from the on call pay budget.
Review of Pre-Determined Attendances (PDAs)
The Service is continually reviewing PDA’s to reduce the number of appliances that are deployed to unwanted fire signals and ensure that the level of response is appropriate to the risk. Work is ongoing to reduce the number of Unwanted Fire Signals (UFS) at premises with frequent alarm activations. UFS’s have reduced from 3,793 in 2017/18 to 3,480 in 2021/22 5 years due to the positive action undertaken by the service to reduce them. This is a reduction of 313 appliance mobilisations per year, allowing crews to allocate time to other activities.