Response
In line with our statutory responsibilities under the Fire and Rescue Service's Act 2004, the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the Fire and Rescue Services (Emergencies) Order 2007 and the Fire and Rescue Services National Framework, GFRS is committed to providing a range of response assets to ensure it is capable of dealing with the full range of emergencies that it could reasonably be expected to attend.
As a very rural fire and rescue service, our response model is a blend of wholetime and on-call crews. We make good use of on-call firefighters in areas where the frequency of incidents is lower, as a more efficient approach. Having full-time firefighters at every station is not the most efficient and effective use of resources when resourcing to risk and demand. This model remains valid but is subject to increasing recruitment and retention challenges for on-call firefighters which are affecting the availability of appliances and response times. This will be an area of significant focus for this CRMP and beyond.
GFRS maintain a fleet of vehicles, systems and equipment to meet these expectations ensuring that our people have the right equipment and are highly skilled and trained in delivering our service to the communities of Gloucestershire. We continue to ensure our resources meet the risk and this plan outlines how we ensure we deliver the right resources at the right time in the right place, responding to the needs of the community we serve. We do this through daily, weekly, and monthly monitoring of incident and availability data, and firefighter safety activities, protection and prevention activities. We continue to ensure our resources meet the risk and this plan outlines how we ensure we deliver the right resources at the right time in the right place, responding to the needs of the community we serve.
We continue to ensure our resources meet the risk and this plan outlines how we ensure we deliver the right resources at the right time in the right place, responding to the needs of the community we serve.
This is carried out at an operational level
and strategic levels at our strategic performance meeting and Fire Leadership Team meetings Also, we periodically bring in external professional support to provide objective data analysis and modelling insights to inform our decisions and direction.
GFRS categorises incidents according to a list of national incident types, for each incident type GFRS has risk assessed the foreseeable hazards and likely control measures. This process produces a Pre-Determined Attendance (PDA).
GFRS is organised based on risk. Risk is defined as the likelihood of an event occurring multiplied by the severity of the impact, should that event occur. These risks can be generic or specific in nature. GFRS is also required to co-operate with other services and agencies within the Local Resilience Forum (LRF), in line with its responsibilities as a category one responder under the Civil Contingencies Act.
The LRF’s main responsibilities are to ensure that local risks are assessed and that preparedness, in terms of response and recovery arrangements are in place to deal with the range of potential emergencies that could affect the county. In addition, GFRS can potentially respond to incidents on a national scale and utilise the resources hosted by GFRS, which form part of the UK Government’s National Resilience Strategy and is delivered through National Coordination and Advisory Framework (NCAF) 2021.