Response Strategy

Our response and resilience priorities are to:

• Ensure we always provide an effective and timely response to fires and other emergencies
• Improve our specialist response capability by optimising the special appliance fleet
• Work with Bedfordshire Local Resilience Forum partners to effectively plan and prepare for local and national emergencies
• Work with partners to broaden our response role and capabilities
• Ensure our response resources and crewing arrangements are aligned to current and future risks

Our approach is to:

• Deliver the outcomes of our Emergency Cover Review, pilots and trials, and special appliances review
• Have effective operational policies and procedures aligned to National Operational Guidance
• Provide firefighters with fast access to accurate, relevant, and timely operational risk information
• Align with the Fire Standards and National Operational Guidance
• Maintain a positive health and safety culture, ensuring we continuously learn from incidents
• Continue to invest in appliances, equipment, training, and development to ensure our crews respond safely and effectively
• Continue to test and maintain effective business continuity plans
• Proactively collaborate with multi-agency and cross-border partners
• Continue to develop and maintain our national resilience assets and capabilities

Our Emergency Response Standards

During the 23/24 financial year, BFRS undertook a comprehensive review of the standards of response and, after public consultation, amended them to allow for the public to have greater transparency of our performance. 

The changes made, align us to similar standards as other Fire and Rescue services and allow us to better measure our performance when compared to other services with similar risk profiles, budgets, and resources. Our previous standards made this difficult as they did not align with nationally recognised parameters or reporting models.
BFRS has now committed to:

• Measuring response times from when the emergency call begins. 
• We will mobilise appliances to primary fires within 120 seconds, or less, of an emergency call being received. 
• We aim to have the first fire engine to arrive in twelve minutes to primary fires on 80% of occasions, measured from the time of call. This incorporates the new call handling time with a ten-minute travel time. 
• We aim to have the second fire engine arrive at primary fires within sixteen minutes of the emergency call on 80% of occasions. 
• We aim to have the first fire engine arrive at RTCs within fifteen minutes on 80% of occasions, measured from the time of call. This incorporates the new call handling time and a thirteen-minute travel time.
• For secondary fires we aim to have one fire engine arrive in twenty minutes on 96% of occasions, measured from the time of call. 

We are committed to always sending enough resources to deliver a safe system of work for our crews and deliver the best outcomes for those involved, on every occasion. 

Our response strategy is designed to provide a prompt and effective emergency response if an incident does occur. The type of incidents responded to by BFRS can broadly be split into three areas:

• Fires - defined as either primary or secondary. Primary fires are generally more serious fires that harm people or cause damage to property. Secondary fires are generally small outdoor fires, not involving people or property. 
• Non-fire incidents which cover a wide range of incidents including road traffic collisions, rescues from height, from water, providing medical assistance, flooding, incidents involving hazardous materials and other calls to protect life, property, and the environment. 
• False alarms which include false reports of all incident types originating from both automatic fire detection systems and by human error. 

The number of incidents attended by the Service has fluctuated over the five years and had been showing a three-year downward trend. The number of incidents is now on the increase, due primarily to undertaking more collaborative activity in support of our partners and through expanding our capabilities to deal with a broader range of incidents (e.g., forced entry for medical emergencies, Co-responding and falls, and assisting the Police with missing persons). 

We have reviewed and implemented a range of improvements to maintain operational availability giving more flexibility and efficiency including: 

• Better availability of on-call fire appliances through new ways of working (recruitment, strategic reserve, standby schemes, dual contracts, self-rostering and phased alerting). 
• On-call availability management improved through use of new software systems, and in 2022 trialling flexible leave arrangements, different training delivery options, new support posts for On Call and alternative employment contracts.