London Fire Brigade has reported that this recommendation has been completed. 

The London Fire Brigade has produced guidance on drawing a clearer distinction between callers seeking advice and callers who believe they are trapped and need rescuing, within Appendix 1 of Policy Number 790 (Fire Survival Guidance), published on 31 March 2021, following a Brigade wide training programme.

London Fire Brigade has reported that this recommendation has been completed. 

The London Fire Brigade’s Control staff began their training on the revised Policy Number 790 (Fire Survival Guidance) in December 2020, with maintenance of competency requirements for staff set out within the Control element of the Brigade’s ‘Development and Maintenance of Operational Professionalism’ (DaMOP) framework, implemented in July 2020.

National Operational Guidance for Fire Survival Guidance calls was published in July 2021.

The Government and the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) collaborated to produce technological solutions to allow fire control rooms to share information about risk critical information, including fire survival guidance calls, simultaneously. All services now have access to this system.

In August 2022, the NFCC surveyed all FRSs (with the exception of the LFB) in England about their progress against recommendation 33.15c:

81% of services (35 services) reported they have completed this recommendation. This represents a 30% increase from the previous NFCC survey completed in March 2022.

19% (eight services) have reviewed their policies but are still in process of making the necessary changes to complete this recommendation.

The progress in this area is slower than previously indicated and two services have delayed sign off of this action. Only one service has indicated it will not have achieved this action by April 2023.

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) has reported that recommendation 33.15c has been completed.

The training for the revised Policy Number 790 (Fire Survival Guidance) and the Broadcast National Talk Group has been completed. Policy Number 790 was published on the 31st March 2021 and the Broadcast National Talk Group went live in February 2021.

The Brigade’s Fire Survival Guidance (FSG) Policy has been shared as national learning and support a new project to establish National Operational Guidance (including FSG) for Control rooms. This guidance also includes the use of a National Talk Group for sharing risk critical information.

In August 2022, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) surveyed all FRSs (with the exception of the LFB) in England about their progress against recommendation 33.15d:

• 79% of services (34 services) have taken actions that allow information to be effectively captured and shared. Five services have completed the required actions but have not yet completely trained its staff.
• 12% of services (five services) are yet to action this recommendation.

This represents a 7% increase from the previous NFCC survey completed in March 2022.

The London Fire Brigade's (LFB) ‘sector leading’ technical initiative has been a matter of interest for many services who are considering how this could be incorporated into their own local arrangements.

The LFB has developed a technological solution which enables information from Fire Survival Guidance (FSG) calls to be displayed simultaneously at the incident and in Control. The introduction of the application was previously delayed due to technical issues which have now been resolved.

The Brigade consider this recommendation complete with the FSG application having gone live in March 2022.

In August 2022, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) surveyed all FRSs (with the exception of the LFB) in England about their progress against recommendation 33.15e:

72% of services (31 services) have reported that they had completed this recommendation including training and assessing staff. This represents a 40% increase from the previous NFCC survey completed in March 2022.

2% of services (one service) have not made make the necessary changes to action this recommendation.

Services will continue to update their policies as research being carried out by Government and revised National Operational Guidance become available.

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) has reported that recommendation 33.15e has been completed.

The guidance for managing the transition from ‘stay put’ to ‘get out’ is provided in the revised Policy Number 790 (Fire Survival Guidance) and the new Evacuation and Rescue policies, both of which were published in March 2021. All operational and Control staff have completed mandatory training on both policies.

In August 2022, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) surveyed all FRSs (with the exception of the LFB) in England about their progress against the recommendations. In relation to 33.15f (which is linked to recommendation 33.15e):

86% of services (37 services) said they have completed this recommendation

2% of services (one service) has made the necessary changes but are still training their staff

7% of services (three services) have completed the training for operational firefighters but not fire control room personnel.

This represents a significant progress from the previous NFCC survey completed in March 2022,

95% of services (41 services) report they will have completed required actions to address this recommendation by April 2023.

London Fire Brigade (LFB) has reported that recommendation 33.15f has been completed as training for all Control staff has been completed and the learning embedded by participation in a series of high-rise firefighting exercises.

The Government is working in partnership with the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) to implement infrastructure and strategic solutions for control rooms to improve the sharing of risk critical information between fire control rooms, and in the longer term, between fire and police/ambulance control rooms. This will allow the transfer of information between control rooms to be electronic instead of a control room operator having to manually contact the other service by telephone. The system is called “Multi Agency Information Transfer” (MAIT) and will allow information to be transferred between control rooms much quicker. This project is progressing well and market engagement with suppliers of the MAIT system took place in March 2022 and the procurement process is ongoing.

Whilst the MAIT project is under way, in the meantime, the Government has worked with the NFCC to establish a separate Broadcast Talkgroup to improve information sharing between control rooms. This has been achieved by introducing two new Airwave Talkgroups (radio channels), a “Fire Broadcast Talkgroup” and a “JESIP (Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles) Multi Agency Talkgroup” to improve the sharing of information between fire, police and ambulance.

The Broadcast Talkgroup went live in England and Scotland in October 2020 and in Wales in December 2020. This means that if a FRS becomes overwhelmed with emergency calls, the affected service can now make an announcement on their control room Airwave Radio, and it will be received in every control room across the county simultaneously. The system has gone through extensive testing with successful results and is now in operational use in England Scotland and Wales under “Business as Usual”. The JESIP Talk group is now live in all Fire Control Rooms and the NFCC has released guidance to support its use.

In conjunction with the NFCC, the Government has provided funding for two Fire Control Managers to be seconded to assist with development of the National Operational Guidance for Fire Control staff. This included updating the current Fire Survival Guidance and training.

Survival Guidance for all incident types, emergency call management people at risk and Fire Control Command guidance have now been published. FRSs are now able to integrate this guidance into their own policies and procedures.

Guidance for fire control staff for handling multiple emergency calls and multiple emergency incidents has been published recently.

To address this recommendation, FRSs must embed the policies and training to support fire control room personnel in the use of the Airwave Talk Groups.

The Home Office and NFCC have worked with BT to establish a more robust way of dealing with Fire Control Rooms becoming overwhelmed with emergency calls resulting from large or protracted incidents.

A procedure known as “Operation Willow Beck” has been developed and tested and is currently operational in England, Scotland and Wales on a six-month pilot.

This means that BT now has a predetermined redistribution plan of how to distribute overflow calls efficiently between other FRSs during periods when a single control room has become overwhelmed with 999 calls due to a large, protracted incident or spate conditions.

The system was used several times in anger during the July/August 22 wildfires with successful outcomes.

In August 2022, the NFCC surveyed all FRSs (with the exception of the LFB) in England about their progress against recommendation 33.16.

For this recommendation, 100% of services (43 services) have, in relation to the Airwave Talk Groups, embedded technical changes to the way information is shared between fire control rooms and between fire, police and ambulance services. This will ensure that accurate and timely information will be available to any service that handles a call for a major incident not in their area, based on the decisions being made in real time on the incident ground. This is currently in use by all FRSs. 

The full completion of this recommendation is dependent on the rollout of MAIT. Procurement of the platform is currently underway supported by the NFCC, to make this system available to all FRSs. Procurement is expected to be completed in Winter 2022. 

With the establishment of the Broadcast Talkgroup, the NFCC has provided guidance on the Talkgroup.

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) has reported that recommendation 33.16 has been completed as all Control officers have received training on the Talkgroup’s protocol. It is further reported that the Brigade’s Vision mobilising system is Multi Agency Incident Transfer (MAIT) enabled in preparation for the implementation of MAIT when it is rolled out nationally.

London Fire Brigade has informed us that its revised Policy Note 790 ‘Fire Survival Guidance’, published on 31 March 2021, has been shared with the Metropolitan Police Service and the London Ambulance Service, together with a briefing note to support an increased understanding of the policy revisions.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and London Ambulance Service (LAS) have both reported to the Mayor of London that they have reviewed protocols on Fire Survival Guidance calls to ensure these are passed to the London Fire Brigade. Therefore, this recommendation is considered to be completed.