Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service (BFRS) needs to make “urgent improvements” according to His Majesty’s fire inspectorate.
In a report published on October 19, it was found that the service is “overly reliant on neighbouring fire and rescue services for emergency response” and that staff were insufficiently provided with “clear direction”.
In particular, efforts to “protect the public through fire regulation” at BFRS were deemed “inadequate”, with not enough fire safety audits taking place across the district.
His Majesty’s Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services Roy Wilsher said: “The service has made some improvements since our 2021 inspection, but we were disappointed to see that it hasn’t made enough progress in more areas.”
“Given the nature of some of the problems we have identified, we will keep in close contact with the service to monitor its progress in addressing areas for improvement, causes of concern and associated recommendations.”
In response to allegations that BFRS is “overly reliant” on fire services from other boroughs, an official representative from the Service said: “BFRS operates a resourcing model that ensures the quickest available fire engine is called regardless of which fire service it comes from. This includes a principle of “borderless mobilising” with neighbouring fire services; especially our Thames Valley colleagues who are mobilised through our joint control centre.
“Due to the geographical nature of the map of Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes, some areas are more likely to receive the quickest response from a neighbouring service, and this contributes to our better than average incident response times for the communities we serve.”
The full report is available at https://shorturl.at/an138
Photo Credit: Bucks Fire and Rescue
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