Draft London Safety Plan 2010/2013 - Fire Brigades Union London

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maintain our fast response times (we reach most emergency incidents in around five and a half minutes 2 ) but for many incidents, where more than one fire engine is needed, vehicles come from a number of surrounding stations. Our Asset Management Plan describes our intentions for the location and regeneration of our fire stations up to 2024. This is based on our modelling work which has identified the best locations for fire stations (and the number of vehicles they need to accommodate) and is also the work that has resulted in us opening a new fire station in the north-east of London at Harold Hill (our 113th fire station) in January 2010. Map 2 – How our fire stations cover London While we have been successful over the past decade in reducing the number of emergency incidents we have to attend (through the success of our community and regulatory safety work) this does not directly lead to a reduction in the number of staff or vehicles we need. The numbers of incidents are reducing, but the complexity of incidents has increased and the risks we face are more involved. The location of our vehicles enables us to provide additional support when required at major incidents while maintaining cover across London for dayto-day demand. We do however always look at the different requirements we have for our vehicles and their staffing arrangements that give us the greatest flexibility in providing cover and resilience. 2 Our average time for the first fire engine to arrive at an incident in 2008/09 was 5 minutes 32 seconds (source Our Performance 2008/09) 12 SUPPORTING LARGE INCIDENTS We position our vehicles so that they can respond quickly to emergency incidents. When we measure and report on our attendance times we record not just when the first fire engine arrives, but also the second if more than one fire engine is required. We attend many more incidents with just one fire engine than we do with two or more. For example we send one fire engine to false alarms from automatic fire alarm systems and small fires such as in refuse bins. However, when we need to send more than one fire engine, it may come from the same fire station or it may come from another station nearby. In many cases, where two or more fire engines are needed, those vehicles will come from a number of other fire stations. It is this principle which enables us to maintain fast first appliance responses times to other incidents across London while a large incident (or incidents) is in progress. This is also why we need to keep a higher number of fire engines available than typical day-to-day demand would indicate we need. The strength of these arrangements can be demonstrated with a real example. In July 2005 a large fire occurred in a timber yard in north London (the ‘Staples Corner’ fire). It resulted in the temporary closure of a nearby railway line and a number of London major roads, including the North Circular Road and a key section of the M1. During the first eight hours of the incident, 55 fire engines (almost a third of London’s fire engines) were mobilised to attend the fire. Over the course of the next few days, a further 77 were mobilised at roughly four to six hour intervals, to provide relief cover to crews who had been working at the scene. In total, 73 different fire engines from 59 of London’s 112 stations attended the incident over a three-day period. Some of appliances attended five or six times, producing a total of 132 appliance attendances. Appliances based at the stations closest to the incident accounted for the majority of the overall response. However, some appliances were provided from fire stations as far away as New Malden, Norbury, Dagenham and Ilford. We made a fast and effective response to this incident, but what is perhaps equally important is how well we maintained emergency cover to the rest of London while
this incident was taking place. We are able to estimate that over the period, there was an average performance fall of only 1.44 minutes for first appliance attendance and less than a minute’s delay in the attendance of second appliances to those incidents that required them. We get around 60 large incidents a year where 20 or more fire engines are required during the duration of the incident, which is why we maintain the numbers of fire engines available in London that we do. We don’t, however, need all of these vehicles to be instantly available (large incidents usually develop over a period of time) so some of them will be allocated work where they can be recalled to front line duty if or when needed. Map 3 - where incidents requiring two or more fire engines happen RESPONDING TO COMPLEX BUILDINGS AND STRUCTURES We know that we can provide a rapid, effective and sustained emergency response to incidents wherever they may occur in London. We also have a range of vehicles and equipment to deal with the complexities of expected and unexpected situations. But throughout London’s design and unique architecture are a range of buildings and structures that present distinct challenges to us. We know from experience that providing more and more specialised vehicles to meet the challenges of new and more complex structures isn’t enough to achieve the safety of those who occupy those buildings, or our firefighters if they have to attend in an emergency. So instead we seek to ‘design in’ safety into buildings as they are built or redeveloped. There are now a range of building standards and codes which require buildings to meet fire safety protection standards for their inhabitants and provide firefighters with improved access, protection and fire fighting capabilities. Fire regulations, which we enforce, ensure that these facilities within buildings are maintained and available for use. Examples of buildings that have significant ‘designed in’ fire safety are high-rise buildings. Our vehicle fleet currently has 11 aerial (high reach) appliances. These have a typical maximum working height of around 30 metres – which is sufficient reach for around 96 percent of all the buildings in London and more than 80 percent of all of London’s high-rise buildings. Beyond 30 metres the capabilities of any fire appliance are greatly reduced. Currently the greatest reach of any commercially available fire appliance in the world is around 100 metres. All of London’s 10 tallest buildings are taller than this and when the ‘Shard’ development is completed at London Bridge it will have a total height of over 300 metres and an occupied floor height of 244 metres. Knowing we could never mount an external firefighting attack to fires in these very tall buildings means that we prepare tactics so that we can fire fight from within the building itself. Our firefighters are trained for this and the building design gives protection to our firefighters and increased protection to the building occupiers who may have to stay within the building while the fire is brought under control. And these building design features aren’t only for very tall buildings. In London, any new building with an occupied floor height of more than 18 metres will have enhanced, designed in, fire safety protection and our enforcement of fire regulations ensures that building owners are held accountable for maintaining these facilities. Designed in fire safety applies to more than just high-rise buildings. We have extensive arrangements in place with Transport for London to protect London Underground’s rail system and we work with building owners, developers and local boroughs to ensure places where people live, work or socialise are adequately protected and provide our firefighters with the protection and resources they need should an emergency happen. 13
Page 1 and 2: Draft London Safety Plan 2010/2013
Page 3 and 4: Operational improvements ..........
Page 5 and 6: FOREWORD Ron Dobson, Commissioner f
Page 7 and 8: SECTION 1 - ABOUT US AND THIS PLAN
Page 9 and 10: through the GLA Group responsible p
Page 11: SECTION 2 - UNDERSTANDING AND MANAG
Page 15 and 16: MAPPING OUR PREVENTION PRIORITIES T
Page 17 and 18: FIRES IN DWELLINGS We attend around
Page 19 and 20: Around 20 percent of our calls to f
Page 21 and 22: We will however need to set our tar
Page 23 and 24: other enforcement actions (both for
Page 25 and 26: SECTION 3 - WHAT WE PLAN TO DO PREV
Page 27 and 28: This and other incidents in London
Page 29 and 30: OUR HEADLINE TARGETS The five-year
Page 31 and 32: AIM 2 - PROTECTION Influencing and
Page 33 and 34: RESOURCES, PEOPLE AND PRINCIPLES De
Page 35 and 36: the increased use of computer-based
Page 37 and 38: AIM 5 - PEOPLE Working together to
Page 39 and 40: SECTION 4 - HOW EFFICIENT WE ARE On
Page 41 and 42: annual efficiency savings of £110m
Page 43 and 44: we have a borough structure and are
Page 45 and 46: Annex two NotLondon Fire Brigade Be
Page 47 and 48: Annex four Isle of Wight Cumbr ia H
Page 49 and 50: 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 BV 150 - Cos
Page 52 and 53: APPENDIX OUR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Page 54 and 55: arrangements, equipment maintenance
Page 56 and 57: OUR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWOR
Page 58 and 59: What we said we would do during 200
Page 60 and 61: What we said we would do during 200
Page 62 and 63:
What we said we would do during 200
Page 64 and 65:
Page 66 and 67:
Page 68 and 69:
Page 70 and 71:
Page 72:
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Draft London Safety Plan 2010/2013 - Fire Brigades Union London

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