Operational Preparedness, Response, and Resilience

This area of NFCC’s work develops and maintains Operational Guidance for UK fire and rescue services. Operational Guidance is the foundation for developing operational policies, procedures and training for personnel to deal with incidents effectively and safely. It is ‘industry good practice’ for everybody in fire and rescue services to draw on.

It can be adopted across the UK and is available for individual fire and rescue services to consider its implications on their own policies, procedures and training. Some of the guidance may not be relevant to all fire and rescue services as this will depend on the range and scope of services the fire authority has agreed to provide, usually through its risk management plan.

As its name suggests, Operational Guidance is:

Operational: Operational Guidance only applies to working practices at operational incidents, although there is a section on corporate guidance for operational activity. It does not cover other corporate policy guidance, equipment, technical notes or fire safety. It describes the hazards that may be encountered at incidents, and details the activities and control measures that may need to be used to control or mitigate those hazards. The control measures describe what should be considered and included in each fire and rescue service’s operational policies (strategic actions). It also includes possible actions for operational personnel and incident commanders to consider using (tactical actions). This informs each service’s operational policies, procedures and training, bringing consistency across the UK.

Guidance: It builds on the legacy of previously adopted guidance and includes the most up-to-date thinking from subject matter experts from both inside and outside of the fire and rescue service.

Each fire and rescue service is obliged to carry out its own risk assessments and identify appropriate control measures to protect its employees and communities. The risks across different services are often very similar or identical.

National work to identify hazards and control measures closely aligns to local risks and complete adoption of Operational Guidance will often be possible. Having a national, high quality product to draw on improves the quality of service delivery and saves a lot of time and money when different services are doing broadly the same thing.

It is also much clearer to those outside the service, including coroners or those responsible for public inquiries, that the service has a sound body of intelligence and good practice on which its activities are based. They will base their expectations of the service on Operational Guidance and will expect it to have been appropriately considered.