CRP Quarterly Briefing - Issue 07

Welcome to issue 07 and the first CRP quarterly briefing of 2021.

The last 12 months have been a very challenging time for the sector, the impact of a global pandemic is one that no fire and rescue service could have foreseen nor planned for in their risk assessments. We’d like to thank fire service colleagues for remaining engaged in and committed to supporting the Community Risk Programme (CRP) throughout this difficult time. We are hopeful that 2021 will be a year of overcoming challenges, growth and success. 

Programme-level update  

As part of the CRP’s rigorous programme management controls, a review of the project dossier was recently conducted. The purpose of the review was to ensure the programme’s direction was still following the most effective path to deliver its objectives.  Following this review, the programme board agreed that the Definition of Risk Project should absorb the work of the planned CRP Risk Methodologies Project. Originally, the programme board agreed eight projects based on the recommendations of an independent review of community risk methodologies published in 2019; this recent decision brings the number down to seven individual projects. More details on why this decision was taken is provided in the Definition of Risk Project update below. 

To provide fire and rescue services more opportunities to contribute to and shape CRP products, the programme will be coordinating regular live webinar sessions. CRP single points of contact in fire and rescue services will be invited to join project executives in monthly ‘show and tell’ style webinars where they will be updated on progress and developments, share learning, and clarify their understanding of the work that is being undertaken. CRP single points of contact communicate CRP developments back to their services and provide information and feedback from their colleagues to the programme regularly. 

Project updates 

Community Risk Management Planning Guidance 

Project executive: Nikki Richards, Deputy Chief Executive, Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service. 

Project manager: Kevin Eaves, NFCC Central Programme Office. 

Following the outcomes of the draft CRMP Fire Standard public consultation conducted November-December last year, the fire standard has been amended and is set to launch this spring. 

46 UK fire and rescue services responded to the consultation, along with several fire sector organisations and individuals. Thanks to all who responded to help shape the final version of the CRMP Fire Standard. More information on the outcomes of the consultation will be shared in the next briefing.

The CRMP Fire Standard will provide a framework for fire and rescue services to follow when developing their CRMPs and will bring consistency to how this is being done across the UK. This programme continues to develop the guidance and tools needed to help services achieve the criteria set out in the fire standard. To support this, the project team have developed a visual illustration of the components of the CRMP process:
The CRMP Fire Standard will also be used by other sector organisations such as the HMICFRS in the inspection of fire and rescue services in the future and will also be of interest to the Home Office amongst others. 

This project is currently working with the Consultation Institute to develop guidance on public engagement and conducting consultations for CRMPs, and is also developing guidance on FRS data and business intelligence assessments. 

Definition of Risk 

Project executive: CFO Ian Hayton, Cleveland Fire Brigade. 

Project manager: Hala Almousawi, NFCC Central Programme Office. 

The project has awarded a contract to ORH to deliver phase 2 of its work as detailed in the previous briefing. 

As part of learning and findings from phase 1 and following a recent review of CRP projects, it was agreed the Definition of Risk Project should absorb the work outlined for the CRP Risk Methodologies Project. The scope of the work for phase 2 includes the work originally scoped for the CRP Risk Methodologies Project and is a natural extension of the work completed in phase 1. This means the programme can deliver the work originally set out for two projects in one, and so will have an impact on timelines due to the broadened scope of the work. The project is looking to deliver the following products by early 2022:

• Identification of influencing factors that have the strongest relationship with the likelihood and consequence of hazardous events, 
• A methodology that enables the calculation of a risk value for each influencing factor identified based upon their strength of relationship with the likelihood and consequence of the hazardous event occurring,  
• A national risk criteria and accompanying descriptors that define high, medium and low risk taking into account the risk value calculation, also provides a national benchmarking capability for risk set against each of the hazardous events,  
• A detailed gap analysis explaining any limitations when exploring likelihood and or consequence when determining risk metric, including but not limited to data access, existence of required data.

A roadmap for the project is provided below:

The project is working closely with colleagues in the NFCC’s Prevention and Protection teams due to the dependencies that exist between these work streams. 

The project is also engaging the HMICFRS in its work to ensure that shared objective are achieved. 

Economic and Social Value of the UK Fire and Rescue Service 

Project executive: Dan Quinn, Assistant Chief Fire Officer, Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service. 

Project manager: Paul Cohen, NFCC Central Programme Office. 

This project has awarded a contract to Nottingham Consulting to deliver the scope of work for phase 2 as detailed in the last briefing.  

The project recently contacted all fire and rescue services to support this work by providing information on all their activities to help identify which activities to begin calculating value for.  The project aims to have identified the data required to calculate the economic value for activities, followed by an initial test of the methodology by summer. Details of the test and its results will be communicated once it is complete and the results have been reviewed and analysed. 

The project is engaging with economists at the Home Office to ensure this work aligns with their Economic and Social Cost of Fire Report that is being produced. 

Contact us

For general questions and comments about the programme or if you would like to get involved in our work, please email the Programme Team: CommunityRiskProgramme@nationalfirechiefs.org.uk

Vanessa Walker is the programme manager for the CRP, if you would like to contact Vanessa, please email: vanessa.walker@nationalfirechiefs.org.uk