National review of community risk methodology across UK Fire and Rescue Service

FRSs decide prevention, protection, and response activities based on a perception of identified risk, to be consulted, informed, and developed by key stakeholders. These are prioritised activities based on the impact of the identified risk. We previously address the definition and priority for targeting risk, and also the sources of data and evidence for informing risk, so these factors will not be considered here. In this section we consider the development of activities and the methods for doing so. That is, the methods of approaching prevention, protection, and response activities.

Figure 24. The number of submissions evidence reported is clearly linked to decision making.

We first explored the extent to which decision making about planned activities were evidence-based (shown in Figure 24). The key finding from this analysis is that 24% of submissions do not include enough detail to evaluate whether decision making is explicitly based on the evidence used. Decision making was informed by evidence in nearly half (45%) of the submissions. This shows good practice among a good number of FRSs, as the use of evidence to inform practices ensures that FRSs work effectively. However, that we did not observe evidence of decision making in over half of the submissions is concerning as it suggests that decisions about control activities (prevention, protection, and response activities, and distribution of available resources) may not be effective (and in some case harmful) and efficient use of FRSs limited resources.

We next explored the collaboration between FRSs and external organisations in community risk management (Figure 25).

Figure 25. The number of FRSs who report using external organisations in their development of community risk management.

These results show that a large majority of FRSs do not use external organisations while developing community risk plans, with only nine reporting that they work with external organisations for this purpose. Considering the methodology needed to complete effective community risk management and activities FRSs have reported elsewhere in this survey; their self-report of limited external working is surprising. From this we interpret that the respondents consider that the decision making around the development and shaping of the plan and process is what FRSs are referring to here. We assume FRSs work with others to understand the risks and controls, but the decision making remains in house. This could be developed by using other FRSs within their type / family group to inform, compare and peer review their practices and methodology.

We next look at the methods of targeting those who have been identified as high risk. Those at high risk are either high risk because of their socio-demographic characteristics or because of their geographical location. The most effective means of targeting these groups will therefore depend on the nature of the risk, with partner targeting enabling FRSs to provide a specialised, targeted approach, using the various strengths of partner organisations to have the most effective reach. To understand the perceptions and use of these types of targeting in UK FRSs, our first evaluation explored the extent to which FRSs view geographic and social targeting as valid approaches (Figure 26), and the extent to which they used different types of targeting in their service (Figure 27).