What’s New

Change request approved and published (24 October 2024)

Business continuity guidance was published to UKFRS.com and predates our project. But until now has never been reviewed. It contains one Hazard: Fire control room equipment failure. The associated control measures are outdated in parts and does not cover contingency arrangements.

The new content contains additional control measure, contingency arrangements. A new hazard, loss of primary fire control, with an existing control measure, establish alternative fire control arrangements. New content also includes a hazard, loss of the 999/112 emergency call service, with two new control measures.

Business continuity guidance is intended as a supplement to organisational business continuity plans.

Training specifications have been drafted to accompany this new guidance.

Approved change request content uploaded – Medical oxygen

Learning indicated that some additional content in the Operational Guidance was required for the use of medical oxygen. A change request was developed and has now been approved and uploaded. The new content appears in:

• Hazard – Accessing a casualty
• Control measure – Oxygen awareness

The accompanying training specification has also been updated.

Approved change request content uploaded – Person in crisis and Mental health impacts of operational activity

An additional hazard and control measure have been published to address National Operational Learning and to support the JESIP publication for Dealing with persons in crisis:

• Hazard – Person in crisis
• Control measure – Attending an incident involving a person in crisis

Updates have been made to an existing hazard and control measure published in the Operations guidance, to improve consideration about the mental health of operational personnel following attendance at traumatic events:

• Hazard – Psychological hazards (retitled Mental health impacts of operational activity)
• Control measure – Manage risk from psychological hazards (retitled Manage the risk of mental health impacts on operational personnel)

An additional hazard and control measures have been published to address National Operational Learning and to support the JESIP publication for Dealing with persons in crisis:

• Hazard – Calls from or about people in crisis
• Control measure – Gather, record and share situational awareness about people in crisis
• Control measure – Effective communication: People in crisis

This addition to the Fire Control Guidance complements the recent additions to the Operational Guidance. Some content intentionally mirrors that provided in the Operational Guidance and is included to inform and aid understanding in the context of fire control operations.

In the process of developing new content for the fire control guidance for emergency call management and mobilising, relevant extant guidance located within Operations was reviewed and, where appropriate, content included within the new guidance.

The new content contains information about communications technology, including reference to MAIT, and how technology can be used to support the prioritisation of tasks and shared situational awareness.

The guidance captures the ethos of ‘Assess, protect, assist rescue’, together with information about communicating with and receiving calls from the call handling agent, and a range of situations such as calls from fire alarm monitoring organisations, in-vehicle systems, silent calls, malicious and nuisance calls.

Emergency call management and mobilising guidance replaces extant guidance: Fire Service Circular 54/2004: Emergency call management.

This guidance also includes a relocated hazard, Inability to store and retrieve call and incident data, which had previously been published in the Operations guidance.