What’s New

Approved change request content uploaded – Driving to incidents

In the process of developing new content for the Firefighting guidance, a gap in content was identified regarding the approach and positioning of fire and rescue services vehicles for fire-related incidents where products of combustion may be present.

The same control measures may also need to be applied to other incidents that could produce an atmosphere containing pollutants, such as hazardous materials incidents.

Therefore, this change request has been developed to encompass the approach to such incidents, and the positioning of vehicles at such incidents. Components affected are:

• Hazard – Driving to incidents
• Control measure – Make a safe and controlled approach to the incident
• Control measure – Position fire and rescue service vehicles safely

The accompanying training specifications have also been updated.

• Following on from recent changes to the Hazardous materials guidance due to the updated IOR for CBRN JOPs, we have now published the accompanying training specification. A further quality assurance check was carried out on the guidance; this has prompted some minor changes in the guidance, mostly terminology and errors, but with some adjustment to the strategic and tactical actions. Further information is provided in a recent Workplace post.
• https://nationalfirechiefs.workplace.com/groups/NFCCAllStaff/permalink/3740695096166299/

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.

Updates have been made to various sections of the Operational Guidance (Corporate guidance for operational activity, Fires in buildings, Fires in buildings under construction or demolition and Height, structures and confined spaces) to reflect the change in wording from premises information boxes to secure information boxes.

This follows the legislative changes included in The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022. Information about this change can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-safety-england-regulations-2022/fact-sheet-secure-information-box-regulation-4

Missing or misallocated tactical actions

In the process of some behind the scenes work for the strategic gap analysis, it was noticed that there were some missing or misallocated tactical actions in this guidance. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you, but would suggest that you check for any impact on your policies or procedures.

The control measures with missing tactical actions were:

• Multi-agency response to terrorist attacks was missing 10 tactical actions
• Safe system of work: Terrorist attacks was missing one incident commander tactical action
• Safe system of work: Sieges resulting from terrorist attacks was missing one fire control tactical action
• Fire and rescue service response to other hazards: Terrorist attacks was missing one incident commander tactical action

The misallocations involved the tactical action being in the incident commander list when it should have been in the fire control list or vice versa. By virtue of their wording, it should have been evident that they were in the wrong list.

Approved change request content uploaded

• Hazard – Compressed air systems – minor wording change to remove unnecessary examples about where the systems may be found and expand to all modes of transport
• Control measure – Safe system of work: Aircraft evacuation slides – control measure knowledge requires expanding, with supporting strategic and tactical actions updated
• Hazard – Military aircraft – hazard knowledge section about liquid oxygen requires minor wording change to provide more accurate information about the presence of liquid oxygen
• Control measure – Cordons: Moving vehicles on roadways – control measure knowledge requires more information about which fire and rescue vehicles can be used for ‘in-line’, ‘fend-off’ or ‘fend-in’ purposes
• Control measure – Roadways: Identify alternative fuel vehicles – control measure knowledge requires minor wording change, with supporting strategic and tactical actions updated

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.