What’s New

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.

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)

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

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.

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

• 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.

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.