Strategic action process

Background

There are a number of reasons why strategic actions (SAs), in either the Operational Guidance or Fire Control Guidance, may need to be updated or archived:

• Publication of a new section of guidance
• Publication of a new control measure
• Periodic reviews of existing guidance
• Change requests to existing guidance
• Removal of a section of guidance or a control measure

Preferred process

To avoid the situation where changes to strategic actions may not be noticed, strategic gap analysis administrators were asked about the preferred process that should be followed when a strategic action is updated or replaced. The outcome of this survey, and the subsequent decision of the NFCC Operational Guidance Forum, means that from June 2025 we will archive existing strategic actions and replace with new strategic actions if required, rather than amending the wording of an existing strategic action.

What this means for services

This process will generate new SA ID numbers. Comments or activity in the service’s SGA will be lost in the online tool when the original strategic action is archived. If the archived strategic action is replaced by a new strategic action, the new strategic action will not adopt any existing comments or activity.

The new strategic action will appear on the ‘Exported SGA Data’ from the online tool with blank ‘Action Complete’ and ‘Compliancy’ fields, to flag to the SGA user the need to review the action afresh, in context with the change of wording of the strategic action or content of the control measure.

Communication

NFCC will provide communication following the publication of a guidance review or change request, which should prompt SGA users to check the impact of any revisions on their SGA. Communication will be made via the What’s New webpage (which it is recommended that users subscribe to) and NFCC Connect rooms, including the Operational Guidance Collaboration room and the Strategic Gap Analysis Collaboration room.

Exception

If the strategic action is only being corrected for a typographical error, the wording will be amended, but in this instance without communication to SGA users.