Essex County Fire and Rescue Service needs to improve engine availability

Availability of fire engines had declined for three out of four years.

A fire service must do more to improve the availability of fire engines to respond to incidents, inspectors found.

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) inspected Essex County Fire and Rescue Service (ECFRS) in October.

It noted the culture within the service had improved but said more work was needed.

The fire service said it was an "important milestone on our improvement journey".

The HMICFRS report rated the service as "good" in three areas, "adequate" in two and "requires improvement" in six.

The report said availability had been "deteriorating" with more engines unavailable for call outs more than 40% per month for three of the last four years.

An engine can be unavailable for a number of reasons, including staffing issues.

For the year 2019-2020 there were an average of 10 a month unavailable, but by 2022-2023 it had nearly doubled to 19.

Inspectors noted: "It [the fire service] needs to improve the availability of its fire engines to make sure it can respond better to incidents. It also needs to make sure its staff are appropriately trained in risk-critical skills to support its response to incidents".

Inspectors said they were satisfied enough progress had been made surrounding protection work to reduce risk, a cause for concern at the last inspection.

Improvements to the culture within the trust were noted but inspectors said there "wasn't a strong culture of challenge at all locations", which allowed poor behaviours to continue.

The report said: "We recognise the service is working to improve its culture. It has made a lot of progress in recent years. This must continue."

'Potential risk'

The report also said enforcement powers were not used consistently and the service did not always take "appropriate opportunities for enforcement action against those who don't comply with fire safety regulations".

Inspectors found the fire service had also mobilised fire engines to incidents with "firefighters who aren't competent in the use of breathing apparatus".

"This presents a potential risk to the public and firefighters, " inspectors said.

Firefighters not competent in the use of breathing apparatus attended 3.3% of total incidents the service attended between June and November 2023

Rick Hylton, ECFRS chief fire officer, welcomed the report and said it was an "important milestone on our improvement journey".

He said: "We have been working hard to improve and the work we are doing is keeping people, homes, and businesses safer".

"A previous cause for concern from inspectors around our protection function has been removed and this is testament to the great, proactive work our teams are doing," he added.

Roger Hirst, Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Essex, said the report was a " strong, steady, positive step forward".