Quality Standards: Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service - Essay Example

Quality Standards – Nottinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service Contents Quality Standards – Nottinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service Contents 2 Abstract 2 Introduction 3 Methodology 5 Analysis of Quality Assurance at Nottingham FRS 6 Conclusions 13 References 14 Abstract In 2010, the UK government initiated some changes in national policy that led to the abolishment of comprehensive area assessments (CAAs) and reduced local government inspections. These changes have increased the responsibility of local governmental agencies and necessitated broader transparency and accountability amongst the various departments providing local services within regions in the UK. This paper studies the changes and strategies adopted by the Nottinghamshire Fire & Rescue Services as a result of these recent trends and details the steps taken by the department to identify local issues and possible solutions using the resources available. The paper further provides a comparative analysis of the strategies adopted by the department before and after the abolishment of the CAAs. Introduction According to Cote (2009), the Quality Assurance (QA) systems used by the Nottinghamshire Fire & Rescue Services (FRS) have traditionally been developed from several important commitments and principles outlined by the government with regards to public services. The framework for QA is based primarily on developing long-term policies and strategies that deliver tangible outcomes without focusing solely on short-term issues. The quality of service provided is measured with respect to the satisfaction levels among citizens and whether they full all their requirements. As such, QA procedures and systems used by the Nottinghamshire FRS do not give any special preference towards providers. Improving efficiency and providing quicker services without any room for mediocrity are also other parameters that have been given due importance by the QA systems (Odpm, 2009). As the subsequent paragraphs will demonstrate, the Nottinghamshire FRS also realizes the crucial role of technology in its operations and has made some important investments to include technological developments within its internal workflows. From an economic perspective, Nottinghamshire has faced two major challenges over the preceding decade. PAC (2009) says that the region faces a low level of innovation and income levels when compared on a national scale which has resulted in fewer jobs within the private sector. Between 2008 and 2009, the local economy faced the greatest challenge from the financial crisis and global recession. This has increased unemployment and has affected several industrial sectors within Nottinghamshire. In this scenario, the public sector has emerged as a major provider of jobs in the country. In the case of the Nottinghamshire FRS, the situation presents a challenge in terms of providing quality service to citizens, planning for future expenses more carefully and creating more jobs within the existing financial constraints (Wilkinson, 2010). Another issue that faces the region is the rapidly aging population, which is expected to double by 2025 (Hessami, 2009). These demographic trends have prompted a long-term challenge to the Nottinghamshire FRS when planning future services. The FRS notes that elderly people are prone to depend more on rescue services then other age classes. Besides, the pressure from a larger elderly population, enhanced by age-related health problems and pensioner poverty, is only likely to increase their dependence on the FRS. The department has been working towards improving its response times in such cases and is contemplating several educational programs to instruct elderly people on the danger of dwelling fires, which have been noted as primary causes of mishaps among people aged above 80 (National UK Fire Statistics, 2009). This paper provides a discussion of the agency’s quality assessment performance before and after the abolition of the Comprehensive area assessments (CAA) introduced in 2009. Methodology The analysis of the QA systems’ used by the Nottinghamshire FRS (NFRS) and their assessment depends largely on an aggregate comparison of their individual performance, especially after the abolition of the CA framework. Since this decision has enhanced the need for self-transparency and openness on the part of the NFRS, it is believed that the service would communicate about all its activities to the general public and remain fair and open about its assessment criteria. The study has relied primarily on information and performance assessments of various experts on similar Fire & Rescue services (across the UK) including the NFRS and has utilized their conclusions and approach to analyze the reports released by the NFRS since 2009. As such, this study relies mainly on secondary sources of information including books, journals and magazine articles to arrive at suitable conclusions on the QA performance of the NFRS. Analysis of Quality Assurance at Nottingham FRS Background history The Nottinghamshire FRS has recognized the role of diverse communities in its quality of service framework and has refrained from maintaining a common focus towards all these groups. The FRS has instead chosen to customize its services to suit the requirements of each local community in a bid to make the best use of available resources. To achieve this, the department has utilized data from several data sources and repositories in order to construct a ‘community risk profile’ based on statistical analysis for every constituent district. The data sources for this exercise has been sourced from Mosaic (to identify communities had more dwelling fires during the previous 2 years), the consumer dynamics database (health surveys, crime surveys, lifestyle survey, multiple deprivation etc) and an internal ‘Incident recording system’ (Muckett, 2009). The data from all these sources is combined to provide an elaborate overview into the problem areas covered by the FRS based on individual risk scores and patterns. The statistical analysis has helped in reducing false alarm calls and traffic collisions apart from incidents involving fire casualties. The information secured through this analysis is also disseminated to the local government authority and is used to generate reports for use by other government agencies in the region. According to Phillips (2008), a notable feature of this exercise is that all incidents reported through the recording system are frequently reviewed by a line manager to maintain clarity and ensure that all reported incidents have received sufficient response. The Nottinghamshire FRS has also used the data from these repositories for detailed community profiling based on incident summaries by area (Wallington, 2010). By doing so, the FRS has managed to identify the areas with the most number of incidents related to fire and rescue. A graph depicting the results of this analysis is shown below: Figure 1: Incident summary by Areas under NFRS (NFRS, 2010) Klann (2009) argues that while the above results help immensely in identifying the most problematic or demanding areas, the FRS claims that it uses this information to predict events in the future. The existing documents available with the Nottingham FRS provide no further information to substantiate this claim that the FRS has indeed used past information to determine events that are likely to occur in the future. As such, the notion that past historical data is a clear indicator of future events is a premise that does not hold under any circumstances. It would be better instead if the FRS utilizes these results to determine ways in which it could mitigate these problems by taking relevant steps. To some extent, these strategies appear to have been developed and implemented. For instance, Grice (2009) states that the analysis has prompted the FRS to make better use of its resources such as fire engines which are positioned in the busiest areas. Smoke alarms are installed beginning with areas that have the greatest risk of incidents related to fire where community programs have also been organized to educate residents on safety. Despite these best practices, there is always the danger that many of the residents and beneficiaries of these services would be hard to reach. In fact, the Nottinghamshire FRS itself acknowledges that not all people, even those residing in the most risky areas, are willing to accept any assistance or additional awareness incentives from the agency. The agency hopes to reach this target group over the next 3 years through better data and analysis (Phillips, 2008). The question of whether residents would still be willing to make the extra effort towards safety and awareness still remains as the agency does not have a clear answer about how it plans to fulfill these deficiencies using sophisticated methods. Analysis of current QA systems Since 2007, the concept of risk management has been implemented as a standard mechanism into the Fire service. In fact, appropriate risk mitigation and risk management procedures have been utilized by the Nottinghamshire FRS to cater to the dynamic and demanding nature of the region. Currently, the risk management mechanism is part of the performance assessment tool that is used for information gathering, analysis and improvement of various services rendered by the NFRS (Nottingham FRS). Muckett (2009) emphasizes that while this integrated approach may help in ensuring uniformity and data consistency across the various QA (Quality Assurance) and management systems of the NFRS, the service could have extended the utility of risk management to forecasting the various threats that occur in the region based on historical data. Risk management may also be extended to help other services that often need to work in conjunction with the NFRS to deliver requisite services. The current risk model in place was developed by Turnbull based on the guidelines of the Health and Safety Principles HSG65 (Wallington, 2010). Figure 2: use of historical data by NFRS to identify major causes of fire incidents (NFRS, 2010). The NFRS also uses QA tools for corporate planning purposes that help identify and assign the available resources based on the priority of the emergencies (Hessami, 2009). All related processes have been structured along the guidelines of the Audit commission and the government and are focus on a response-driven approach based on the extent of financial support available. These corporate planning and strategic decision making initiatives have allowed the NFRS to respond to a number of issues like protecting public property, assisting employees, facilitate internal growth of the organization and building a strong IT-driven infrastructure (Hessami, 2009). However, there is no information on whether such planning and decision making follows any particular project management framework such as Prince2. It is thus advisable to adopt any future projects after having gained useful knowledge on suitable project management techniques. Other areas where QA is mainly used include home risk assessments and installation of smoke alarms. The QA systems related to such areas are aimed at creating capacity and making the best operational use of resources. The NFRS has achieved this by allocating dedicated personnel to each service area and using these QA systems to cover vast sections of the community (Wilkinson, 2010). However, the NFRS acknowledges the need for further inclusion of intervention mechanisms and strategies based on the goals stipulated under the ACAS principles (for developing new grievance and capability policies to improve worker motivation and prevent disruption of essential services) and other regulatory frameworks. These strategies are also necessary as they can immensely improve the level of partnership with other government agencies to prevent major issues affecting local communities like road accidents, arson and theft. During the period 2008-2010, the NFRS has directed its financial strategy towards strengthening the IT and telecommunications infrastructure which initially commenced in 2005 (PAC, 2009). During this period, the focus has been towards integrating all communication systems to deliver seamless services and gather operational information on risk directly from end users. The internal financial management systems have also been improvised to enforce accountability from the lowest levels throughout the organization so as to create a hierarchical information flow across managers and budget planners. The post CAA scenario Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAA), introduced in 2009, was soon abolished by the new government in mid 2010. The CAAs were introduced by the Audit commission in an effort to assess performance of local public services in a top-down approach. The abolition of this mechanism to cut costs has meant that local services will now have to undertake periodic self-assessments and evaluate their efficiency towards achieving relevant targets (Cote, 2009). These new changes imply that agencies such as the NFRS now have a greater responsibility to ensure broader transparency and openness towards disclosing their performance and quality of service. The NFRS is also required to publish its assessments online so that they can be evaluated by anyone from the general public for appropriate scrutiny. During the past year, the NFRS used the risk management platform to identify the dangers related to fire accidents and concluded that people with disabilities were the most vulnerable to such incidents. A new safety education program called ‘RiskWatch’ has been introduced recently to educate young students about safety procedures and ways to protect them against fire. However, the NFRS is yet to extend this program across all age groups. Such improvements are essential in the case of Nottinghamshire as people with physical disabilities are significant in number (Wilkinson, 2010). Moreover, the National UK fire Statistics for 2010 shows that residents aged above 80 are four times more unresponsive than people between 17-25 years in cases of fire mishaps and require special instructions to overcome such situations. Internal reports published by the NFRS since 2004 have consistently identified problems within younger people as primary reasons for crime-related incidents in the region. The service have developed system like FireSetter Intervention and introduced schemes such as the Prince’s trust team program to organize and monitor youth engagement programs (Hessami, 2009). Quality assurance achieved by these initiatives is now being shared with other partners including social services, health services and the local police. The NFRS is also working to improve its quality in reducing road traffic collisions. The current annual figure for such incidents within Nottinghamshire is 4000 while the economic loss is estimated at over ?300 million. The NFRS has adopted the government’s ‘National road safety strategy’ and hopes to mitigate such incidents to 40% by 2013 (Wallington, 2010). Stricter regulations are currently being devised to prevent the illegal use of vehicles through more frequent checks and reporting. In this context, the NFRS has partnered with the NRSP (Nottinghamshire Road Safety Partnership) to improve coordination in related activities. The NFRS is also establishing an Arson task force in partnership with other services to protect the most vulnerable people and work with identified offenders to correct their behavior. However, there is a need for better systems and analytical procedures to generate such identification which current systems are unable to provide. The NFRS acknowledges the need to establish and train a dedicated team for this task to help vulnerable people in the most efficient way (Klann, 2009). Most notably, a comprehensive service-wide system must be made available to monitor and identify derelict properties and localities that are most prone to arson-related incidents. Conclusions The study has provided some good insights over the growth in the use of quality assurance systems by the NFRS in various service areas. The findings indicate a growing significance of QA in areas like information assessment, incident forecasting and risk management. The NFRS is developing new policies to improve its quality of service and make the best operational use of available resources. In all these initiatives, there is extensive scrutiny towards conformance with applicable regulations and standards laid out by the government, the Audit commission and other agencies. The NFRS is also incorporating all QA systems into an elaborate IT and communications network that it plans to use for delivering and coordinating all of its activities and services. In fact, various administrative tasks such as financial planning and human resource management are being carried out through this network infrastructure to achieve interoperability and sharing of data with all stakeholders and partner agencies. The abolition of the CAA has given more responsibilities to the NFRS towards maintaining an independent observation and self-assessment methodology. Several new projects have been started or are being planned as part of a renewed quality deliverance strategy that aims to secure the region against all vulnerabilities. Future studies analyzing the NFRS and its QA approach should evaluate the effectiveness of these projects and determine the extent to which existing issues have been resolved. The level of engagement and responsiveness from the local communities as well as the existing trends in various incidents like fire, accident or theft should also be analyzed and compared with the figures computed until now to develop a historical profile and consensus on the effectiveness of current strategies. In any case, the primary objective for any study should be focused towards assessing the performance of the NFRS over the next three year period as new information is released periodically by the agency. References 1. Cote (2009), Organizing for Fire And Rescue Services. New York: Jones & Bartlett. 2. Grice (2009), Fire Risk: Fire Safety Law and Its Practical Application. Thorogood Publishing. 3. Hessami (2009), Global Security, Safety, and Sustainability: 5th International Conference, ICGS3 2009. New York: Springer. 4. Klann (2009), Managing healthcare fire safety. Great Britain Department of Health: Estates and Facilities Division. 5. Muckett (2009), Introduction to fire safety management. London: Elsevier. 6. Odpm (2009), Fire safety risk assessment: theatres, cinemas and similar premises. The Stationery Office. 7. PAC (2009), New dimension - enhancing the Fire and Rescue Services' capacity to respond to terrorist and other large-scale incidents: report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence. Great Britain House of Commons. 8. Phillips (2008), Air Management for the Fire Service. London: Fire Engineering Books. 9. Wallington (2010), One Hundred Years of the British Fire Engine. Jerry Mills Publishing. 10. Wilkinson (2010), Homeland security in the UK: future preparedness for terrorist attack since 9/11. London: Taylor & Francis. Read More