Desired outcome
A fire and rescue service that has a competent and resilient fire control capability, resourced to meet the demands placed upon it. Its fire control is prepared and empowered to manage emergency calls from when they are received, through to the conclusion of incidents and beyond, providing the best possible service to the public. Fire control employees gather and share information to make informed and proactive decisions. They mobilise resources, provide safety, evacuation, and survival guidance to the public in an accessible way, contributing to the effective, safe and coordinated resolution of local, regional and national incidents.
The service values and understands the critical and broad role of fire control as an integral part of its operational preparedness, response and incident command arrangements. When the service responds to multi-agency incidents or events, its fire control contributes to an effective response between operational employees, blue light partners and other organisations, following JESIP principles.
The service acknowledges the expertise and perspective of fire control in informing both its community risk management and strategic plans. The service has a culture that actively values and encourages the contribution of fire control managers as part of its organisational leadership, providing them with opportunities for development and progression.
The service trains and equips its fire control employees and supports them through continuous professional development to achieve and maintain their competence. This includes regular training and exercising with operational employees, incident commanders and, where relevant, other services and agencies.
Fire control is integrated in the organisational learning process of the service. There is recognition of the value that is drawn from effective de-briefing and the sharing of information and experiences from a fire control perspective. The service adopts good practice and is innovative, it stays informed of industry developments, emerging technologies and trends.
It is an inclusive and caring organisation that recognises the mental health pressures fire control employees may be exposed to, and proactively provides appropriate health and wellbeing support.
During periods of exceptional demand for fire control and when other factors disrupt business as usual, the service continues to deliver critical fire control functions because of its resilient fire control capability and business continuity arrangements.
Activity
Service Delivery
Business Area(s)
Response
- Date approved
- Date issued
- Review date
- Reference number
- FSD-RSP03
What is required to meet the fire standard
To achieve this Fire Standard, a fire and rescue service must:
- Include fire control managers in its community risk management and strategic planning;
- As part of their community risk management, strategic and workforce planning, consider the resources they need to provide a resilient fire control, including:
- the number of fire control employees required for the safe and effective command and operation of fire control;
- the role and level of the fire control commander; and
- an effective fire control management structure that takes into account the leadership and ongoing development of its fire control function.
- Base fire control policies, procedures and tailored guidance on National Operational Guidance, unless by exception its content is not relevant to the service;
- Embed JESIP principles into policies, procedures, training and exercising to support interoperability and multi-agency working;
- Embed national resilience arrangements into policies, procedures, training and exercising to support intraoperability;
- Provide fire control employees with effective systems and arrangements to:
- Receive and manage emergency calls;
- Identify and record the location of emergency callers and incidents;
- Provide advice and life-saving survival guidance to help people at risk;
- Determine an appropriate response;
- Identify the location, skills and availability of resources;
- Mobilise appropriate resources;
- Share incident related information with operational employees, other fire controls and other multi-agency organisations;
- Increase emergency call management capacity;
- Escalate fire control command levels according to operational need;
- Record all incident-related actions and decisions; and
- Support the ongoing needs of an incident.
- Recruit, train, exercise, develop and maintain a competent and professional fire control workforce;
- Have in place necessary succession planning and processes to maintain a sustainable competent fire control workforce;
- Develop a cycle of continuous learning and professional development for fire control employees that considers relevant occupational standards;
- Have assurance processes in place to ensure that fire control commanders and employees working within its fire control are suitably competent;
- Establish and regularly test and evaluate robust business continuity plans (BCP) and arrangements relating to critical fire control functions, that:
- plan for the degradation and loss of fire control capabilities, including systems, infrastructure and people; and
- provide clear steps for invoking the BCP with assigned responsibilities.
- Provide easily accessible and widely promoted mental and physical health and wellbeing support to its fire control employees;
- Integrate fire control employees in organisational and multi-agency learning processes, providing opportunities and tools to:
- Share relevant learning;
- Receive relevant learning; and
- Implement improvements by acting on relevant learning.
To achieve this Fire Standard, a fire and rescue service should:
- Use the training specification component of National Operational Guidance to inform their training needs analysis;
- Stay informed of trends, developments and innovations in mobilising and communications technologies
Expected benefits of achieving the fire standard
- Continuously improves the quality of service provided to the public.
- An effective operational response and improved community safety and wellbeing.
- Professional and competent fire control employees.
- Improved safety, mental and physical health and wellbeing of employees.
- Improved levels of recruitment and retention as a consequence of increased professional development opportunities and effective planning.
- Effective intra-operability between fire controls, contributing to improved coordinated responses, collaboration and sharing of learning.
- Improved interoperability with other organisations.
- A resilient fire control capability.
Legal requirements or mandatory duties
This Fire Standard reflects only the most relevant legislation to this topic.
We recognise that fire and rescue services must comply with a broader list of legislation to undertake their duties, which would be applicable to all standards. View the legislation which applies to all Fire Standards.
Linked qualifications, accreditations or fire standards
Fire Standards:
- Code of Ethics
- Community Risk Management Planning
- Leading and Developing People
- Leading the Service
- Operational Competence
- Operational Learning
- Operational Preparedness
Standards:
- National Occupational Standards – currently under review
Qualifications:
Guidance and supporting information
- Fire control National Operational Guidance: Survival guidance
- Fire control National Operational Guidance: Fire control command
- Fire control National Operational Guidance: Multiple calls and multiple incidents
- Fire control National Operational Guidance: Emergency call management: People at risk
- JESIP
- Fire Control Guidance – NFCC
- International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 22301: Business continuity management systems
- ISO 11064: Ergonomic design of control centres
- Code of Practice for the Public Emergency Call Service – DocsLib
Note Please contact the Fire Standards team within the NFCC for any queries or support with regards to this Fire Standard [email protected]