Protection Fire Standard

The NFCC’s Protection, Policy and Reform Unit (PPRU) has delivered a number of guidance documents and a competency framework to enable services to improve their capacity and competency in this area. It is continuing to deliver guidance and support to services across the UK to help drive improvements in protection activities.

We are grateful for all the feedback we received through the consultation, all of which has been considered. We have provided an explanation and rationale for the changes made in the table below.

Approved Standard

Take a look at the Fire Standard that was published following your feedback to the consultation.

• 

  Protection

Consultation

• Fire Protection Fire Standard

  Closed on 9 April 2021

DESIRED OUTCOME

You Said	We Did
The Desired Outcome was not clear in stating that Protection activities should drive changing behaviours in communities which would then see a reduction in risks and incidents and improve their health, safety and wellbeing.	It was agreed this is a key point to include in the standard, so the Desired Outcome statement has been amended to emphasise this important aspect.

TO ACHIEVE THE FIRE STANDARD

You Said	We Did
Building information should be available to all fire and rescue service personnel, whenever they need it.	This was a new point that was added to the Fire Standard.
The Fire Standard was not clear in the role Protection departments have in responding to consultations.	We clarified the language relating to consultation responses to ensure that these are done in a timely and appropriate way, without causing burden to fire and rescue services.
There was repetition across a number of points and the Fire Standard duplicated some elements of the NFCC Competency Framework for Fire Safety Regulators.	We removed areas of duplication, particularly around Competency Framework adoption.
Petroleum and Explosives are managed and regulated in a variety of ways across services and depending upon a fire and rescue services governing body. The Fire Standard did not adequately reflect this.	We held a number of workshops with subject matter experts in this area to clarify how this topic was best addressed in the Fire Standard.
Protection departments do not have the capacity to train all operational staff in protection activities. The role of Protection function is to support Operational staff in this matter.	We changed the emphasis from training to providing support to operational response staff in relation to protection activities.
Primary Authority Partnership schemes play an important role in Protection departments and were not adequately covered.	We revised the Fire Standard to emphasise Primary Authority Partnership schemes as a key form of engagement.
The Fire Standard could be made clearer that Protection departments should provide only the necessary statutory protection activities outside of normal office hours.	Emphasised that services should maintain an ability to deliver necessary, rather than all, statutory protection activities at all times.
Fire Investigation could be made clearer to state that a service should not only undertake Fire Investigation, but they should learn from the causes of incidents.	We realised we had not made clear at the time of consultation that a separate and specific Fire Standard for Fire Investigation was planned and therefore we would not go into full detail on this topic within either this or the Protection Fire Standard. However, we have made reference to the importance of developing a learning culture to continually improve service delivery.
Fire and rescue services should support and contribute to national campaigns alongside delivering their local risk plans.	We have added this as an additional activity that services should undertake, in order to support a national approach to prevention.

EXPECTED BENEFITS THE FIRE STANDARD

You Said	We Did
Many benefits listed are subjective and would be difficult to quantify and measure.	We have reviewed the benefits section in its entirety and refined the benefits that remain to ensure they are both appropriate and measurable.