Episode 15: Shaping Our Future - Exploring our Community Risk Management Plan

In this episode of Out of the Ashes: Stories from Lancashire, we're exploring our Community Risk Management Plan, or CRMP.

 Our draft Community Risk Management Plan is now out for consultation, and your views are crucial in helping us shape the future of Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service. We're joined by Deputy Chief Fire Officer (DCFO) Steve Healey and Area Manager (AM) Tom Powell, who discuss some of the risks facing Lancashire, how we're planning to respond to them, and why it's important that you have your say. 

Earlier this year, we asked staff, the public and our partners what matters most to them, receiving more than 2,000 responses which have helped shape this draft plan. But now, we want to hear from you again.

If you'd like to read the draft plan and share your views, you can find the consultation on our website: www.lancsfirerescue.org.uk/about/consultation

The consultation closes at 5pm on Friday 9 October 2026, so please take the time to have your say. 

And remember if you liked our episode, please like and subscribe and let’s make Lancashire safer together.

Transcript

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[00:00:04.050] - Host (Lucinda)
Welcome to Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service's podcast series, Out of the Ashes: Stories from Lancashire. In today's episode, we're going to explore our Community Risk Management Plan, or CRMP. We're going to explore what it is, why it matters, and how it will shape the work we do over the next 5 years. Our draft Community Risk Management Plan is now out for consultation, and your views are crucial in helping us shape the future of Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service. The CRMP sets the direction for the service. From preventing fires and helping our most vulnerable residents develop safer habits, to supporting businesses, landlords, and employers to keep people safe in their buildings, the CRMP helps shape what we do and how we deliver our services.

[00:00:48.380] - Host (Lucinda)
Earlier this year, we asked staff, the public, and our partners what matters to them most, receiving more than 2,000 responses which have helped shape this draft plan. But now we want to hear from you again. In this episode, we'll be speaking to Deputy Chief Fire Officer (DCFO) Steve Healey and Area Manager (AM) Tom Powell to explore the CRMP in more detail, why it's so important, and what we're asking you to consider as part of the consultation.

[00:01:10.490] - Host (Lucinda)
So let's take a closer look at the plan and how you can have your say. For someone hearing the term CRMP for the first time, what exactly is it and why is it so important to Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service?

[00:01:21.930] - DCFO Steve Healey
Well, morning Lucinda. Yeah, the CRMP is our Community Risk Management Plan. All fire and rescue authorities are legally required to produce these plans on a regular basis. The national framework says it needs to last at least 3 years, so the community risk management plan that we are currently drafting, and that is out to public consultation, lasts for 5 years running from 2027 through to 2032. Essentially, it sets out our high-level approach to how we manage risk across the county. It talks very much about how we look after our people to deliver the best services that they can, particularly talking around how we interact between prevention activities, protection, and response to keep Lancashire safe. And it also talks very much about how we are aiming to deliver the most efficient and effective services to our community and essentially deliver value for money.

[00:02:26.330] - Host (Lucinda)
Yeah, so when people think of the fire service, like you've just briefly explained, it's not just responding to fires and attending fires, is it? So our CRMP shows how much broader our role is, doesn't it?

[00:02:38.890] - AM Tom Powell
It does, yeah, absolutely, Lucinda, and one of the things that we've tried to do in this version, and hopefully members of the public and staff will see, is It's just how the landscape for fire and rescue services is changing. So there's a lot of different risks that we see now compared to 10, 15 years ago, and whilst we might see some of the traditional fires reducing, our overall activity has increased slightly from 15 years ago, and that's due to a number of different incident types that we now attend through supporting partners for missing persons, gaining entry to properties, to things like water rescue and the effects of climate change. So through the Community Risk Management Plan, we have a number of documents that support it, and one of them is the Strategic Assessment of Risk, and that looks at what incidents are happening in Lancashire and where the likely demand will be in the future, and then how we best place our resources to deal with those challenges.

[00:03:40.140] - Host (Lucinda)
So the plan covers the next 5 years, but how does something like the CRMP actually influence what happens day to day across our stations, departments and within teams?

[00:03:49.750] - AM Tom Powell
Okay, so outlined in our Community Risk Management Plan is, is our purpose and our vision, but also our priorities. So we've got 6 priorities in Lancashire, or this is what we're proposing for the next 5 years. And firstly, it's around valuing our people. So we've got a people strategy that looks at how we can ensure our teams and our staff are best prepared to make Lancashire safer. We've got a prevention strategy, which looks at how do we prevent those fires and other emergencies happening in the first place. Then we have a protecting priority, which is all around business and property safety and, if needed, enforcement from a fire and rescue perspective. We've got responding to fires, so obviously when those emergencies happen, we can get there as quickly and as competently as possible. We also recognise that the use of technology is vast and expanding at a great rate, so as a fire and rescue service, there's a lot of technology that we use. So the use of digital data and technology to drive our continuous improvement is another priority of ours. And then the final one is delivering value for money. So again, you know, we've got budgets, we've got to maintain those budgets and deliver value for money for, for the people of Lancashire.

[00:05:03.320] - AM Tom Powell
So there our 6 priorities and then they each have a strategy and underneath those every year we produce an Annual Service Plan which looks at our community risk management plan, which looks at the strategies and says how can we deliver for the community of Lancashire over this next year? What projects, what initiatives can we do? And then we measure ourselves and hold ourselves to account via the Annual Service Report following the year. We have department and local delivery plans as well, so departments here at headquarters or stations out across Lancashire have local delivery plans based on the risk and the demand in their areas, where they're going to target the risk as we've discussed, and then that, that leads down into individual appraisals and targets, objectives that that everybody across Lancashire Fire and Rescue Services has a contribution to make, and it's about them understanding the role that they have and the impact that they can, they can play in making Lancashire safer.

[00:06:01.850] - Host (Lucinda)
So you've just touched upon all of the different elements of community risk and briefly what that means. Some of the key areas that we are now seeing in Lancashire are different from like a couple of years ago, aren't they? And I know that from my experience, we're dealing with more challenging risks that can be related to, like you said, climate change, but also new risks that we've never seen before, like your flooding, wildfires, you've said water rescues, environmental risk, and even humanitarian incidents. So as I've just said, the risks in Lancashire are changing over time. Are there any emerging risks that we need to be thinking about over the next couple of years?

[00:06:40.560] - DCFO Steve Healey
Absolutely. I mean, in Lancashire, we respond on average to around about 17,500 incidents incidents every year. That sort of peaks and troughs, but on average over the last few years we've been around that level. But as you rightly identify, risk is changing, the incidents that we respond to are changing. Indeed, if we look back 10, 15 years, we were responding to around about 40, 45% of fires. That's now reduced to around about 30%, but other incident types are increasing. So the amount of incidents our firefighters respond to in terms of special service calls, so road traffic collisions, supporting other agencies such as the police and North West Ambulance Service for incidents like gaining entry. But in relation to fires, you're absolutely right to identify that they're very different now than they were many years ago. So we're seeing, and in recent months that's testment, we're seeing a lot more protracted incidents, wildfire incidents. Our crews not only respond across Lancashire but also support that national resilience piece. So literally in recent weeks we've had crews over the border in Manchester, down in South Wales, Hampshire, and other parts of the country assisting with that national resilience.

[00:07:59.130] - DCFO Steve Healey
The Community Risk Management Plan draws that all together to look at what resources we need to maintain within Lancashire to keep our communities safe but also how we can support the national resilience piece. The other point I would sort of draw out, and I don't know whether Tom's got anything to add here, is that technology is changing as well. So lithium-ion batteries, our roads are more challenging when we respond now to road traffic collisions. It's not just your traditional petrol and diesel cars that our crews are dealing with, very complex battery fires that can have significant impacts on the road infrastructure and clearly the risk to our firefighters that are responding, but I don't know whether you want to touch a bit more, Tom, on that climate change agenda.

[00:08:40.800] - AM Tom Powell
Absolutely, Steve. So, you know, we've gone literally from responding and dealing with wildfires and supporting colleagues across the country and the UK to flash flooding here in Lancashire that we're dealing with currently. And one thing I'd say around the emerging technology and the other incident types that we're facing is that fires themselves have developed, so we're seeing that the types of lithium-ion battery fires, that the way the ferocity that they develop is, is, is nothing like we've experienced previously. So how we tackle those fires and extinguish them again is, is changing, is developing, um, not just in Lancashire but across the world. And there's a lot of research and development ongoing, and part of the community risk management plan is, is to look at how can we support our, our staff and our teams to face those new risks and to deal with those risks as best as they can. And that's set out in a number of our strategies that we've got under the Community Risk Management Plan.

[00:09:40.110] - Host (Lucinda)
It sounds like there's a lot of elements to consider and it's not just how it affects our staff, it's how it affects the community, how we deal with it. And like looking at Lancashire as a whole, the demographics of our county are changing all the time and it's also a very diverse county. So how do we make sure when we identify the risks that they're specific to the different communities we see across the county and like different areas of Lancashire? Because I know what might be an issue in Blackpool, might not be an issue over in Rawtenstall, to Lancaster all the way down to like Skelmersdale.

[00:10:14.940] - DCFO Steve Healey
So yeah, as Tom touched on earlier, we do, um, create a strategic assessment of risk. That document is updated every year So, we do consider the demographics, as you rightly point out there. We've got real diverse communities across many parts of Lancashire— Preston, Blackburn, Burnley, Lancaster— diverse communities that need different, um, I guess, response arrangements in place to make sure that we tailored our response to their needs. So, we, we undertake that. We have an equality, diversity, and inclusion annual document that sets out how we look to support all of our communities right across Lancashire, and as you rightly point out, risk is different at different times of the year, so we try and tailor our prevention activities to make sure that we are targeting our prevention according to the risk.

[00:11:07.030] - DCFO Steve Healey
So we do a lot of work with different communities right across Lancashire, and you're right, sadly there's a lot of deprivation in parts of Lancashire as well, which we do know directly links and has impact on fires. So where we've got more deprivation and more incidents, we do make sure that our resources are aligned to that risk. So we resource to risk and demand, and that's very much part of this Community Risk Management Plan consultation.

[00:11:34.000] - DCFO Steve Healey
We're wanting the public's views on how we resource to risk and demand to make sure that we do have the right number of fire engines and firefighters available when demand is at its highest.

[00:11:45.280] - AM Tom Powell
And I think just to add to that, the, you know, in Lancashire we've got a population just over 1.6 million, and, um, in, in the last 15 years we've seen the population increase by about 10%, households have increased by about 15%, and we've got some real extremes across Lancashire, both from a rurality perspective but also that deprivation piece. We have got some of the most deprived areas in the country, some of the highest ranking, but also some of the lowest ranking. And we have to tailor our, not just the response arrangements, but also our prevention activities to those communities. And whether it's vulnerable people, elderly people living alone, whether it's people with complex needs, we've got a number of offerings that we look to support from a prevention perspective first before we even need those fire engines. But we understand that clearly we'll need those fire engines when that day comes. So it's about making sure that we've got the right people in the right place at all times, either to undertake those prevention or protection activities, or should they need them, the response activities when those incidents arise.

[00:12:53.670] - Host (Lucinda)
So Steve, you did mention about it before about resourcing to risk and demand. So I know our plan talks about this, but what does that actually mean to the public and has, how has demand changed?

[00:13:05.950] - DCFO Steve Healey
Yeah, I think it's important probably to set out a little bit of the context of Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service first. So we've got 58 fire engines across 39 fire stations across the length and breadth of the county. 26 of those fire engines are crewed by whole-time firefighters and 32 by on-call. There's a challenge locally and nationally around the number of on-call firefighters. It's a demanding role that we expect people of local communities to come forward to be on-call firefighters. And when we talk about resourcing to risk and demand, essentially what it means is have we got the right resources available at the right time to respond when the demand is the highest, and currently across Lancashire those two don't always align.

[00:13:57.510] - DCFO Steve Healey
Before I go on to that in a little bit more detail, I just want to cover some of the sort of costs of fire engines as well. 5 years ago we would buy fire engines for around about £200,000. Fast forward 5 years to 2026 and we're paying in the region of £350,000 for those fire engines. And when you look across Lancashire, as we talked about earlier, risk is changing. We've got to challenge ourselves and say, is it 58 full-size fire engines that we need across the county to support our communities, or do we need some more smaller agile vehicles, perhaps with 4x4 capability that can assist with things like moorland fires, wildfires, etc.

[00:14:38.860] - DCFO Steve Healey
So part of the CRMP, Community Risk Management Plan, sets out those challenges and, and asks questions through the consultation of what the public's view is of that. I think in terms of some very quick additional stats before Tom might want to jump in, our highest fire engine availability is between 10 o'clock at night and 5 o'clock in the morning. Out of our 58 fire engines, we would average around 54 available during that night time period. However, that's not when our peak demand is. Our peak demand is between 5 o'clock at night and 8 o'clock at night, you know, the sort of traditional evening mealtime, when our incident numbers are the highest, but conversely our availability isn't the highest. So what the CRMP is looking to do is is ask questions, ask views through the consultation of how we can essentially try and align our resources to make sure we've got more resources available when demand is the highest, and perhaps less resources available when demand is lowest. That's essentially what we're doing when we talk resourcing to risk. Tom, anything to add on that one?

[00:15:47.910] - AM Tom Powell
I think the link here as well, Steve, is, is also within the Community Risk Management Plan document, and the, the consultation is, is around our response standards. So we're looking at resourcing to risk from a what do we have available, but also how quickly do we get to you. And within Lancashire, we've got some of the, the most stringent response standards in the country and equally the fastest response, you know, from, from a fairly geographical perspective. We're quite a large fire and rescue service, but we still have some really good response times, and we're not looking to, to change those times in terms of how, how long we take to get there, but it's that understanding we've got different levels of response standards, and the question we're posing to members of the public and staff and partners is, firstly, do they understand our current response standards? And actually, do we align to most other fire and rescue services in the country by having single standards of response so people understand how quickly that we'll get there and we can measure ourselves against that more easily?

[00:16:49.440] - AM Tom Powell
The methodology behind our current response standards isn't going to change from a prevention perspective because it takes in a number of different factors to look at where risk is greatest within Lancashire. So we will then target our resources in terms of our prevention and protection activities, and also where we align our, our response resources. But from a response time perspective, is a single standard like we have for critical special service calls better and easier to understand and more transparent to the public as well?

[00:17:19.890] - Host (Lucinda)
Tom, you mentioned a lot there about response times. Before I joined the service, I wasn't really aware of it. I thought a fire engine just turned up and just got there. I wasn't aware that there were so many factors and considerations into actually how quick they have to get there and why they have to get there and what is there. So what do we, how do we compare to like national response times?

[00:17:41.970] - DCFO Steve Healey
Well, that's very timely because, Lucinda, the national stats have just been released today from the government the average time for fire engines nationally to respond to critical fires, so your property fires, the house fires, is 9 minutes and 25 seconds. In Lancashire, our average within our CRMP consultation, we're averaging over the last 4 years 7 minutes and 32 seconds, so almost 2 minutes faster than the national average. And there's lots of things that go into that, and I think it'd be remiss of me on this podcast, not to mention the great team that we've got at North West Fire Control. All calls start with the call handling. They answer the calls very, very quickly. They dispatch our crews exceptionally fast to make sure that we can get there right across the county as quick as we possibly can.

[00:18:34.960] - DCFO Steve Healey
We do know that responding fast is real, a real priority for us. We know in phase 1 of the consultation the public put response at the very top of the hierarchy of what they would see their fire and rescue service needs to do, but as Tom mentioned earlier, prevention and protection are vital as well, and our crews spend a lot of time preventing fires, and we do want to hear further feedback from our communities around how we can deliver that prevention offer in a more efficient and effective way.

[00:19:08.290] - DCFO Steve Healey
And again, Tom touched on some of that digital opportunities that present themselves later on. So slightly digressing from, from the, the response standard, but as you, as you rightly say, it's complicated. I, I think in closing, our current standards for fires is very complicated, and we've got 4 different standards depending on the level of risk across the county. And within the consultation, we're simply asking a question, would it be more transparent, um, for everybody concerned to just go to that single standard like the majority of other fire and rescue services up and down the country?

[00:19:45.130] - AM Tom Powell
And I think if, just to add a bit more context to that as well, Lucinda, so, um, currently out of the 4 standards that we've got, there's just 1.1% of the population of Lancashire, um, that we measure against for a very high response rate, whereas the majority of Lancashire residents sit in our low-risk area, which is 12-minute response, and that's 59, pretty much 60% of the, the population of Lancashire. So this isn't around changing what response people will get, it's simply around how we measure our response times in the future.

[00:20:21.970] - Host (Lucinda)
I can see from everything that we've started to discuss that a CRMP is not as easy as just putting pen to paper. There's a lot of things that we consider as an organisation, to help make Lancashire safer. So once we have identified the risks that we're facing, how do we decide what we need to do to reduce them?

[00:20:37.790] - DCFO Steve Healey
Yeah, it's a really good question. Tom touched on our core strategies earlier. I think we would much rather see incidents not happening across Lancashire. Whenever an incident happens, communities and people are at risk, so we do a lot of work across the county around preventing Not only fires but road traffic collisions. Sadly, a number of people lose their lives every year in our waterways, and nationally there's around about 600 people drown every year in water. So preventing people getting into difficulty in water, preventing road traffic collisions, preventing fires is at the heart of what our firefighters and our community safety teams do. And then of course we've got the protection element, which is the more complex commercial buildings, and we've extended that now. So we've got a specialist fire safety team that inspect the more complex buildings and the higher-risk buildings across Lancashire, but our frontline firefighters also go into businesses now to deliver business fire safety checks, and it's important that we give the appropriate advice to businesses and of course to people in their dwellings to make sure that we can prevent these fires. So that is at the heart of some of our core strategies to, I guess, to offset some of that need to respond.

[00:22:02.300] - AM Tom Powell
And then from a response perspective, it's making sure that we are equipped and trained and competent to undertake that response activity when the bells go down or the pagers, pagers activate, and really that starts from the basic training and then the maintenance of skills and staff competence, but also then the training and exercising with partners. So we've talked about some of the different types of incidents we now attend and the complexities with those incidents, and it's also about learning from those incidents and taking the feedback and sharing that nationally, and also taking the learning that's been shared with us nationally as well. There's an important part within response around maintaining fitness and health from a firefighter perspective, maintaining the right level of appliance availability and staffing levels, which Steve's already touched on around the on-call challenges that, that we and nationally that, that we face.

[00:23:01.060] - AM Tom Powell
From a preparedness perspective as well, under response, we, we've got a number of complex buildings within Lancashire, a number of high-risk sites, so our firefighters and officers proactively attend those sites, visit those sites, and we have plans in place should those incidents occur within those sites. So there's a lot within— under the response umbrella rather than just on the fire engine responding to incidents. There's a lot that goes on prior to the incident happening but also post-incident as well.

[00:23:33.170] - DCFO Steve Healey
I think just before we move on, it'd be probably appropriate as well to comment on our support services. None of the things that Tom and I have just talked about, the prevention, protection, the response of our firefighters, can happen without really good supportive systems behind that. So whether that be human resources, finance, corporate communications, there's a whole host of support services there, property services, ICT, digital, you know, the list is endless and it's vital that we make sure that got the right people in those teams, real professional people that are very dedicated to their roles, that they can support and make sure that our frontline crews and community and fire protection teams have the appropriate infrastructure, whether that be iPads, digital access to digital software, etc., to make sure that they can do their roles very effectively. So part of pulling all that together is very much looking right across the organisation to make sure that we've, that we have the right teams to support that frontline delivery.

[00:24:40.590] - Host (Lucinda)
It sounds like everything has to work together to manage these risks, but the CRMP also looks at things like our people, our resources, even technology and partnerships. Why are those things so important in making sure that we're able to actually deliver this plan over the next 5 years?

[00:24:56.640] - AM Tom Powell
Well, as I said earlier, Lucinda, I think one of our main priorities and the first priority is around valuing our people, and we can't deliver anything without our people. And I think this Community Risk Management Plan also recognises that, um, not just us in Lancashire, across the sector and across the country, workforce sustainability is a challenge, you know, and continues to be a challenge within, within the public, public sector. But for us, we, we deliver a large amount for the communities of Lancashire, and that's due to the teams that we've got. You know, we've not got massive support departments and teams, but the work that they produce is fantastic to support that frontline response aspect, or also the communities within Lancashire. I think the other focus nationally and under the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, now that the Fire and Rescue Service come under, There is a lot of scrutiny around productivity and efficiency. We have annual returns that we need to demonstrate the work that we're doing and the value that we are producing. But there is opportunities as well from a fire and rescue perspective around risk and resilience in the communities, and we work a lot with partner agencies and we have collaboration boards with blue light partners and a whole host of other local meetings that we attend as a service and support the, the risk.

[00:26:21.740] - AM Tom Powell
So from a broader health perspective, there are links to fire, and, and it's around maintaining and strengthening those relationships and those partnerships, but also making the community safer and resilient because we're seeing challenges nationally, whether it's national power outage, and it's that we've got a role to play as a fire and rescue service to build some of that community resilience and work with with partners.

[00:26:47.420] - DCFO Steve Healey
Yeah, and just touching on that community resilience, we do know there's a lot of work ongoing on a national level to try and make sure that we can deliver the very best services to our communities when, when they need help. Um, things like medical response, things like that broader resilience piece, you know, we know the escalation of what's happening globally in terms of conflicts and how we can prepare and use our firefighters longer term to make sure that they are adding the best value they possibly can to that community resilience piece. And that very much goes back to one of my earlier points around on-call firefighters and some of the challenges that we've got in some of our more rural communities to make sure that we've got a sustainable workforce and that we do have sufficient resources available to crew those more rural fire engines.

[00:27:38.360] - AM Tom Powell
And I think from a finance perspective, You know, we are seeing challenges from a budgetary perspective. Steve's mentioned earlier around fire engines, the cost of inflation, and whilst that sometimes gets recognised in the budget setting, other times it's a challenge for fire and rescue services to try and find additional money or different ways of working to support that budget perspective. And the use of data and digital is important not just from an efficiency perspective and a budgetary perspective, but also from a staffing perspective and giving them the skills and the confidence to be able to use technology to automate things to make life more efficient for us as a fire and rescue service, but also that cyber insecurity and resilience piece because we are, as any organisation and life in general, more and more reliant on digital assets. So we've got to make sure as a fire and rescue service that we're best placed to be able to respond, should we have threats from a cyber or resilience perspective as well. So it's important that we continue to invest resources and time in that area.

[00:28:47.650] - DCFO Steve Healey
Yeah, I mean, it's a really good point, Simon. I think one of the things that we do pride ourselves in in Lancashire is being the most— and we would say this— but the most innovative fire and rescue service across the United Kingdom. And the investment that the authority has made into things like drones, underwater drones, aerial drones. We've just got a significant project ongoing now to look at how we can use drones more effectively to fight wildfires, you know, through some dedicated government funding.

[00:29:17.820] - DCFO Steve Healey
And within the CRMP, it very much talks about how we can use our resources as effectively as possible to make sure that we are delivering a first-class fire and rescue service for the communities of Lancashire.

[00:29:30.510] - Host (Lucinda)
So you have just touched upon some examples of how these factors actually change the way we work in a community, such as the drones, which are a fantastic asset to our service, and I've seen firsthand how amazing they are in showing us emergencies and how having that aerial view of a fire. But are there any other examples that we can give of how looking at these factors such as technology, community, people, resources how does that change how we work in a community?

[00:30:00.110] - AM Tom Powell
Yeah, I think one of the key priorities and areas of focus that we're proposing for the prevention aspect is around that risk-based, person-centred, evidence-led approach, and that's the use of data and intelligence to target the people and, and the trends that we're finding that people are where the most risk at fire, but also the, the technology advances that we've got within the service to help us deliver those. So it might be through use of webinars or videos and interactive sessions where the reach can be far wider than individual face-to-face reactions. Now that's not to say we won't be doing those, we'll continue to do those and we can continue to deliver upwards of 20,000 visits per year face-to-face from a home fire safety check perspective, but the use through whether it's social media, whether it's through emails, newsletters, technology gives us a lot far greater reach than we ever had before, and it's about how can we get our messaging out there, um, to support the communities of Lancashire.

[00:31:06.350] - DCFO Steve Healey
Yeah, and it's certainly not, as Tom's just said there, certainly not about reducing what we deliver. I think the digital opportunity, and we've got a fantastic digital and data team, um, supported by, you know, ICT colleagues that provide the The hardware, the infrastructure, to make sure that our frontline crews can deliver things as efficiently and as effectively as possible. And what we are saying in this consultation, and we're keen to hear people's views, particularly around the prevention strategy, is do we move more towards where there's less risk, using digital ways of engaging and reducing that risk, than fire engines and firefighters going out physically to, to all of the different schools, to all of the different venues, to reduce that risk? Can we use opportunities of the advancements in digital technology to make sure that we're delivering things more efficiently, and that our crews are targeting the highest-risk people and communities to deliver the face-to-face interactions.

[00:32:07.020] - AM Tom Powell
And I think, from a response perspective, in answer to your question, Lucinda, when, when you look at some of the ways that we're working, or we want to work, with communities is we've got things now like 999 eye. So if a member of the public dials 999 and asks for the fire service, you know, because there's a fire, for example, there is the ability for our North West Fire Control colleagues to send a link. They can see that imagery and then therefore North West Fire Control could determine actually do they need more fire engines than we've currently got en route. There's other projects that Steve touched on earlier around drones. So for example, drone in a box technology where If we're alerted to an incident, can we get a drone to the scene quicker than a fire engine to start streaming so the officers and crews en route, and indeed North West Fire Control, can start to see and build their situational awareness and start to develop a plan of how they're going to deal with the incident, through to things like use of iPads and demountable iPads essentially on the fire engine, which helps officers officers and crews communicate back to North West Fire Control, whether that's in a tall building and some of the developments that have sadly taken place after the Grenfell Tower tragedy. But that technology allows us to be more efficient on the incident ground and frees up people to be doing other tasks.

[00:33:26.330] - Host (Lucinda)
So before we did start developing this, we asked staff, the public, and our partners what mattered to them. What did we actually learn from the 2,000 responses we got earlier this year?

[00:33:38.030] - DCFO Steve Healey
Okay, well, we, as you say, Lucinda, we had a fantastic response, over 2,000 responses to the consultation, and it was overwhelmingly positive. Those that responded said that they would prioritise response, as I mentioned earlier, over other aspects of the service, so clearly as a blue light 999 service it's important that we do get that frontline response.  And our fire engines fire engines and firefighters available, ready to respond as quick as they can. In relation to response, there was some comments around how we respond to automatic fire alarms. Across the county, we're still responding to, over 40% of our incidents turn out to be false alarms, so there was some really useful feedback around how we respond to automatic fire alarms. Bearing in mind that less than 1% of those do turn out to be actual fires.

[00:34:32.930] - DCFO Steve Healey
So we're keen to hear some feedback from communities, firefighters, wider stakeholders on how we can make sure that we're delivering a better response to automatic fire alarms. There was recognition that house fires are seen as the biggest risk in the community, which we do know. We do a lot of work to try and reduce the number of serious house fires, but sadly our crews still do respond to some very, very serious house fires across the county, and sadly people still do end up losing their lives in those fires.

[00:35:09.820] - DCFO Steve Healey
There was general agreement within the consultation responses of Phase 1 as to how we are setting around shaping that plan. Again, there's further questions in this second round. So, we are keen to get that feedback. And then finally, I think there was an acknowledgement, Tom and you touched on it earlier, around some of the funding pressures, but part of the CRMP is to make sure that we are delivering as efficiently as we possibly can, recognising some of the funding challenges that we do have, and where we may need to tailor our resources in a different way. What we intend to do around the CRMP is that sets out our 5-year overarching plan, and then every year we will deliver that through, as Tom mentioned earlier, annual service plans which we'll set out. And where we do need to do wider consultation, such as potentially an emergency cover review, then that will come out as a separate consultation, obviously underpinned by the CRMP and this strategic assessment of risk.

[00:36:10.750] - AM Tom Powell
And I think for me, just in terms of the development of the Community Risk Management Plan, this process has started well over 12 months ago. So whilst the plan won't go live until April 2027, um, the, the project management around it started in, in, in mid-2025, and Phase 1 consultation was part of that plan. But we use, um, the National Fire Chiefs Council strategic framework and their best practise around community risk management plan and the development of those. So Um, they, they talk about 5 key components for the community risk management plan, and that's the sort of structure that we've tried to follow and develop in developing this draft plan.

[00:36:52.180] - AM Tom Powell
So it's important that whilst it looks like we've got a document there, um, you know, already developed, it is still in draft, and that's, that's the bit that we're wanting members of the public, staff, and partners to, to feed back on. Are there bits that we're missing, or equally other things that we need to focus on that we haven't considered? Because this is our plan for the next 5 years, so it's got, it's important that we get people's views and understanding, and then we reflect that within our plan and what we're going to deliver.

[00:37:25.280] - Host (Lucinda)
So I'll ask you a question, Steve. What are we asking people to consider when they are taking part in this consultation?

[00:37:32.640] - DCFO Steve Healey
I mean, it's, it's a consultation that runs for 12 weeks, so we're asking, um, all stakeholders to, to contribute to that consultation. Everything that's in there essentially, Lucinda, their views on our vision, is our vision right? And how we're managing community risk, is, is our approach to managing community risk right? And how we work with partners and use digital and data technology to ensure that we're being as efficient as we possibly can. I talked extensively about how we resource to risk and demand. We're keen to hear views from all stakeholders around that, particularly on our availability, have we got the right resources available when, when they should be available? And how we set targets appropriately for that, in addition to the targets that Tom touched on in relation to response times and should we be more transparent in what that, that looks like? Um,

[00:38:29.050] - DCFO Steve Healey
Essentially views on how we, you know, monitor and report our fire engine availability at the moment. You know, is it clear to the members of the public what the offer is from Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, and do we need to look at how we tweak some of those, um, standards and key performance indicators that get reported into our, our fire authority?

[00:38:50.060] - DCFO Steve Healey
And I would urge everybody not just residents of Lancashire but anybody that visits the county, our staff and wider stakeholders to please take time to let us have their views and that will certainly assist us in shaping the final plan that will go to our Fire Authority for sign-off in December this year.

[00:39:11.860] - Host (Lucinda)
Thank you, and then to Tom, I'll word it in a different way, but someone listening right now might think that they're not an expert in fire and rescue service. So what's the point, and what, what could they possibly contribute to this because they don't have the knowledge? What would you say to that person?

[00:39:28.700] - AM Tom Powell
Okay, well, firstly, I'd say you don't need to be an expert, and hopefully through the, the way the CRMP is laid out, and certainly the survey with some videos and key messaging, so that people who don't necessarily have the detail, we are helping to inform them so they can make informed contributions to that survey. This is a public-facing document, this is something that fire and rescue services have to do, but within Lancashire we want to be able to publish a document to be really transparent around what our plan is for the next 5 years and also how we will measure ourselves.

[00:40:03.760] - AM Tom Powell
So I think it's really important for members of the public, for staff and partners to think about, well, actually, where are our areas of focus, where should they be? be, but also how do we measure those areas of success. So, um, you know, whatever your expertise, your area is, you can contribute, and we, we do want you to contribute to, to this, this survey, this consultation, and the development of our plan for the next 5 years.

[00:40:29.710] - Host (Lucinda)
And finally, I ask this to all of our guests that come on the podcast, but what's the biggest takeaway that you hope a listener takes away from this episode?

[00:40:38.860] - DCFO Steve Healey
I mean, we've covered it, covered a lot here. I think I would want to reassure those that are listening around the fantastic Fire and Rescue Service that we've got in Lancashire. We have some of the very best firefighters that not only protect Lancashire but do international response as well, and some of the very best staff that are in our support departments, our community safety teams, and our protection teams. So currently the public of Lancashire has a very, very excellent fire and rescue service. What we're trying to do in this Community Risk Management Plan consultation is set out where we're wanting to take the service in the next 5 years. So please do let us have your views, particularly around that resourcing to risk and demand, and, and we look forward to, um, to producing the final document at the back end of the year.

[00:41:27.440] - AM Tom Powell
I think just building on Steve's answer there, Lucinda, you know, we, we last year in our last inspection we received unprecedented results, 6 outstandings and 5 goods, which had never been achieved before by any fire and rescue service. So for me it's around the community of Lancashire understanding that, you know, we are delivering an exceptional service and we want to continue to do that and it's their opportunity to contribute.

[00:41:55.900] - AM Tom Powell
I think a lot of the time members of the public don't necessarily interact with the Fire and Rescue Service until they need us, and I think the biggest takeaway for me is it's their opportunity to interact with us now before, and hopefully they will never need us, but if they do then they've had influence on us, on our teams and how we deliver our services.

[00:42:18.830] - Host (Lucinda)
Thank you both for joining us and helping us explore the Community Risk Management Plan. If you'd like to read the draft plan and share your views, you can find the consultation on our website. The link will be in the episode notes. The consultation closes at 5 PM on the Friday the 9th of October 2026, so please take the time to have your say.

[00:42:37.470] - Host (Lucinda)
And remember, if you liked our episodes, please like and subscribe, and let's make Lancashire safer together.