Agenda item

Report of the Director of Finance, People & Estates (PC/23/4) attached.

The Committee received for information a report of the Director of Finance, People & Estates (PC/23/4) detailing performance as at Quarter 3 of 2022-23 against those Key Performance Indicators agreed by the Committee for measuring progress against the following three strategic priorities as approved by the Authority:

3(a).   Ensure that the workforce is highly trained and has the capability and capacity to deliver services professionally, safely and effectively;

3(b).   Increase the diversity of the workforce to better reflect the communities we serve, promoting inclusion and developing strong and effective leaders who ensure that we have a fair place to work where our organisational values are a lived experience; and

3(c).   Recognise and maximise the value of all employees, particularly the commitment of on-call firefighters, improving recruitment and retention.

In particular, the report provided information on performance against each of the following key measures:

·         operational core competence skills (beathing apparatus; incident command; water rescue; safety when working at heights or in confined spaces; maritime; driving; and casualty care);

·         health and safety (accidents [including near misses]; personal injuries; vehicle incidents (together with the correlation to appliance mobilisation) and reporting against the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR));

·         sickness and absence (including mental health) for wholetime, on-call, support, Control and casual staff, by type of sickness  and details of the health and wellbeing support offered by the Service. The report also provided comparisons with national fire service data and featured benchmarking for sickness absence against comparable, neighbouring fire and rescue services;

·         fitness testing (including support offered for red and amber groups) and a review of testing to explore a more inclusive, role-related functional fitness test for operational staff;

·         diversity, with a particular emphasis on the work being undertaken on retention and promoting inclusion by developing strong leadership living the Service’s values ;

·         promoting inclusion, developing strong leaders, living Service values and being a fair place to work;

·         strategic workforce planning including details of staff turnover in all categories of the workforce; and

·         employee engagement.

The Committee noted and welcomed the point that there were no areas below the 90% minimum threshold on performance against operational core competency skills albeit that performance against Working at Height and in Confined Spaces was at amber (93% overall).  This was due to the legacy of recording against two different systems, a matter which could not be resolved until 2025 when the existing legacy position would expire and requalification would be required.  It was requested, however, that the term “no action required” in the column headed “Impact and action taken” under paragraph 2.6 of the report be replaced in future as this could be perceive to mean that the Service was not striving to achieve more.  The Area Manager (Training and Development) responded that this would be replaced by a commentary on the mitigating action taken in future.  It was also confirmed that pilots were being undertaken in conjunction with the Estates Department for the local delivery of training to staff.

Reference was made to performance on health and safety issues which was showing:

·       a slight decrease in the rolling 12 month trend on accidents in 2022/23 overall albeit with an increase from 55 to 68 accidents in quarter 4 (January to March 2023);

·       there were 21 near misses in quarter 4 of 2022-23, a 50% increase (7 events) on the previous quarter but this was welcomed as it enabled organisational learning to achieve improvements in the longer term;

·       personal injuries remained low generally with the rolling 12-month trend showing a reduction from a high of 11 in May 2022 to 5 in February 2023;

·       vehicle incidents increased in quarter 4 of 2022-23 by one incident from 36 to 37 although the decreasing long term trend remained;

·       RIDDOR had remained with a decreasing trend over the last five years.  All dangerous occurrence events were investigated with the lessons learned communicated ot staff.

The average number of days/shifts lost due to sickness absence had increased slightly from 8.37 in 2021-22 to 9.4 in 2022-23 (April 2022 to February 2023).  The average number of days sickness absence over the rolling 12 months from March 2022 to February 2023 showed a more stable trend in both long and short term certificated absence since July 2022, although short term uncertificated absence had increased from 1.5 days on average to 2.8 days.  53% of all short term absence was due to colds/flue with musculoskeletal coming in second and mental health third.  Both musculoskeletal and mental health issues lead to longer periods of absence than colds/flu, however.

The Committee extended its appreciation for the performance on fitness testing which was at 99% now with 1549 out of 1560 staff having passed.  It was noted that every effort was made with the 11 individuals who had not passed to bring them up to the required fitness standard.  It was further noted that work was being undertaken in conjunction with the National Fire Chiefs’ Council to review the fitness standards to ensure a more inclusive approach in future.

The annual measures for Diversity showed there had been a slight decrease in the number of female staff employed from 14.6 %  in 2021 to 14.4% in 2022.  There had, however, been an increase in the percentage of ethnic minority staff employed from 2.8% to 3.5% in 2022.  The figures for Diversity were set out in more depth in a separate report to the Committee (Minute PC/22/18 below refers).  The Chair expressed concern that the number of women and LGBT and ethnic minority staff within the Service was still too low.  The Diversity Manager undertook to report in more depth at the next meeting on the actions being taken to improve performance in this area.

The Service had implemented a Strategic Workforce Planning Group to look more closely at overall establishment levels month on month.  The Group received regular updates on sickness absence data, recruitment and selection processes and development programmes underway in order to keep informed and be proactive in identifying trends at an earlier stage going forwards.  The data showed that in 2022-23, the leavers were split with:

·       94 On Call leavers,

·       67 support staff; and

·       36 wholetime.

There were also:

·       93 On Call starters;

·       36 support staff starters; and

·       23 wholetime starters.

The figures continued to indicate that the Service was losing more staff than it was recruiting but noted that there had been a recruitment freeze instigated during part of the 2022-23 financial year.  A new Human Resources Systems project was underway which would provide greater visibility of people management data including structure, performance and sickness absence.

It was also noted that a new, annual staff survey had been launched recently which it was envisaged would provide an updated picture, the results of which would be reported to a future meeting of the Committee.