Government of Jersey

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A decision made (19/06/2008) regarding Jersey Fire & Rescue Service Island Risk Profile 2008.

Decision Reference: MD-HA-2008-0005
Decision Summary Title :	Fire & Rescue Service – Island Risk Profile		Date of Decision Summary:	18 April 2008
Decision Summary Author:	Mark James Chief Fire Officer		Decision Summary: Public or Exempt?	Public
Type of Report: Oral or Written?	Written		Person Giving Oral Report:
Written Report Title :	States of Jersey Fire & Rescue Service – Island Risk Profile 2008		Date of Written Report:	18 April 2008
Written Report Author:	Mark James Chief Fire Officer		Written Report : Public or Exempt?	Public
Subject: The Fire & Rescue Service’s Island Risk Profile for 2008.
Decision(s): The Minister approved the publication of the 2008 Island Risk Profile to support Fire & Rescue operations generally and in particular, the Service’s Annual Integrated Risk Management Action Plan for 2008.
Reason(s) for Decision: This has been completed as part of the Service’s Integrated Risk Management Plan 2007 – 2009 strategic project ‘Emergency Response Task 5’. The development and publication of the Island Risk Profile provides an objective, evidence based overview of relative risk levels within the Island with regard to fires and other emergencies. The document enables the Fire & Rescue Service to focus its prevention, protection and emergency response activities on those areas most at risk and provides a baseline from which to measure progress in reducing overall risk levels within the community.
Resource Implications: Resource requirements will be met from within the existing cash limits for the F & R Department
Action required: The Chief Fire Officer to arrange for publication of the Island Risk Profile, and make copies available for the States bookshop.
Signature:		Position:
Date Signed:		Date of Decision (If different from Date Signed):

States of Jersey Fire & Rescue Service – Island Risk Profile 2008

Report

To: Senator W Kinnard, Minister for Home Affairs

From: Group Manager P Brown – Fire & Rescue Service

Date: 28 December 2008

Subject: Island Risk Profile 2008

1. Purpose

1.1 The purpose of this report is to advise the Minister of the completion of the Island Risk Profile and to provide additional information in supporting the decision making process in relation to the document’s publication.

2. Background

2.1 Until now, the Fire & Rescue Service’s (FRS) Integrated Risk Management Plans which aims to articulate the risks to the Island’s community from fires and other emergencies and the initiatives to be employed by the FRS as control measures have been based upon large amounts of statistical evidence gathered from historical incident reports from previous years’ activity.

2.2 The evidence has provided a useful and accurate picture of Island risk albeit on an Island-wide basis but has not provided a more detailed overview of risk on a Parish by Parish basis.

2.3 The Service’s new Island Risk Profile document utilises the same base information but now evaluates the community risk by bringing together other sources of Island social and demographic data and UK national fire statistical trends. It combines all this risk information to calculate dwelling fire and fire casualty rates and definitions of risk for each Parish, so that relative comparisons can be made and more targeted activity in those higher risk areas can be achieved. The Island Risk Profile also considers the potential risks posed by specific sites in each Parish (i.e. Jersey Airport in St Peter and the Kosangas installation in St John).

2.4 Dwelling fire and fire casualty rates as well as the definitions attached to each Parish (Low, Medium and High) are based upon the Dwelling Fire Risk Assessment Toolkit provided by the UK Department for Communities and Local Government’s Fire & Resilience Directorate. This toolkit is based on extensive research and its subsequent use within the UK FRS. It provides an explanation of how to assess the rate of dwelling fire risk in communities using algorithms and how to use this to identify the level of fire service fire cover and community fire safety required to maintain, as a minimum, tolerable levels of risk.

2.5 It will be noted in the document that St Helier, St Saviour and St Brelade are classified as ‘High Risk’ Parishes, Trinity as ‘Low Risk’ and all other Parishes being ‘Medium’. This profile supports previous anecdotal evidence and that broadly predicated by Service management prior to the conclusion of the research. The findings do however highlight the higher fire risk in St Brelade coupled with the difficulties currently being experienced in recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of Retained Firefighters at the Western Fire Station.

3. Recommendation

3.1 It is recommended that the Island Risk Profile be approved and published and that this document, updated annually to provide the future “intelligence based” determination of risk that will support the Service’s Integrated Risk Management Planning methodology.