Since the National Fire Chiefs Council launch of the Person Centred Framework, fire and rescue services (FRSs) across the United Kingdom have been adopting the standards and methodologies documented within the Framework. Following this success, a standardised data collection system to support Home Fire Safety Visits has been launched on ukfrs.com.
The Standard Data Requirement for the Person Centred Framework is intended as best practice guidance, giving each service something to work towards. Standardised data collection and monitoring practices will improve data collection systems and ensure that the data being collected is comparable across the country.
This launch is just part of a bigger data and digital ambition to encourage and support FRSs to improve data quality, encourage standardisation and develop standardised terminology. This includes, but is not limited to, encouraging electronic data collection, and finding ways to improve data completeness and accuracy.
Neil Odin is the NFCC Prevention Committee Chair and NFCC Prevention Programme Executive. He said, “Ultimately the shift from property to person centred data recording systems, and increased multi-agency working, will greatly assist in addressing fire risk, how to quantify it and what actions need to be taken as part of Home Fire Safety Visits to complement local approaches.
“To generate good quality data, to maximise local and collective learning and to enable continuous improvement over time each fire and rescue service must assess its Home Fire Safety Visit, ideally in a way that is consistent with other fire and rescue services. This enables evidence to be pooled across FRSs, and it also enables individual approaches to be directly compared to identify best practice. The more closely this approach can be followed, the greater the quality of data that can be generated across the country.”
The requirement for the collection of person identifiable data at a local fire and rescue service level falls under duties in the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. It places a duty on fire and rescue services to protect life and property from fire. Part 6, Sections 45 to 48 of the Act empowers a fire and rescue service to obtain information and investigate fires and provides powers to investigate what caused a fire or why it progressed as it did.
The demographic data that the NFCC are recommending that all FRS collect can be proven as causal factors in higher fire risk based on fire investigation data and fatality reports. Each local FRS Home Fire Safety Visit requires consent to collect this data and the intended aggregation by the NFCC will only require anonymised data to support national research and development.
NFCC is keen to receive feedback from FRSs on the Standard Data Requirement which will help inform further future developments to the Framework and the data requirement. The document and feedback from can be accessed on ukfrs.com.