Introduction
Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service has developed a clear purpose which is to help make Northern Ireland a safer place and improve community well-being. We will achieve this by working with others to deliver a high quality Fire & Rescue Service that is valued by the public, our partners and our people.
This Annual Business Plan has been developed in the context of COVID-19 and diminishing public sector budgets. We fully recognise the need to manage our resources efficiently and effectively to ensure best value and strongly believe that by transforming how we operate we can create efficiencies while improving the service we deliver.
To help us achieve our purpose we have developed 6 strategic outcomes covering Transformation; Service Delivery; People; Governance & Performance; Financial Management and Asset Management,
and these will be the focus of our work over the next number of years. We have also developed a suite of strategic indicators against which we will measure the delivery of our strategic outcomes.
Central to our work in 2021/22 will be the development and delivery of our Community Safety Plan. This Plan will set out clearly what our Prevention, Protection, Response and Resilience activities will look like. It will explain how we will design and apply each of these risk management approaches, working with our community and our partners, to help make Northern Ireland a safer place for everyone.
Our prevention activities will be at the forefront of our Community Safety Plan as it is through these activities that we will prevent critical incidents happening in the first place. This work will be most effectively delivered through a better understanding of our community which will be achieved through greater collaboration with others so that we best identify and support those most at risk.
Our protection work reduces the risk and impact of fire on the business community and safeguards our Firefighters when they respond to emergency incidents. Our focus will be on working with businesses to jointly deliver a safer build environment. That said we will not shy away from enforcement where this is appropriate and where it is in the interest of public safety.
As successful as our prevention and protection work has been over the past decade in reducing incidents of fire, we still need to prepare for and deliver a safe and effective response when such incidents occur. We now respond to a greater variety of calls including flooding and collapsed structures, road traffic collisions and other serious transport incidents, large animal recues and incidents involving hazardous materials.
We have a responsibility to ensure our Firefighters are safe when they respond to incidents. This responsibility will be delivered through the application of the safe person principles. We will ensure the right people are selected, that they will be properly trained, given the right equipment and are properly supervised and that they have access to suitable operational guidance and risk critical information required to deliver our service safely and effectively. We are committed to looking after our Firefighter’s health & wellbeing during and after their response to critical incidents and are equally committed to learning lessons from every incident.
It is clear that we need to better support our people through the proper management of our organisational resources. Through proper financial management we will ensure the efficient use of available budget to support the delivery of our service, taking a risk based approach to our financial planning to deliver agreed outcomes and using public money in the best way possible. We will need to develop and deliver an organisational asset management plan, which ensures better management of our physical assets that drives efficiencies, delivers proper traceability and supports the delivery of our service.
Our Service Transformation Programme will support the redesign of our organisation so that it is better structured to deliver the best, affordable service to everyone in Northern Ireland. The Transformation Programme will focus on 3 key areas ‘Our Service Delivery Model’, ‘Our People & Culture’ and ‘Our Systems and Processes’. I know we have the talent and commitment to embrace this change to ensure that we continue to deliver the service the public deserves.
We believe that collaborative working is the future of the emergency services, enabling us to improve the way we work; share our people and financial resources; and ultimately make people safer. We are also committed to finding innovative solutions to improve the way we work, improve Firefighter safety, reduce our impact on the environment and ultimately contribute to the well-being of our communities.
I am aware that people are rightly proud of their Firefighters and the Stations they respond from. However, risk changes and as a result we must continually review where we put our resources. We need to be more flexible as a Service to allow us to appropriately intervene where risk is high and then move on to reduce risk elsewhere. This may mean that in some cases our resource focus may need to move from one area to another and shift from response to prevention to ensure we most effectively deliver the required outcomes for the people of Northern Ireland.
We understand that we are public servants and as such we are rightly accountable to those we serve. As such we recognise that effective governance is essential to ensure that the Service is properly directed, controlled and held to account for how it uses its resources, treats its people and delivers its service. Good governance is underpinned by effective planning & performance management, combined with the proper understanding and management of community, Firefighter and organisational risk.
This Annual Business Plan sets out the first steps in this journey, and over the next 5 years we need to embed a culture which sets high expectations and ensures our people are developed, supported and motivated to fulfil their potential and deliver results. We
need to become a more inclusive organisation that better reflects all of the people we serve so as to ensure we access the widest range of skills required to develop and deliver a modern Fire & Rescue Service. To continue to achieve this we will build an inclusive environment and promote health and wellbeing, personal responsibility and continuous development. Ultimately, we want NIFRS to be an organisation which everyone enjoys coming to work and feels that they can contribute to making Northern Ireland a safer place.
Michael Graham, Chief Fire & Rescue Officer