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Fire and Rescue Statistics User Group

26th Meeting
of the
Fire & Rescue Statistics User Group
held on
5th June 2008 at 10:30 am
in
Ashdown House, London, Room 6/A

Present:

Mr. S. Hunt

FRSUG Chair, CFOA

Mr. A. Paish

World Fire Statistics Centre

Mr. S. Emery

English Heritage

Mr. M. Coull

Grampian FRS

Mr. R. Gazzard

Forestry Commission representing the English Wildfire Forum.

Ms. S. Pantry

Fire Information Group

Ms. K. Bosley

Communities and Local Government

Mr. D Davis

FOBFO

Ms. S. Wright, Secretary

Communities and Local Government

OUTSTANDING ACTIONS SUMMARY FROM MEETING - 19 June 2006:
No. ACTION OPEN/CLOSED

19/1

Samantha to send round the latest FRD organogram, for information. A draft has been created but is not yet ready for circulation.

Samantha emailed Jon Woolfson for the latest copy and circulated it to the Group

Closed

OUTSTANDING ACTIONS SUMMARY FROM MEETING - 2 October 2007:
No. ACTION OPEN/CLOSED

23/6

Tony Paish to contact CTIF regarding potential engagement with FRSUG (see letter from Essex FRS).

Dennis Davis received a reply on 9 April. Part of the Academy is concerned with developing a mathematic model of the emergency model to sell it to other countries. For this they require good fire statistics. Although, the letter does not go into detail about what they want from the UK. Dennis has a new action from this meeting (26) to respond to Bruslinsky.

Ongoing

OUTSTANDING ACTIONS SUMMARY FROM MEETING - February 2008:

24/1

Sheila Pantry to create, host and maintain the FRSUG website as agreed.

Ongoing

24/6

Stephen Robbins to ask Kirsty Bosley if there is the capacity for someone to keep the above document up to date. Samantha to circulate to the Group for comment once document updated.

Ongoing

24/7

Simon Hunt to ask Catherine Levin for permission to send out documents and minutes from the EU Fire Safety Network meetings to the FRSUG. Simon to send all the link for the website.

Open

OUTSTANDING ACTIONS SUMMARY FROM MEETING - April 2008:

25/2

Samantha Wright to send the IRS guidance to put on the website.

This is currently being updated ahead of the next release and will be available after testing.

Open

25/4

Steve Emery was visiting the FSC shortly and would ask if he could access the Library and give an update at the next meeting.

Closed

ACTIONS ARISING FROM THIS MEETING:

26/1

Samantha Wright to forward the email from Professor Bruslinsky to the Group.

Closed

26/2

Simon Hunt to write to the FSC on behalf of the FRSUG regarding access to information from the college library

Open

26/3

Simon Hunt to send Dennis Davis the letter he has drafted to the Commission from the Network

Open

26/4

Simon Hunt to circulate the paper consultation and underpinning research document from Rob Gazzard.

Open

26/5

Rob Gazzard to send version 1.9 of his consultation paper to the Group to comment on. The following version will be hosted on the FRSUG website. The glossary will be extracted to add separately as people will be interested in this specific part.

Ongoing

26/6

Simon said guidance on wildfire is being produced for IRMPs. One of the strategy's preventative activities is to look at this area.

Simon to send the latest version of this chapter to Rob

Open

26/7

Simon Hunt to speak with DOC regarding the FRSUG press release before discussing next steps with Sheila Pantry

Ongoing

26/8

Sheila Pantry to add another link to the FRSUG homepage such as 'Reports produced and presentations by Members' or 'Other sources of information' and a 'Consultation' section.

Open

26/9

Dennis Davis to send Samantha the Large Loss Fires presentation to circulate to the Group. (3/7/08 -Dennis to present to the Group instead as the work is preliminary in nature at this stage).

Open

27/10

Sheila Pantry to add Steve Emery's Guide to Fire Safety in Historic Town Centres to the website.

Open

27/11

Simon Hunt to ask a member of the Met Office to join the FRSUG and possibly ask them to present to the Group.

Open

27/12

Mike Coull to send Sheila the PDF to add to the FRSUG website

Open

1 Chair's Introduction

1.1 Simon Hunt, Chair, welcomed everyone to the meeting. He introduced Dennis Davis of FOBFO as a new member of the FRSUG.

Dennis gave a brief introduction to the Group. He is also the Vice President of CTIF and the Chair of a committee in Europe.

2 Apologies

2.1 Mr. M. Rowan, London FRS

Mr. D. Smith, FIA

Mr. I. Gough, BAFSA

3 Minutes of the 24th Meeting

Accuracy:

3.1 Pg 1 - Amend Simon's details

3.2 Action 23/6 - still ongoing, not closed

3.3 Pg 2 - 5.3 should say 'by the end of the following week'

3.4 Pg 2 - 6.1 should say Forestry Commission, not Group. Highlight that the PAG looks at forest fires only, not wildfire.

3.5 Pg 3 - 6.3 Section 6 need to add details on dissemination of information and that Sheila Pantry will write a 100 word draft for a press release later in the year for the Group to review.

4 Matters Arising

4.1 Actions from the last meeting have been updated as above.

5 EU FS Network

5.1 Simon Hunt went to the EUFS Network meeting in mid-May. There Bjorn Albinson announced that he was retiring and his last meeting as Chair would be in November. They had also negotiated funding from the commission for the Network.

The work ok Safety Cigarettes was ongoing and the commission had posted a consultation looking at European Standards on cigarettes and reducing fire deaths.

The UK is supportive of this and Simon has drafted a letter to the Commission from the Network.

ACTION - Simon to send this draft letter to Dennis Davis.

The subject of better statistics was also raised and asked whether the group were supportive of collecting better statistics and improving communications. Estonia, Sweden and Finland were supportive and would look to join together and collaborate.

Dennis Davis said that the EUFSN were a competent authority, but some member states' representation is fragmented or non existent. Some are advanced countries but do not participate fully or have the capacity to. It may be five to ten years before we have meaningful stats.

Simon said that the Commission had prepared a paper on proposed interventions for example for potential manmade disasters. It says there is a flood directive in place but there should be more in place for other man made disasters. We could not have created FSEC without statistics and like this we cannot do it without good statistics.

ACTION - Simon Hunt to circulate the paper consultation and underpinning research document from Rob Gazzard.

Simon said that the Network were supportive of a paper going forward on collaboration and once we have a new Statistician in FRD we can move it forward.

The UK is holding the next meeting.

6 Development of the key areas of the Group's workplan

A) Rob Gazzard's UK Wildfire Statistics report:

Rob had sent the Group three documents to review ahead of the meeting; his research document, the development document and the framework document.

He said on 9 April the Scottish wildfire forum data gathering group accepted the framework for their group.

Brian Gough of Northern Ireland FRS is keen to set up a wildfire group like that in Scotland. He did not know about the IRS system but will now find information on it.

Edinburgh University has completed a fire beaters project. A section has been added on fire behaviour to the report. There are also links to the Fire Operations Group in the Peak District, who are the longest established Group lead by Jonathan Parker. They are working closely with Manchester University and Rob said he is keen that his documents are reviewed by these Groups to ensure that they are happy with the content.

A glossary for the documents has also been produced but there is a need to standardise terminology.

Rob asked the FRSUG to review the document with a view to telling him if there are any fundamental structural changes required and how long the consultation period should last.

It was decided that the consultation period should be two weeks for the FRSUG and two months for other outside organisations.

Dennis Davis had read some of the documentation and highlighted two areas that were not in Rob's document and said thought should be given as to whether they should be added. These were Actual land Values (the financial cost of the loss) and Sustainability (such as carbon arguments). Rob noted that he would look at these areas.

Rob will look at making changes for the FRSUG to review at the next meeting and will speak to the climate change team regarding sustainability and Eco System Services to make sure they are content with the values being used.

The IRS uses the same classifications for land use as Land Managers but classifications of other organisations are different.

Dennis asked whether the content integrates with Met. Office Weather. Rob confirmed that he has used the Met. Office severity index on humidity and moisture content.

The FRSUG are required to assist Rob in the section on fire protection. Simon said guidance on wildfire is being produced for IRMPs. One of the strategy's preventative activities is to look at this area.

ACTION: Simon to send the latest version of this chapter to Rob

Rob said he would like his documents to be added to the FRSUG website for easy referral.

ACTION: He will send version 1.9 to the Group to review over two weeks and add the next version to the website for wider consultation.

Rob would like other organisations that have been involved in the review and have an interest in the content to be added to the cover page to add weight to his document.

ACTION: Group to tell Rob if they would like to be added to the document and provide their logo if available.

Tony Paish asked Rob to check pages 39 and 40 of his document as they have not printed out and datasets 22 and 30 have some areas of overlap. Rob will check his version.

Prescribed burning is the new terminology for controlled burning.

B) FRSUG Website:

ACTION: Sheila Pantry to add another link to the FRSUG homepage such as 'Reports produced and presentations by Members' or 'Other sources of information' and a 'Consultation' section.

ACTION: Sheila Pantry to add Steve Emery's Guide to Fire Safety in Historic Town Centres to the website.

C) Currently available statistics spreadsheet:

There is currently no staff available to take this work on at this time.

D) Data Sharing Group

Covered - Rob's documents and EU FS Network

E) IRS Review Group

Cath Reynolds and Samantha Wright arranging.

F) Dissemination arrangements

Sheila to liaise with Simon to create a press release.

ACTION: Simon Hunt to speak with DOC regarding the FRSUG press release before discussing next steps with Sheila Pantry

7 Any other Business

7.1 Sheila told the Group that a third edition of Incident Command had been released and was being sold, yet on the TSO website the second edition was still being promoted and sold. Steve Emery confirmed that he had bought the second edition, not realising that it had been recently replaced.

Sheila also said that this publication was not on the Communities website and had chased this and was told it would be soon. Simon confirmed that it was CLG policy to have all publications online.

7.2 Dennis Davis made the Group aware that a project on the understanding of large loss fires, a confidential commercial undertaking for the FPA and CLG existed.

Trends up to 2006 were used to define economic loss using insurer's and CLG's databases. Dennis will make the presentation available to the Group.

ACTION: Dennis Davis to send Samantha the Large Loss Fires presentation to circulate to the Group. (3/7/08 -Dennis to present to the Group instead as the work is preliminary in nature at this stage).

7.3 Mike Coull said Historic Scotland was concerned about the lack of statistics in historic properties. They tried to get a feeling for incidents concerned for research projects and until then gathered information from newspaper articles and FOSIs. They gathered interim reports from each of the eight Scottish FRSs. It was found that there was an actual total of 495 FDR1 fires in listed properties in Scotland in the last fiscal year, 68 or which were in A-listed properties. Electrical faults and cooking were the most common causes of fire. Mike passed round a copy of the statistics. The figures were used to form the economic cost of fire report but it does not take into account the historic value of those properties.

ACTION: Mike Coull to send Sheila the PDF to add to the FRSUG website.

7.4 Steve Emery said that the Guide to Fire Safety in Historic Town Centres (Chester) has changed since 2002 due to IRMPs and Chief Fire Advisory policy on false alarms. He wanted to see whether, based on all the changes, whether Chester was any safer, and the evidence was found to be no.

ACTION: Sheila Pantry to add Steve Emery's Guide to Fire Safety in Historic Town Centres to the website.

7.5 Tony Paish spoke about the data published by the World Health Organisation on the causes of death, including accidental deaths, caused by smoke, fire and flames.

IDC10 now has additional categories and data on deaths including actual and suspected suicide and actual and suspected homicide. They do not however include transport accidents broken down by category. According to the CTIF this accounts for ten percent of the total but they make an adjustment of 25 percent to these figures.

IDC10 figures are more reliable now so the Centre could use them and adjust them by ten percent instead.

Surrey University could look at this if we had funding for example distinguishing deaths in the home from other deaths.

Simon asked whether this was something we could do and Kirsty said she was not sure but would look into it.

Tony also gave an update on the future of the WFSC. There is another OK organisation that put to the Geneva Association a detailed proposal to take over the WFSC from the start of 2009. the application required donors from the Geneva Association to go forward. If all goes as planed Tony will introduce the new Member to the Group next year and will then stand down.

7.6 Rob Gazzard has designed a document which looks at other incidents on natural hazards. It was asked whether the IRS could record further information on why an incident happened, for example whether an RTC occurred because of high winds or storms.

Simon hunt suggested inviting the Met. Office to join the FRSUG under the data sharing area of the work plan. The Group agreed and suggested that the new member does a presentation on their work.

ACTION: Simon Hunt to ask a member of the Met Office to join the FRSUG and possibly ask them to present to the Group.

Rob also asked what the ABI's view was on vegetation loss. Samantha provided Tim Humphrey's email address for Rob to make contact.

8 Date and location of Next Meeting (27th)

30 January 2009

Strathclyde FRS HQ, Strathclyde