Budget (£’000)

Reserves table

Efficiency savings

* reported in 2024/24

Procurement savings are incorporated in the efficiency table above, but they are not elaborated upon in the narrative section below.

Direct employee

·         In 2024/25 there have been adjustments to staffing models with savings in employee costs (recurrent cashable efficiency).

o   Green book instead of operational grey book fire safety inspectors and business safety advisors provide more flexible and agile workforce: £218,000.

o   Reduction of incident intelligent officers: £58,000.

·         The emergency cover review implementation during 2023/24 with full year effect in 2024/25 (recurrent cashable efficiency). Duty systems changed at some stations whilst maintaining all 39 fire stations and 58 appliances, and increased firefighter establishment by 8 providing more flexible crewing arrangements: £400,000.

Indirect employee

·         In 2024/25 alternative training delivery models reduced travel time and expenses (recurrent cashable efficiency saving): £10,000.

o   Incident command workshops have been delivered locally to on-call crews instead of at our Leadership and Development Centre in Chorley, reducing the time and travel involved for individuals.

o   Use of technology has been successfully embedded enabling us to deliver pan-Service interactive training using virtual classrooms.

·         Other changes in working practices that are not quantifiable but reduce the need for overtime include (recurrent cashable efficiency saving):

o   Flexible annual leave pilot for some wholetime stations.

o   Introduction of case conference meetings in respect of absence management leading to improved attendance.

Premises

·         Various initiatives have been implemented to reduce our gas and electric energy consumption in 2024/25 (recurrent cashable efficiency saving excluding impact of tariff changes): £133,000 including:

o   Transition to energy efficient lighting and cooking facilities.

o   Upgrading of boilers.

o   Efficient programming of heating where possible.

o   Efficient use of buildings leading to reduction in old, outdated building stock.

o   Regular site visits to educate and focus on energy saving opportunities.

o   LED lighting upgrades.

o   Upgrading some window, doors and whole facades that contribute to loss of heating.

Transport

·         Various efficiency initiatives within the fleet and engineering department (non-recurrent cashable efficiency): £36,000 including:

o   Beaver tail collection vehicle reduces emissions, saves costs, and minimises the number of people required by enabling one person to collect two vehicles.

o   Two in-house mobile technicians employed, reducing green emissions, cost saving compared to third party repairs, along with savings in time as more efficient to carry out repairs on station.

·         Bulk fuel and fuel cards procurement savings (recurrent cashable efficiency): £5,000.

·         Ongoing investment in hybrid vehicles for officers, providing better fuel economy and a positive impact on the environment. These savings have not been quantified.

Supplies and services

·         Learning and development sessions delivered in collaboration with Blue Light Partners where the cost of events was shared (recurrent cashable efficiency saving): £4,000.

Future efficiencies

Various initiatives commencing in 2025/26:

·         The investment in a dynamic cover tool (DCT) identifies where emergency cover is needed based on real-time appliance locations and current demand, rather than the previous static model. It is used to monitor fire cover and plan relief strategies and cover moves. It has improved emergency cover and made efficiency savings on overtime. A recurrent cashable efficiency saving of £500,000 in 2025/26 will be delivered by using the DCT for the effective deployment of resources and effective management of overtime, and the delivery of changes to resources agreed as part of the previous emergency cover review.

·         Ongoing review of establishment numbers and crewing systems with the aim of generating a recurrent cashable efficiency saving of £1m by the end of 2026/27.

·         A review of emergency cover across the wider Preston area as part of the relocation of Service headquarters (currently at Fulwood) to our Leadership and Development Centre, with potential efficiency savings arising post consultations.

·         Moving to encrypted pagers will allow us to remove radio masts for alerters, whilst also delivering data security needs.

·         A full review of our light vehicle fleet aims to improve efficiency by ensuring staff use the most appropriate vehicle for the tasks undertaken. As part of this review, we will consider the introduction of fifty mild hybrid vehicles since 2020 and four fully electric pool cars, plus one electric van used by our fleet department for on-station repairs. The review will consider our infrastructure to ensure we can accommodate our aspirations for more energy efficient vehicles.

Collaboration

Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS) has a long tradition of collaboration and partnership working:

·         As a key partner of the Lancashire Resilience Forum (LRF), our deputy chief fire officer (DCFO) is the current chair, and the Service is linked in with strategic partners to deliver efficient and effective prevention, protection, and response services to Lancashire communities. Through the work of the LRF, the Service and partners can prepare and respond to emergencies quickly, thereby protecting the safety of the communities we serve.

·         Our head of prevention and protection chairs the Lancashire Road Safety Partnership, bringing together a collaborative and targeted approach to road safety across the county, ultimately leading to a reduction in those killed and seriously injured on our roads.

Lancashire Blue Light Collaboration Board

The Lancashire Blue Light Collaboration Board includes representation from fire, police and ambulance services, who have all signed a strategic statement of intent which contains the following aims: improve outcomes, reduce demand, better value for money, and reduce inequalities within communities.

Collaboration projects to-date have delivered improved community outcomes and commensurate increases in operational response activity, ensuring the right blue light agency can respond effectively to deliver the best outcomes. Whilst some of the following projects commenced some time ago, they continue to deliver in-year benefits to LFRS and the communities of Lancashire:

·         Joint Public Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme with Merseyside and Cumbria fire and rescue services to deliver 16 stations across the 3 authorities (4 of the stations are in Lancashire), the largest fire specific PFI scheme agreed at that point in time (estimated capital value of £48m).

·         Combined fire and ambulance stations at Darwen and Lancaster; this provides rental income to the authority (c.£50,000 pa) but also negates the need for North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) to invest in new facilities, saving the public purse c.£4m-£5m.

·         Joint procurement with the Clinical Commissioning Group for the provision of our Wide Area Network (WAN), saving £40,000 p.a.

·         Gaining entry in support of NWAS (c.2000 responses p.a. based on 2024-25 data).

·         Drone development (aerial and sub-surface capabilities) for which LFRS has the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) lead role. Our aerial drone capability has supported with many missing person searches (c.250 p.a. based on 2024/25 data). With increasing experience of missing person searches, LFRS staff can provide local or specialist advice for consideration by the police search advisor, and searches become streamlined allowing a more structured and effective approach to locating high-risk missing persons, reducing the time and demand for all responding agencies.

·         Further investment has strengthened our sub-surface rescue and recovery capability of persons by virtue of an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV). This asset has been deployed locally, regionally and nationally and delivered improved outcomes by way of quickening incident resolution. Ultimately, this results in less public spending due to reduced time commitment of 999 responding agencies. During 2024, the ROV was deployed operationally 6 times, 4 of which were out of county (recharge in line with NFCC guidance). Several incidents involved the casualty being located by the ROV or led to areas being searched (and effectively cleared), which in turn had positive effects on the incident conclusion. The underwater deployments have enabled incidents to be de-escalated, significantly reducing the number of resources required from several agencies for what would normally be protracted incidents.

·         Search dog capabilities, specialising in incidents specific to fire and explosion. These specialist assets are also used in collaboration with Lancashire Constabulary for high risk missing people:

o   2 x Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) / area search dogs (live)

o   1 x USAR / area search dog (cadaver)

o   1 x Fire investigation search dog.

·         USAR dogs are part funded by Northern Ireland and UK International Search and Rescue and provide national and international cover. LFRS funds cadaver and the fire investigation search dog and allow the use of these assets on a goodwill basis to north west regional fire and rescue services (FRS) and Lancashire Police. All other police services and FRSs are on a recharge basis. *Note: While cadaver is not a requirement of an FRS it is the most requested specialist asset due to police teams being unfamiliar and often untrained for the scenes we encounter.

As a qualified team of 4 years, LFRS have cleared hundreds of scenes and located 12 bodies, 10 specific to the search dog.

·         Blood Bike charity motorbikes are garaged at 7 operational fire stations within the county.

·         Firefighters Charity clothes collection points are available at 22 operational fire stations.

·         Lancashire Police have a license/lease for use and access to 2 operational fire stations.

·         The King’s Trust 12-week team programmes are based at 8 of our operational fire stations.

·         Red Cross house their fire victim support unit at our headquarters in Fulwood.

·         North West Fire Control (NWFC) – collaboration between Cumbria, Lancashire, Cheshire, and Greater Manchester fire authorities, realising annual savings of more than £1m p.a. The coming year will see further system-based improvements being introduced collaboratively into NWFC to improve efficiency within the context of the dynamic cover tool (designed to optimise fire cover across the FRS) and a more efficient software-based solution for the handling of fire survival guidance at complex incidents. A collaborative project to source the replacement CAD and ICCS systems within the control room also build upon the previous economies of scale delivered through the initial project.

·         Community First Responder scheme (CFR) with a group of community safety staff, and more recently a cohort of flexible duty system managers trained by NWAS and able to deploy to life critical medical emergencies during working hours, alongside ambulance colleagues. This has already delivered life-saving interventions whilst awaiting the arrival of ambulance colleagues with 278 incidents attended during 2024-25. According to a cost-benefit analysis conducted by the New Economy, the benefits of CFR far outweigh the initial investment required. The analysis estimates an overall financial return on investment of £4.41 per £1 invested.

·         The north west regional fleet and equipment collaboration group meets quarterly through the technical officer group (TOG), chaired by Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service. This group focuses on innovation and horizon-scanning for new developments in equipment and vehicles. By pooling resources and sharing best practices, we enhance our collective buying power within the fire sector, driving financial savings. This collaboration also distributes the workload across seven fire and rescue services, fostering shared responsibility and efficiency.

National leadership

LFRS’s principal officers have significant national leadership roles, contributing to sector-wide efficiency and productivity. 

Our chief fire officer (CFO) is the NFCC lead for wildfires and during the past 12 months has developed international knowledge exchange; worked with lead government departments to develop a national wildfire framework; scoped a cohesive national wildfire strategy for England; and successfully secured Home Office funding to create a dedicated National Resilience wildfire capability lead.

Our DCFO is the national lead for on-call, supporting national workstreams including a comprehensive data research analysis; academic evaluation to identify future sustainable solutions to this incredibly efficient duty system; and the sharing of national best practice, including analysis of different operating systems that can demonstrate more efficient and effective ways of operating.

In addition to the work of the principal officers, staff within the Service also lead national work around canines, drones and robotics, significantly helping to improve incident response arrangements both locally, nationally and internationally.

Assessment of efficiencies

Against the ‘efficiency savings as a percentage of not payroll budgets’ target of 2%, LFRS exceeded this in 2024/25, achieving over 7%, and is forecast to exceed this target in 2025/26.

Asset management and IT investment

We have developed a Digital Strategy that outlines our 5-year trajectory to deliver improved productivity and efficiency both internally and externally. Our high-level projects and plans are progressing well:

·         Digitalising fire engines – we have recently replaced all our front mobile data terminals (MDTs) and have also rolled-out rear demountable MDTs during 2024/5. At the same time, we have delivered a programme of upgrades of iPad devices on our fire engines, all of which increases the ability for simultaneous activity and thereby productivity. We are currently undertaking a pilot at two of our wholetime fire stations of full digitalisation of a fire engine; this includes additional work terminals and 5G wi-fi bubbles so that firefighters and officers can undertake office administration tasks and access various applications whilst out in communities and away from the station. Access is being provided to the full suite of applications as is presently accessed on fire stations (e.g. home fire safety check system, business fire safety check app, training management, incident recording system, rota management system, intranet).

·         CCTV installation on Service vehicles – we are continuing to install CCTV cameras on our frontline appliances and officer vehicles, with the aim of reducing accident and injury costs, also a deterrent for anti-social behaviour and spurious claims. 

·         Business intelligence – the function is being strengthened with use of a data warehouse, new Service level key performance indicator (KPI) reporting, performance dashboards for use by managers to improve understanding of performance outcomes and inform efficient and effective targeting of resources. Digitalising our approach to performance management is leading to more efficient ways of operating for our managers.

·         Training delivery – the full implementation of our new learning management system has vastly reduced the administration demands for operational staff, managers, and our leadership and development centre. Capturing evidence of competency in a digital format has enabled development programmes to be delivered more efficiently and has released capacity. Incident command workshop events for on-call staff are being delivered using a hybrid approach, i.e. in person at the on-call station, or digitally via Microsoft Teams, reducing travel and time costs.

·         Equipment and appliance checks, inventories and defects - in line with the appliance digitalisation programme, we are currently exploring new fleet management software to remove the manual entries and improve on-station equipment and maintenance checks. This will enable visibility of equipment and vehicle inspections. The new system will be app based, so inspections can be verified remotely and live updates posted on the system. In addition, we now operate an in-house vehicle compliance/safety checking procedure at station level. This ensures appliance safety inspections are completed on-time, keeping defect rectification to a minimum, which provides enhanced appliance availability and efficiencies.

·         On-call availability, recruitment and skills (OARS) software – we have worked collaboratively with a software provider to develop bespoke software, the first of its kind across the UK fire service. This innovative software allows us to use data to improve strategic workforce planning for our on-call stations. The software is designed to optimise on-call availability, recruitment, and skills utilisation, including understanding expected availability and incident demand. It enables us to use data more effectively to address critical challenges in recruitment, diversity, and workforce planning, particularly in the light of shortages of emergency response drivers and incident commanders, and a growing recruitment and retention challenge both locally, and nationally. Since its inception we have seen a positive increase in on-call availability and used the software effectively to target potential incident commanders, seeing a 275% increase in those coming forward because of targeted conversations. During 2025/6 we will continue to use the software to inform strategic policy decisions in relation to on-call.

·         Site specific risk information (SSRI) risk scoring calculator

We have created a risk scoring calculator, which makes the scoring and subsequent level of SSRIs far more accurate and objective. There are several benefits to this concept. Buildings will only require an SSRI and subsequent review if it is deemed necessary by the accurate score provided. This has seen a reduction in the number of SSRI and their levels. This subsequently reduces the need for unproductive visits to premises, allowing this time to go towards improving risk data at high-risk premises and ensuring the crews are prepared to attend an incident there, by training and familiarising.  The calculator also allows for lower risk premises to be reviewed initially over the phone with the responsible person. This reduces time lost from travelling and the subsequent cost of fuel and benefits to the environment. The calculator uses the current PORIS methodology but includes data from NFCC and our risk based intervention programme to increase the accuracy of the score by considering other factors.

Resourcing

As detailed in our 2024/25 plan, our productivity improvements were largely framed around the volumes of home fire safety checks (HFSC) and business fire safety checks (BFSC) delivered, alongside completion of training and increases in operational activity linked to new work areas in support of other agencies. It is anticipated that such productivity increases will lead to safer communities and improved business safety across the county.

Through the development of bespoke mobile apps (debrief app, HFSC app, BFSC app) and the digitalisation of our fire engines, crews can spend more productive time in communities. In the last 12 months, we have seen output gains in aspects of prevention and protection activity. Tangible outputs delivered in 2023/24 showed 21,040 HFSCs completed within the home and 3,348 BFSCs. In 2024/25 this increased to 21,517 HFSCs and 3,637 BFSCs; a 2.27% and 8.7% increase on 2023/24 respectively.

Building on our business fire safety check service, built environment training has been provided to all community safety advisors for them to identify areas of non-compliance with the fire safety order. This training provides community safety staff with the knowledge to support residents living in multiple occupation homes along with occasions when onward referral is appropriate to our protection department. Over the past 12 months, the Service has worked on several significant fire safety breach cases, helping to secure sentences amounting to 14 months suspended sentences, 420 hours community service, 20 days rehabilitation, £142,500 fines and cost recovery amounting to £44,225.

The Service has also achieved a reduction in unwanted fire signal mobilisations (AFAs) with the move to 24-hour adoption of a policy change. Reducing unwanted and unnecessary mobilisations to premises types covered by the policy change and disruption to operational crews has been calculated as an efficiency saving in the region of 1,383 hours over the last 12-month period which has undoubtedly supported the increase in prevention and protection delivery.

Investment in two additional water tower dual purpose fire appliances

Investment to ensure we can deliver high volumes of water for firefighting and reduce the number of appliances required to safely deal with protracted commercial (and to a lesser degree domestic) fires. Both new appliances also double up as frontline pumps and will be operational during 2025/6.

Income generation

Our focus in recent years has been to deliver collaborative projects with a priority of delivering the best community outcomes. We have an innovative approach to service delivery and are a trusted partner that can, and does, support regional and national partners during emergency incidents. We have arrangements in place across our neighbouring FRSs to deliver the quickest and most suitable response, generally on a ‘knock for knock’ basis. Over last 12 months we introduced:

·         Charging for out of county asset deployment in line with NFCC guidelines on FRS charging for mutual assistance.

·         Charging model for other agencies for application when FRS assets are used for non-statutory duties in support of other agencies, for example use of our drones with Lancashire Police.

Transformation plans

Our transformation high level planning is available across our Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) and supporting core strategies. Some of our high-level plans include:

Fire protection transformation programme

·         Following a restructure of our fire protection function to meet challenges posed by risks within the built environment and the introduction of the Building Safety Regulator, we continue to refine our risk-based approach to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of resources deployed to undertake risk reduction activities. This has seen improvements in our datasets and digital solutions to enable inspecting officers to better prioritise their inspections and remove paper-based systems.

·         Our digital investment has also increased productivity outputs in terms of timeliness of the handling of building regulation consultations, from 76.3% in 2022/23, to 94.6% in the year to-date.

·         Our Climate Change Operational Response Plan 2022-27 was developed with investment into new capabilities. Evaluation of several key deliverables to-date has provided operational efficiencies across:

o   Fleet vehicles

o   Specialist training

o   PPE

o   Technology and equipment

·         Increased partnership working via Lancashire Fire Operations Group (LFOG) has seen the launch of a public space protection order (PSPO) over the last year, for sites deemed high risk for wildfire activity. The introduction of the PSPO should deter unwanted and unnecessary fire-setting in high-risk areas, reducing mobilisations and incidents. The success of the PSPO introduced will be measured after the 2025/26 wildfire season.

·         Our on-call improvement programme provides a fundamental review of our on-call system to ensure that it remains an efficient and effective use of resources.  The programme focuses upon recruitment, selection, development, and retention of on-call staff and takes in reviews of induction, initial training, role capabilities, remuneration, employment contracts, mobilising and resilience of special appliances. Several projects were delivered during 2024/25, which included implementing a hybrid working policy, which enables people to work from an on-call station during essential daytime hours and simultaneously provide availability for the on-call fire engine. This has resulted in more effective recruitment and improved availability of a fire engine. The learning from this project is being shared nationally as positive practice.

Outcome-based activities

Wholetime firefighter activities that are measured include responding to incidents, conducting training exercises, prevention activity, engaging in community safety initiatives and understanding risks through site specific risk inspections. Protection activities including fire investigation. We are looking at a mechanism to capture this work into one piece of evidence so that we can understand better the output and targeted outcomes in service delivery.

Our frontline crews deliver vast amounts of prevention and protection activities which have been captured within this plan. Targets and performance levels are monitored locally and through our various service management team (SMT) meetings, ultimately reporting into our Combined Fire Authority (Performance Committee) on a quarterly basis through a suite of key performance indicators (KPIs):

KPI 1: Valuing our people so they can focus on making Lancashire safer

1.1 Overall staff engagement

1.2.1 Staff absence – wholetime

1.2.2 Staff absence – on-call

1.2.3 Staff absence – green book

1.3.1 Workforce diversity

1.3.2 Workforce diversity recruited

1.4 Staff accidents

KPI 2: Preventing fires and other emergencies from happening / Protecting people and property when fires happen

2.1 Critical fire risk map score

2.2 Overall activity

2.3 Accidental dwelling fires (ADF)

2.3.1 ADF – harm to people – casualties

2.3.2 ADF – harm to property – extent of damage (fire severity)

2.4 Accidental building fires (ABF) (commercial premises)

2.4.1 ABF (commercial premises) – harm to property - extent of damage (fire severity)

2.5 ABF (non-commercial premises)

2.5.1 ABF (non-commercial premises: private garages and sheds) – harm to property – extent of damage (fire severity)

2.6 Deliberate fires total

2.6.1 Deliberate fires – dwellings

2.6.2 Deliberate fires – commercial premises

2.6.3 Deliberate fires – other (rubbish, grassland, vehicles etc)

2.7 Home fire safety checks

2.8 Numbers of other prevention activities delivered such as Childsafe / Wasted Lives

2.9 Fire safety enforcement (including business fire safety checks)

2.10 Building regulation consultations (number and completed on time)

KPI 3: Responding to fires and other emergencies quickly and competently

3.1 Critical fire response – 1st fire engine attendance

3.2 Critical special service response – 1st fire engine attendance

3.3 Total fire engine availability

KPI 4: Delivering value for money in how we use our resources

4.1 Progress against allocated budget

4.2 Partnership collaboration

4.3 Overall user satisfaction

Targets are set for each wholetime station based on their local risk plan and include targets around HFSCs and BFSCs.

Local performance indicators also include the tracking of site specific risk information completion and crew training, captured through our new e-learning management system.

PowerBi dashboards are available for all the KPIs reported into the authority and local performance dashboards are being enhanced / built and include a culture / people dashboard, finance dashboard, and service delivery related dashboards. These are reported quarterly into SMT.

All projects have oversight from a relevant programme board and are reported to SMT quarterly.

Collaboration and evaluation logs are maintained for all activity and scrutinised quarterly at SMT meetings.

In 2024/25 total HFSCs were 20,280 and in 2025/26 the target has increased to 23,352. This target will be supported by a restructuring of the requirement to address more vulnerable groups of people, as well as an increase in quantity. We currently record this information on different reporting systems to record and analyse data, some of which are utilised by many fire and rescue services. Training management systems record the completion rates, assessment results and certifications of qualifications.

Post incident analysis reports review response effectiveness and outcomes of emergency response. Quality assessment of training programmes is conducted through evaluation and feedback from participants. Community feedback mechanisms assess the impact of fire prevention and protection activities.

There will be a study to look at activity of operational staff which will highlight areas for efficiency and performance across service delivery. At the same time, prevention will be restructured to ensure that as a service we are targeting the most vulnerable people in the community, and we work effectively with partners to find the best ways to create new opportunities to source data and partnerships. This will be categorised into clear approaches to ensure the right people are supported swiftly and effectively.

Workforce capacity

A full workforce capacity review took place in 2020. LFRS has taken part in the NFCC firefighter utilisation survey in 2022 and 2023. As part of the recent emergency cover review 2022-25, duty systems were changed leading to increased capacity and resilience.

A daily work routine framework is available for all wholetime crews, with outputs and outcomes captured through KPIs and local performance indicators already detailed. The Service aims to roll out the new sector productivity app / products being developed by the NFCC during 2025/26. At present, the Service does not capture specific daily workforce activity but relies on the performance data to ensure effective and efficient service delivery is maintained.

Meeting the 3% productivity target

LFRS is well placed to deliver the 3% productivity increase as evidenced in this section through the various initiatives across the organisation.