Devon's fire service still 'cause for concern'

Prevention work still need improving

A national watchdog has kept the heat on Devon’s fire service on the back of an inspection to measure how well it is scaling a host of challenges.

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) issued an update this month on the progress it believes the county’s fire service is making against a host of benchmarks it wants to see improvements in.

Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Service received a ‘cause of concern’ in late 2024 from HMICFRS for its prevention work, and the watchdog made six recommendations to help the fire service improve.

The watchdog revisited in January and just this month issued a formal update off the back of its time assessing progress.

It has decided to keep the cause for concern and the six related recommendations open.

The fire service said it had been “working hard on delivering against the actions on the improvement plan”.

The inspectorate report said: “Despite making good progress against the cause of concern recommendations, the service still has more work to do.

“The service recognises that it is too early to fully close any of the recommendations.

“The service concluded a lot of activity shortly before our revisit. The service will need to evaluate these actions, and make sure it is effectively managing and mitigating the risk to those most vulnerable from fire.

“It also needs to make sure that all staff accept and understand the changes and that it can sustain these over the longer term.”

It added that it would return to the Clyst St George-headquartered fire service to ascertain whether further improvements had been made.

The watchdog said the executive board recognised it needs to do more in prevention but “not enough progress has been made since our last inspection to make prevention a sufficiently high priority for the service”.

“The service should implement a robust and consistent method of prioritising its home safety visits to those most at risk and make sure there are clear timescales in place for the different risk levels,” it said.

One of the recommendations related to home fire safety visit bookings, which the fire service is trying to tackle.

HMICFRS said in November last year, the total number of people waiting to have appointments booked with Devon & Somerset was 2,051.

But during its inspection in January this year, it found that “the service had put measures in place to improve monitoring and deal more efficiently with the backlog, which it has now reduced”. The figure it quoted was 1,293 people waiting to for bookings, just outside its targeted band of 500-1200.

Elsewhere, HMICFRS said Devon & Somerset had “prioritised work according to risk”.

“One of the completed actions is the development and use of a new risk stratification process,” it said.

“There is strong strategic backing for procuring a new prevention management information system. The service is confident it can get the necessary funding approvals for the 2026/27 financial year.”

Gavin Ellis, Chief Fire Officer for Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, said the cause for concern had involved a number of recommendations which the service had been working hard to address.

“We took these findings extremely seriously and developed an improvement plan immediately after the publication of the report,” he said.

“We have since been working hard on delivering against the actions on the improvement plan.

“We’re pleased that the inspectorate has highlighted progress against every recommendation. We know that we have more to do and need time for actions to fully embed, to iron out any inconsistencies, and to be assured that the improvements are sufficiently answering the inspectorate’s concerns.

“The inspectorate will assess progress again at a later date. In the meantime, we will keep working on our improvement plan and continuing to support people in our communities to be safer.”

The update from HMICFRS will be discussed at the Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Authority meeting on Monday (30 March), which is the body made up of councillors from the two counties that oversees the fire service.