Priority one
Our targeted prevention and protection activities reduce the risks in our communities, improving health, safety, and wellbeing, and supporting the local economy.
By preventing fires and other emergencies from happening, we can make Devon and Somerset a safer place for everyone to live, work and visit. Our prevention work is focused on road safety, water safety, home safety, safeguarding and partnerships. We are guided by the duties placed on us by the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 and Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Our protection teams work closely with businesses supporting them in meeting fire safety legislation. The team uses the regulatory powers where necessary to enforce the legislation.
Our community safety departments use data to plan campaigns, target the right people and deliver intervention and education at the most effective time. We also develop behaviour change campaigns, based on local risks and informed by data and insight. We have launched an annual calendar of prevention campaigns and communication activities. We align the timings of our campaigns with the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) campaign calendar (https://nfcc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Fire-and-Rescue-Campaign-Calendar-2024-print-ready.pdf).
Our data analysis team produces data and risk maps to ensure we target our interventions at those most at risk. We use various data sets to identify high-risk individuals and locations, such as those who have had multiple fires and other risk factors. Our wholetime crews are now using targeted data for their prevention work, to reduce incidents as well as injuries and fatalities.
Safeguarding training, which includes information on identifying and reporting concerns to our Safeguarding Team, has been rolled out service-wide and is mandatory training for all staff.
We have established partnerships with a variety of organisations who refer vulnerable clients for home safety visits and request our support at community events such as open days, talks and community fetes. We work closely with our internal communications team to create a regular newsletter that our partners can ‘opt-in’ to receive. In addition, we have ‘safety alerts’ which include information on emerging risks to the community which go to all partners and is not opt-in.
Following Grenfell and the implementation of the Fire Safety England Regulations 2022, our protection work was focused on ensuring that buildings over 18 metres tall complied with fire safety legislation. Now, following national guidance and feedback the Protection Team is starting to focus on buildings 11 to 18 metres tall. The Protection Team continues to lobby the government, where possible, to promote the installation of sprinklers or water mist
suppression systems in high-risk housing.
Proactive work and campaigns
Beyond fire safety, the proactive work from our teams has been recognised nationally, with the Service becoming the NFCC Lead for Young Drivers and Regional Lead for Road Safety, as well as playing a pivotal role in the national Pre-driver Theatre and Workshop Education Research (https://www.racfoundation.org/collaborations/pre-driver-theatre-workshop-education-research-pdtwer) (PdTWER) by Dr Elizabeth Box.
Young motorcycle riders are disproportionately represented in our road traffic collision (RTC) statistics. To address this we are piloting a new intervention in several local colleges and feedback is being acquired to inform its future development. This work is running concurrently with existing campaigns such as Learn2Live (https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/education/learn2live-events) and Biker Down (https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/safety/on-the-road/biker-down).
We continue to invest in activities to prevent accidental drowning and promote water safety (https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/safety/outdoors/water-safety), with a target of halving the number of people who accidentally drown in the area by 2026. While we continue to train and equip our staff to be able to respond to water incidents, the bigger impact on reducing accidental drownings comes through education and the provision of safety equipment, and this is where we focus our efforts. The Community Safety Team is working actively with the RNLI, police, schools, colleges, councils and charities to provide
education, support campaigns and supply lifesaving equipment at key locations.
Throughout the summer, the Service attended several events, advising people on how to
become ‘Wildfire Warriors (https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/news/firefighters-launch-wildfire-campaign)’ in their communities.
In the last year:
- we delivered 18,839 home fire safety visits, with around a quarter of these generated through our partners
- we delivered 117 road safety interventions, 57 were focused on young drivers and 28 were focused on motorcyclists. We reached an audience of almost 28,000 people
- we completed 2,591 fire safety checks and 857 fire safety audits, providing advice and interventions to commercial premises.