Local Area inspections
The 2005 Act requires the SFRS to appoint a Local Senior Officer (LSO) and develop a Local Plan for each local authority area in Scotland. The Local Fire and Rescue Plan sets out the SFRS’s priorities and objectives for that local area. Inspections of the SFRS service delivery within local authority areas aim to examine the development and delivery of Local Fire and Rescue Plans.
Since 2014, HMFSI has carried out a programme of inspections of the SFRS local service delivery across the local authority areas of Scotland.
These Local Area inspections (LAI's) have played a valuable part in ensuring that the SFRS gives due consideration to both national and local needs when designing and developing systems of work.
Whilst this approach provided a valuable insight into SFRS arrangements at a local authority level, it is a resource intensive process and results of inspections can at times appear somewhat repetitive.
Between 2014 and 2022 HMFSI carried out a total of 16 LAI's, an average of 2 inspections per year. Given there are 32 local authorities in Scotland, it would seem likely that it would have taken around 16 years to complete this programme, and provide comfort that arrangements across the entire country were fit for purpose.
With this in mind, we took the decision in 2022, to review our inspection arrangements and to move to a new style of inspection that considers performance over a larger area against a range of key themes. Whilst our approach has changed with the introduction of Service Delivery Area Inspections, we maintain our focus on arrangements for ensuring suitable local service delivery.
All LAI reports carried out to date are published on our website and can be viewed in the Publications library.