Contingency Planning Arrangements for Industrial Action in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service

87. The SFRS IATAG tasked each Local Senior Officer (LSO) within the Service to compile the main operational risks within their areas. These risks were used to form an information layer for the SFRS ArcGIS, which plotted the most advantageous locations for IA AMLs. An OC risk information layer was also added to the ArcGIS, which would have allowed SFRS Operational Intelligence information to be accessed by the OC IA mobilising cell during emergency calls. A demonstration of the ArcGIS system was provided for the inspection team as part of our fieldwork.

88. The OC team produced a set of business rules that were to be applied when answering any emergency call during IA. There would have been a strong focus by the IA OC on the maintenance of SFRS statutory responsibilities, in terms of what emergency incident mobilisations could realistically be made, with the reduced levels of appliances available. This focus would have been particularly acute in geographical areas that established AMLs for military crews of fire appliances.

89. During IA, the OC planned to initiate emergency call triaging. This would focus on the most appropriate use of available appliances and address the greatest level of risk to the safety of people. Priority was to be given to fire and non-fire incidents that involved persons who were trapped and in need of assistance. For these calls, a mobilisation would always be made as a priority by the OC, dependent upon fire appliance availability. The next level of priority would be for fires within buildings (or which threaten buildings), or non-fire incidents such as road traffic collisions, which did not involve people. Mobilisation to these incidents would be made but would also be dependent upon fire appliance availability.

90. Two further levels of priority were to be used for more minor incidents. Examples of these two levels included rubbish burning in an open field or a minor road traffic collisions with no persons injured, or secondly an automatic fire alarm with no signs of fire at a business premises etc. For these two levels of priority, the IA OC would have taken a decision to queue the call until resources became available or decided that no mobilisation should be made. All mobilising decisions were to be logged within the IA OC and all associated emergency calls, and their outcomes recorded.