HM Fire Service Inspectorate local area inspection: Dumfries and Galloway

Figure 1: Scottish council area boundaries

Dumfries and Galloway is the area numbered 6 on the map in Figure 1. It covers an area of around 6,426 km². It has a border with the local authority areas of South Ayrshire, East Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and Scottish Borders. It also has a border with Cumbria in England. In terms of SFRS organisation, Dumfries and Galloway is within the West SDA, and borders one LSO area that is within the East SDA.

Dumfries and Galloway is split into 12 council wards. 

The population of Dumfries and Galloway at the end of June 2018 was 148,790^[1]  making it the 13th highest populated of the 32 local authority areas in Scotland. Around 2.7% of the Scottish population reside in Dumfries and Galloway. In Dumfries and Galloway, the percentage of the population aged 65 and over, at 25.5%, is greater than the overall percentage for Scotland of 18.9% in that age band.

The main centres of population are Dumfries, Stranraer and Annan. There are various operational risks in the area, including: major roads; railways; the ferry terminal connection to Northern Ireland; and various commercial, industrial, military, and rural risks.

There are 17 fire stations in Dumfries and Galloway. Their locations are shown in Figure 2, and Table 1 shows the fire station duty system, the resources based there and incident activity.

Figure 2: location of fire stations in Dumfries and Galloway

Table 1: Dumfries and Galloway fire station information: source SFRS 

*this is the number of times that appliances from the fire station mobilised – it is not an indication of the number of incidents
**wholetime appliances at Dumfries are dual crewed

Employees^[2]: The SFRS has 279 staff posts in the area. Twenty-five (9%) of the staff identify themselves as female.

Incident statistics

Table 2 shows the number of incidents attended by the SFRS in Dumfries and Galloway over a period of four years^[3].

Table 2: incidents in Dumfries and Galloway

Figure 3 gives a visual reflection of the make-up of incidents within Dumfries and Galloway for the most recent available statistics, 2018/19.

Figure 3: Dumfries and Galloway incidents 2018/19

Responding to false alarms represents 55% of all incidents attended by the SFRS in Dumfries and Galloway in 2018/19. Unwanted fire alarm signals (UFAS) from non-domestic premises made up 470^[4] of these false alarms and therefore comprise 25% of all incidents. 

The incident rates for 2018/19 are shown in Figure 4, benchmarked against the rates for Scotland. In Dumfries and Galloway, the rates per population for primary fires, secondary fires and false alarms are lower than for Scotland. 

Figure 4: incident rates per 100,000 population, 2018/19 – Dumfries and Galloway and Scotland