HM Fire Service Inspectorate: local area inspection - Midlothian
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2 About the area
14. Midlothian is the area numbered 19 on the map in Figure 1. It covers an area of around 353 km2. It has a border with the local authority areas of the City of Edinburgh, East Lothian and Scottish Borders. In terms of the SFRS organisation structure, Midlothian is within the East SDA.
15. Midlothian is split into six council wards each represented jointly by three Councillors.
16. The population of Midlothian at the end of June 2019 was 92,460[1] making it the 25th most populated of the 32 local authority areas in Scotland. Over the year to mid-2019, Midlothian was one of the council areas which experienced the highest percentage growth in its population (1.2%). Around 1.6% of the Scottish population reside in Midlothian. The percentage of the population aged 65 and over, at 18.8%, is less than the overall percentage for Scotland of 19.1% in that age band. 19.4% of the Midlothian population was aged 15 and under. The ethnicity of the population of Midlothian at the 2011[2] census was classified as 99% white (Scottish White: Other British White: Irish White: Other) and 1% Asian, Asian Scottish or Asian British.
There are various operational risks in the area, including, roads, railways, various commercial, industrial, military, and heritage risks.
There are two community fire stations in Midlothian, Dalkeith and Penicuik. The locations are shown in Figure 2 which is a map of the whole LSO area. Table 1 on page 6 shows the fire station duty system, the resources based there and incident activity.
| Fire station | Duty system | Appliances | Activity* 2019/20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dalkeith | Wholetime | 1 rescue pump | 817 |
| Penicuik | RDS | 1 rescue pump | 210 |
*This is the number of times that an appliance from the fire station attended an incident – it is not an indication of the number of turnouts. The IRS data on which the activity totals are based exclude mobilisations which did not result in a direct incident attendance, for example, stand-by or where the appliance was turned back.
19. Employees.[3] The SFRS has 51 staff posts in the area, three (6%) of the staff identify themselves as female.
Incident statistics
20. Table 2 shows the number of incidents attended by the SFRS in Midlothian over a period of four years[4]. As can be seen there has been a significant reduction in the number of primary and secondary fires in Midlothian. Whilst there has also been a national reduction in both these incident types, the scale of the reduction in Midlothian is greater than the equivalent figures for Scotland as a whole. Primary fires has seen a 24.4% reduction in Midlothian compared to 9.8% for Scotland. For secondary fires the reduction is 38% for Midlothian against 10% for Scotland as a whole.
|
Incident type |
2016/17 |
2017/18 |
2018/19 |
2019/20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Primary fire |
205 |
211 |
169 |
155 |
|
Secondary fire |
371 |
391 |
317 |
230 |
|
Chimney fire |
9 |
7 |
4 |
6 |
|
Road traffic collision |
39 |
42 |
29 |
37 |
|
Other non-fire incident |
123 |
146 |
134 |
149 |
|
False alarm (including non-fire false alarm) |
667 |
659 |
641 |
685 |
|
Total incidents |
1414 |
1456 |
1294 |
1262 |
21. Figure 3 gives a visual reflection of the make-up of incidents within Midlothian for the most recent available statistics, 2019/20.
22. Responding to false alarms represents 54% of all incidents attended by the SFRS in Midlothian in 2019/20. Unwanted fire alarm signals (UFAS) from non-domestic premises made up 386[5] of these false alarms and therefore comprise around 30% of all incidents.
23. The incident rates for 2019/20 are shown in Figure 4 benchmarked against the rates for Scotland. In Midlothian the rates per population for primary fires, secondary fires, false alarms, and non-fire incidents are all lower than the equivalent rate for Scotland.
