Inspection of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service North Service Delivery Area

1. This is the third report in a series of Service Delivery Area (SDA) Inspections of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) carried out by His Majesty’s Fire Service Inspectorate in Scotland (HMFSI). This report focuses on the North SDA (NSDA).

2. Since the SFRS was established in 2013, HMFSI had undertaken inspection of service delivery at a Local Authority (LA) level. From 2023, inspection of local service delivery has been carried out across the SFRS’s SDAs, of which there are three: North; West; and East. The management of each SDA is overseen by a Deputy Assistant Chief Officer (DACO).

3. A number of the LA areas within the NSDA have previously been the subject of a local area inspection by HMFSI, namely, Angus, Highland, Moray, Dundee City, Western Isles and Aberdeen City. In this SDA inspection, we have revisited these areas, along with those LA areas not previously visited, namely, Aberdeenshire, Perth and Kinross, the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands.

4. The format for reporting our cyclical inspection activity has also changed. Our findings and recommendations contained in this report are based on our inspection of service delivery at a Local Senior Officer (LSO) level and are aggregated at an SDA level to inform our judgements/grading, however, we still take cognisance of LA area activity. We have adopted a sampling approach in conducting this inspection, as such, we cannot, with complete certainty, identify all potential areas for improvement or areas of good practice. Instead, we intend that this should be a proportionate inspection that provides an overview of the NSDA.

Inspection Themes

Prevention & Protection: Protecting communities from fire and other emergencies

People: Managing and supporting the workforce

Response: Responding to Incidents when they do occur

Partnership: Working in partnership with others to improve community safety outcomes

5. Building on the process for the East and West SDA reports, we undertook a short, anonymised survey of all SFRS staff based within the NSDA. We are grateful to all those who took time to complete our questionnaire as it has helped to inform and reinforce our findings. There was a total of 292 responses to our survey which equates to a response rate of 10% of the Full Time Equivalent (FTE) posts in the NSDA. For comparison, the West SDA survey achieved a 24% return, while the East SDA achieved 23%. While the return rates for this survey are significantly different to the other SDAs, the rate remains at a level that we consider to be valid.

6. This report focuses on the four key themes of Prevention and Protection; Response; Partnership; and People. In exploring these themes, we interviewed SFRS Operational Staff, Management Teams, Functional Staff and Support Staff as well as partners from Local Authorities, Police and the Third Sector.

7. Our fieldwork took place between April 2024 and January 2025. Due to a named storm event, the Inspection team scheduled to visit the Western Isles in October 2024 was unable to reach that location. During the fieldwork period there were a number of significant events or issues that impacted our analysis and fieldwork. In particular:

• HMFSI published a report ‘Inspection of the SFRS West Service Delivery Area’ in July 2024.
  
  
• The SFRS launched a public consultation, ‘Shaping our Future Service: Your Say’ to gather the views of members of the Scottish public about what they want from their Fire Service in the future. This consultation is now closed after receiving 6,400 responses. The Service is expected to publish its findings in due course.
  
  
• The SFRS confirmed that appliances removals, including from Perth and Dundee Kingsway East in the NSDA, would remain in place. These temporary arrangements will remain in place until the ongoing SFRS Service Delivery Review consultation is complete and its outcomes are put in place.

8. In making our assessment of how effective the SFRS is in the NSDA, we use the following gradings:

Opportunity for improvement: where we find important failings of policy, practice or performance which require improvement.

Satisfactory: where we find limited shortcomings in the area being considered.

Good: where we find important strengths in performance.

Outstanding: where we find performance which significantly exceeds Good.

9. The awarding of the gradings is subjectively derived using the Inspectors’ professional judgement, skills and knowledge, and based on analysis, evidence, survey and observation as detailed in Appendix B.