Crewing of appliances - Fifth London Safety Plan Supporting document No.18 Consultation draft
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Crewing of appliances Fifth London Safety Plan Supporting document No.18 Consultation draft March 2013
Introduction
1. The Brigade’s response to incidents is mainly though the use of our fire station-based pumping appliances
(the traditional fire engine). In addition, we have a range of vehicles we collectively refer to as ‘special
appliances’ that supplement the work of our fire engines by providing the equipment and protective
clothing that we need to deliver certain services such as rescue from water, height or collapsed buildings,
delivering large quantities of foam or hose, or providing scientific services.
2. Some are mobilised at the request of the incident commander and some are automatically mobilised to
certain types of incident, but by their very nature these appliances are used less frequently than pumping
appliances. This paper sets out our current arrangements for crewing (or staffing) these vehicles and
recommends a number of changes to staffing and mobilising arrangements.
Dedicated, alternate and shared crewing
3. Dedicated crewing arrangements exist where the crew needed to operate the vehicle are exclusively
available for that vehicle alone.
4. Alternate crewing is where the crew are available to operate more than one vehicle. This means that only
one of the vehicles can be mobilised at a time, as there are not enough crew members to operate all the
available vehicles.
5. Shared crewing is similar to alternate crewing, but when the specialist vehicle is needed, the crew splits up
to take both a fire engine and the specialist vehicle to the incident. This arrangement is usually introduced
where the specialist vehicle needs a full crew in order to put to use the equipment it carries.
6. London Fire Brigade (and many other fire and rescue services) use types of alternate crewing as a cost-
effective means of crewing specialist vehicles, as it removes the need for a dedicated crew that may be
called out only occasionally.
Current arrangements
7. In London, alternate crewing arrangements were first formalised in February 2007. In 2003, The Brigade had
introduced four Incident Response Units (IRUs), vehicles that primarily provide mass decontamination
facilities at incidents where large numbers of people have been exposed to hazardous materials. A further
six IRUs were introduced in 2007 to ensure that the Brigade had sufficient capacity to respond to incidents
in the capital, but because the demand for the initial four had been so insignificant, the new IRUs were
alternately crewed.
8. Further alternate crewing was introduced in the fourth London Safety Plan 2009 – 2012: the number of
alternately crewed IRUs became seven and as part of the creation of Incident Support Centres, alternate
crewing was introduced for our hose laying appliances and bulk foam units.
9. Hose laying appliances lay hose over long distances where no water supply is nearby and bulk foam units
deliver large quantities of foam for certain types of fires. In the 12 month period from September 2011 to
August 2012, the Brigade’s hose laying lorries had been mobilised a total of 514 times, arrived at 181
incidents and were actually used on 39 occasions (eight per cent of the time) at 19 separate incidents. In the
same period, the foam units were mobilised a total of seven times. They arrived at three incidents and were
used twice. Special appliances are often mobilised to incidents but told en route that their attendance is no
longer necessary and return to their base station.
10. The use of alternate crewing means that it is possible that there will be a demand for the second vehicle at a
time when the first has already been mobilised and there is no crew available. However, on average, fire
engines spend only 7.4% of their time responding to incidents, and given that the demand for specialist
vehicles is very low, the incidence of unavailability of any of these vehicles will also be very low.
Nevertheless, to provide cover for such a situation, we are training crews at other stations to use the special
appliances to provide cover if required.
Page 1Extending our alternate crewing arrangements
11. The use of alternate crewing arrangements has been successful in making more productive use of firefighter
time without a noticeable effect on operational performance and it is therefore proposed to extend the
arrangements to the following types of special appliance that are infrequently used:
Urban search and rescue modules (USAR) that attend collapsed structures.
Scientific support units (SSU) which aid and support our scientific advisors in identifying hazardous
materials.
The remaining two incident response vehicles.
12. Each USAR module contains equipment for particular types of rescue and they are transported to incidents
by a specially designed vehicle called a prime mover. They are located at four of our five Technical Rescue
Centres, where we co-locate at least one fire engine and one Fire Rescue Unit. Between April 2011 and
March 2012, USAR modules were mobilised on 12 occasions. At the moment, there are two prime movers
at each of the four Technical Rescue Centres and there are dedicated driver roles for each prime mover. The
proposal is that when the USAR modules are mobilised, the fire engine, the FRU and the prime movers will
be mobilised together to provide an integrated response. It will not be necessary to maintain the two
dedicated prime mover driver roles in order to mobilise in this way, and so it is proposed to delete these
posts, which will reduce the establishment by 32 posts in total.
13. The Scientific Support Units are also co-located with fire appliances at two stations. Between April 2011 and
March 2012 they were mobilised on 184 occasions. The proposal is to introduce alternate crewing of these
vehicles, which would mean a reduction of 16 posts.
14. It is also proposed to extend the alternate crewing arrangements to the remaining two IRUs. The demand for
these vehicles has remained extremely low and there is no reason to retain dedicated crews for them. This
would result in a reduction of a further 12 posts.
15. Increasing the use of alternate crewing makes a considerable saving, whilst still ensuring the availability of
our appliances. Extending this model of crewing as set out above would involve a reduction of 60 firefighter
posts, resulting in annual savings of over £2.5m.
Pre-determined attendance and ‘on request’ mobilising
16. Some special appliances are mobilised to incidents as part of the pre-determined attendance for that
incident, but it can be seen from the utilisation figures above that it is not uncommon for these appliances to
be identified as not needed before they even arrive at the incident, and the number of times the equipment
is actually used is small. To reduce unnecessary appliance mobilisations we propose to remove the pre-
determined attendance requirement for hose laying lorries and bulk foam units. This would mean that they
would be mobilised at the request of the incident commander at the scene and should ensure that they are
only mobilised when they are required. This system is already in use with our urban search and rescue
modules and we believe it to be a more effective use of resources.
17. We also propose to introduce ‘on request’ mobilising for the Brigade’s fleet of aerial appliances. Each of the
three types of aerial appliance in use in London (turntable ladders, hydraulic platforms and aerial ladder
platforms) has specific characteristics. However, in general they are used to carry out a range of tasks at
incidents which include high-level access and rescue and as water towers for firefighting use. Aerial
appliances are currently mobilised to some incidents as part of the pre-determined attendance , but can also
be mobilised (as can all of our vehicles) at the request of the incident commander. They are strategically
positioned at 11 fire stations and are permanently crewed by a vehicle commander and an aerial operator.
18. Table1 below sets out aerial appliance mobilisations for the period 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012 and the
percentage of occasions on which they were used.
Page 2Table 1: Aerial appliance mobilisations between 1 July 2011 and 30 June 2012
Used % Used
Station Total Incidents Average per day
operationally operationally
Clapham 620 1.7 99 16%
Dagenham 81 0.22 30 37%
Forest Hill 313 0.86 34 11%
Greenwich 312 0.85 32 10%
Hayes 187 0.51 27 14%
Old Kent Road 558 1.53 35 6%
Paddington 767 2.1 237 31%
Soho 919 2.52 165 18%
Tottenham 215 0.59 53 25%
Wembley 154 0.42 43 28%
Wimbledon 209 0.57 28 13%
Total 4,335 11.88 783 18%
19. It can be seen that there is a significant variation in the demand for these appliances across the different
stations and the extent to which they are used at the incidents to which they are mobilised. Dagenham is
mobilised the least, but is most likely to be used at the incident when it arrives.
20. Of the 4,335 mobilisations, 3,696 (or 85.2 per cent) were as part of the pre-determined attendance.
21. Table 2 below shows the types of work aerial appliances undertook at operational incidents during the same
period. Aerials can be used for more than one purpose at an incident and so the total number of uses for
each appliance as shown in table 2 below will not equate to the numbers in the “used operationally” column
in table 1.
Table 2: Use made of aerial appliances at incidents between 1 July 2011 and 30 June 2012
Incidents Water Observation Other
Station Rescue Access
attended Tower Tower Work
Clapham 620 19 9 75 30 36
Dagenham 81 19 2 22 7 4
Forest Hill 313 17 2 14 7 13
Greenwich 312 18 6 12 4 10
Hayes 187 15 1 19 10 3
Old Kent
558 19 3 24 8 7
Road
Paddington 767 22 7 192 61 32
Soho 919 14 11 128 50 34
Tottenham 215 19 2 30 16 9
Wembley 154 24 7 29 9 9
Wimbledon 209 15 5 15 5 2
Total 4,335 201 55 560 207 159
An example of ‘Other Work’ would be removing loose debris from a roof following an incident
22. Of the 55 rescues, seven were at fires. The remaining 48 were ‘on request’ mobilisations from the incident
commander and included 11 rescues of cats from roofs and pigeons from netting under bridges.
Page 323. It is clear that operational use of aerial appliances at incidents is relatively low compared with the number of
mobilisations. Making these appliances ‘on request’ only by incident commanders at the scene would allow
the Brigade to be flexible in the way it responds and deploys its resources without reducing appliances or
equipment and reduce unnecessary appliance movements across the Brigade area.
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