Value

[Becile]

Thoughts anyone?

NFCC - value of FRS

Economic & Social Value

Edited October 1, 2022 by Keith
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[Jet]

Good bit of bean-counting by the National Fire Chiefs Cartel sorry Council.

[PhilipK]

Adding this which I found by folllowing the link in the video description:

ESV PHASE ONE REPORT - SEPTEMBER 2022.pdf
 

[CaptainFlack]

I'd throw this round and ask what value is the NFCC ?

[Rory-495]

I mean... interesting. Who is the target audience? Usually only firefighters know about the NFCC and we know the value we bring

[Messyshaw]

Call my cynical, but if this research finds a lack of value for money in the UKFRS, then what?

This looks like an exercise to prepare a white paper or similar into significant changes to the way the fire service is managed. 

The NHS is slowly being privatised so why not the fire service? This might be controversial, but if there was substantial evidence- such as from this NFCC report - it might be easier to push through

I am not an expert on statistics or data but there does seem to be a fair bit of guesstimating going on here. Establishing what would happen if no fire service attendance was made is an example. There are so many factors thar would influence fire development and only a few of them are recorded in fire reports.

As a taxpayer I want value for money in all government spending- including the fire service. But using data based on educated guesswork to shape the future of the UKFRS worries me

I would prefer a live study over a 12 to 36 month timescale (?) where real data can be measured on site rather than guessing what may have happened

If you are not concerned,  indeed worried about this research, maybe you should be

Does anyone know if the FBU are represented in the panel of experts or in any other role in the project?

[Percy]

So ‘experts’ have concluded that a house fire will average out at 43% of damage to it if we didn’t attend any of them? The trouble with this job is people like NFCC and teams within services spend money, time and effort into coming up with entirely unprovable nonsense like this as if any of it really matters 🤷🏻‍♂️

All of that claptrap is meaningless because there are so many variables.

[Messyshaw]

@Percy

I would like to understand that 43% better too as I have ATTENDED fires where, despite our best efforts, 100% of the building has been damaged.

Maybe we should have parked at the end of the street to have saved 57% of the building? 😉

Before someone mentions 'averages , I can't imagine more than a handful of property fires not burning out

This sort of mathematical or scientific approach doesn't give me much confidence in this project

[Kinmel]

It is simple to collate a realistic data set.

Every time a new call comes in, toss a coin.

Heads - send 1st attendance

Tails - send a loss assessor round next day.

Evaluate the data set on the 1st of every month until such time someone decides future policy.

[Jobbo]

Has anyone read the entire report?

I'm working my way through it, but in the first section it says that the NFCC's findings show that for every £1 spent on FRS work, we see a social and economic return of over £6.

That's good, right?

[FirePhil]

11 hours ago, Messyshaw said:

@Percy

I would like to understand that 43% better too as I have ATTENDED fires where, despite our best efforts, 100% of the building has been damaged

‘The 0.43 constant for damage to domestic dwelling fires is based on a midpoint between measurements from within two government documents, and ideally, this could be researched in more detail and a more defensible constant determined.’ 

So it looks like they are not entirely convinced of the accuracy themselves.

It seems strange to me that the report concludes that there are no directly comparable studies, and then goes on to compare the results:

Upper Austria Social Return on Investment = 10.2:1

Swedish FRS Benefit to Cost = 8:1

UKFRS ROI = 6.17:1

[Jobbo]

It could be that the reports are not directly comparable but do cover similar ground. I haven't read the other reports, I can't even find them, but it could be as simple as the Austrian report doesn't account for prevention work, and the Swedish one only looks at a subset of incident types, perhaps.

[FirePhil]

But I would hazard a guess that they are using different criteria and methods to reach their ratios. Given that the Austrian one is the ‘Social ROI’ that would also suggest it isn’t accounting for the economic ROI. Personally, it feels like comparing apples with oranges is all I’m saying.