Post Fire Prevention and Reassurance Activity

[Percy]

Hi all

I am currently writing a new Policy and Procedure (titled above) that sets down mandatory expectations of crews and prevention staff following a domestic dwelling fire.

It is well needed as currently there is nothing really service wide which I flagged up a while ago and then got tasked with writing it (note to self... don't flag things up😄), instead each Borough and Area does what it feels is the best course of action and there are glaring inconsistencies in approaches - which simply can't continue.

GMFRS'isms of 'Target 25' or 'Target 50' are the names of the post fire leaflet drops we currently perform and have done for a while, but the issue with this is the number attached to each one is often not the number actually delivered. So if there were 36 homes in a street that need leafletting, its either more than a T 25 or less than a T 50 🤷‍♂️

I am used to the term 'Hot Strike' for post fire leaflet drops etc. which I know is quite commonly used elsewhere too and it is less confusing to report on such as 36 x Hot Strikes delivered.

The term chosen will probably end up being 'Hot Strike', after all; I am writing it, but what do other FRS' call theirs?

As ever, much appresh!

[Luminoki]

In West Mids the stop or further informative message will usually include “hot strike carried out” no mention of number of houses leafletted

[Percy]

Cheers pal, the exact number is something we have been asked to collate for reporting purposes:

[Messyshaw]

Whilst I accept the value of leaflet hot strikes, I wonder whether anyone is utilising social media in a very local way to do similar work?

There is Twitter, Local FB Groups, Next Door and 101 other platforms that could be accessed by local stations to push fire safety messages tied to local incidents & dress

When there's a job near my home, social media is alive with 'what's going on?' 'I hope nobody is hurt' etc

Getting a reply from the local fire station - linked with a safety/education message would reach many more than dropping a grubby leaflet thru a front door. Plus social media posts are often shared, leaflets go in the bin

I know most fire service comms teams would have a heart attack at the thought of FFs providing messages locally. But with guidelines it would be a more efficient way of a community fire station reaching their community 

[Crog]

We use Post Incident Engagement (PIE) and previous service used Post Incident Protocol (PIP). No need to put it in messages to control, although some people do.

Previous service, depending on the street, we went for 5-10 addresses either side and further 10 opposite, but nothing was recorded.

Similar in current service, but we use CFRMIS as a recording tool and every address leafleted gets an entry to show it’s happened.

[Percy]

20 hours ago, Messyshaw said:

Whilst I accept the value of leaflet hot strikes, I wonder whether anyone is utilising social media in a very local way to do similar work?

There is Twitter, Local FB Groups, Next Door and 101 other platforms that could be accessed by local stations to push fire safety messages tied to local incidents….

I know most fire service comms teams would have a heart attack at the thought of FFs providing messages locally. But with guidelines it would be a more efficient way of a community fire station reaching their community 

Well funnily enough Messy, Ol Percy is quite a busy chap atm because for the last five years since I joined, I have repeatedly suggested exactly what you are! Our current Social Media presence is just nowhere near good enough really, especially for 2023, and by having all comms and media centralised, we miss a trick with local stories, jobs of interest, latest campaigns etc. so guess what? I’ve been tasked with delivering that project too 😂😶.

You are right in so far as Comms and seniors having angina at the thought of Ops crews being able to post locally, but as I’ve said forever and pretty much won them over… so we trust the Watch Commanders and crews to safely and effectively resolve incidents, often risk critical and with lives at stake - but we are reluctant to trust them making a post from scene, Station or in the community celebrating local good work and highlighting a relevant safety campaign? Really? Comms will still have overall admin anyway.

For an organisation with the size and scale of us, we have only one Comms person on at nights and weekends. The problem with centralised comms is, and which our partners at GMP found out a LONG time ago (basically I’m using their model as a blueprint) they can’t keep up with every last ‘good story’ but the main issue being, we are so big geographically that what maybe happening in Rochdale Borough is of little interest to the people in Wigan Borough and vice versa across all 10 Boroughs and GMP have done the leg work for us surveying residents who want to know what ‘their’ Police are doing locally. So, given comprehensive training on what to/not do on SM, instead of having one person tasked with highlighting maybe three or four newsworthy stories and linked Safety messages, we will soon have approx 1250 who can highlight each and every one! That’s some increase in staff and not one extra on the actual payroll. But it’s the overall Comms strategy that I want to change - for us stop thinking like an emergency service and instead adopt a commercial aggressive ‘sales’ mindset… not of a product but of who we are and what we do, celebrate all the good work by crews more - by the crews themselves, celebrate it’s staff, highlight a potential career for someone who would never have thought about it before etc. all through a new way of thinking and working!

…but in true Percy form I digress - back to topic 😂😂

[Becile]

@Percy"note to self .don't flag things up" ...old habits die hard - take care me old mate.😉