His Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) assess each Fire and Rescue Service in England. They grade three main areas, which are Effectiveness, Efficiency, and People.
Humberside Fire and Rescue Service (HFRS) has been praised for its work to keep communities safe from fire and to create a fair and inclusive workplace.
In its latest round of inspections, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) rated the Service as ‘Good’ across all three of its inspection criteria. This means we are Good at preventing and responding to emergencies, Good at efficiently spending our money and Good at looking after our people.
The findings represent an improvement on the last routine inspection in 2018, which suggested the Service needed to do more in how it developed its workforce and increase the diversity of the people it employs.
Areas of improvement from our previous inspection report (published in 2022) have all been completed.
Below are details of the identified areas of improvement:
- The service should make sure it allocates enough resources to respond effectively and in time to statutory building control consultations.
- The service should assure itself that its use of enforcement powers prioritises the highest risks and includes proportionate activity to reduce risk.
- The service should make sure its mobile data terminals are reliable so that firefighters can readily access up-to-date risk information.
- The service should make sure it has an effective system for learning from operational incidents.
- The service should ensure it effectively monitors, reviews and evaluates the benefits and outcomes of any collaboration activity.
- The service should assure itself that senior managers are visible and demonstrate service values through their behaviours.
- The service should monitor secondary contracts to make sure working hours are not exceeded.
- The service should assure itself that staff are confident using its feedback mechanisms, so these help the service gather valuable information.
- The service should make sure that it has effective grievance procedures. It should identify and implement ways to improve staff confidence in the grievance process.
- The service should make sure it has robust processes in place to undertake equality impact assessments and review any actions agreed as a result.
- The service should put in place an open and fair process to identify, develop and support high-potential staff and aspiring leaders.
The grading for each area, provides the public and the Fire and Rescue Service with a summary and will promote improvements where necessary.
They are not intended to advise on specific standards or exhaustive lists of how HMI expects Fire and Rescue Service's to perform in these main areas.
The grading criteria consider existing National Operational Guidance and any new standards as agreed upon and adopted when assessing Fire and Rescue Services.
