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A fundamental review of fire and rescue provision in Norfolk would see a more effective and efficient service across the county without compromising safety, councillors will hear next week (March 9).

Norfolk County Council's Fire and Community Protection Overview and Scrutiny Committee will meet next Tuesday to discuss Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service's latest Integrated Risk Management Plan, called its Safety Plan.

The service works on a three to four year planning cycle and is required to refresh its Safety Plan every three years. The plan contains the service's aims, objectives and actions and gives the opportunity to take a fresh look at how services are delivered and at the resources needed.

Next week's meeting will be asked to look at a number of initial proposals drawn up by officers and a cross-party Member working group.  The committee will then comment on the proposals before Cabinet decides on the draft Safety Plan for 2011/14. That draft will then be subject to a twelve-week public consultation.

The proposals have been formulated after detailed and thorough analysis of where the greatest response demands are in Norfolk (and are likely to be in the future), the types of incidents attended, where the main risks are within the county and where fire and rescue resources are currently based. The key proposals include:

• establishing a new, additional fire station in King's Lynn.
• redeploying one wholetime fire engine from Great Yarmouth to Gorleston, replacing the current   Retained crew to give quicker 24-hour cover both sides of the river.
• replacing the second fire engines at the county's two-pump, rural stations (Diss, Cromer, Sandringham, Fakenham, Wymondham and Dereham) with new specialist vehicles which are better equipped and specifically designed to tackle emergencies in rural areas.
• deploying one fire engine at a new fire station (being built at the Carrow site in south east Norwich) instead of the two currently based at Bethel Street.

Harry Humphrey, Cabinet Member for Fire and Community Protection, said: "The Safety Plan process ensures our fire and rescue service remains on its toes. Obviously the service is constantly monitoring performance and reacting accordingly - as shown by the recent £330,000 investment in rural services - but the Safety Plan discipline means that every three years the service must step back, take a fresh look at itself and asks how it can improve. It means the service can plan for change; changes in communities, changes in population and changes in the way we live to ensure that it continues to safeguard our communities.

"The current economic situation dictates that all public bodies reevaluate how they deliver their services. I think people would expect their fire and rescue service to take this opportunity to make sure it is working as efficiently as possible to make Norfolk even safer, as well as making the best use of its resources. This inevitably means looking at doing some things differently. I am sure there will be a good, healthy debate next week and I look forward to hearing the committee's views. "

Mike McCarthy, Deputy Chief Fire Officer for Norfolk, said: "Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service is about one thing - making Norfolk, already a very safe county, even safer. It is what we are here for, it is what we do and we are committed to maintaining the high standards people rightly expect from us. Whilst we constantly monitor our performance and our services, every three years we look at Norfolk as a whole, look at the main risks ahead from a fire and rescue point of view and at what we need to do to mitigate them. We look at the resources we will need to manage those risks and at where those resources need to be.

"A number of options are on the table which we believe could help Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service work in a better and smarter way without, crucially, compromising the safety of the public or our staff."

Cabinet* will meet on April 6 to agree the final draft of the Safety Plan. A public consultation will then follow over the summer with the final plan returning to Overview and Scrutiny Panel on September 7 and Cabinet on October 11.

Also on next week's agenda are the service plans for the council's Trading Standards Department, Emergency Planning Team and Youth Offending Team.

The Fire and Community Protection Overview and Scrutiny Panel meets in the Edwards Room at County Hall on Tuesday March 9 at 10am.

*Norfolk County Council's Cabinet is the county's fire and rescue authority. The final, approved plan will be owned by the fire and rescue authority and will be called the Norfolk Fire and Rescue Authority's Safety Plan 2011/14.

Read the Reports

IRMP Report 2010
IRMP Report (Appendix a)

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