Release date: 30 September 2025
West Sussex County Council’s Fire and Rescue Service Scrutiny Committee met to discuss the Fire and Rescue Service Strategic Performance Report and the Quarterly Performance and Resources Report on Friday 26 September.
The committee heard how the service performed in the first quarter of 2025/2026, during which it prepared to launch a public consultation on its new Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) for 2026 – 2030.
Of the 30 performance measures that WSFRS is benchmarked against, 27 had a green status, 1 was amber, and two were red. Of the two measures that were red last quarter, Accidental Dwelling Fire Casualties showed an improvement in this quarter while on-call availability remained in red status.
Members were asked to review the core measures to ensure the service’s performance can be continually monitored and improved. The changes include a reduction in tolerance for deliberate fires and attendance at unwanted fire signals, and an increased target for delivering Safe and Well Visits to households with at least one vulnerability or risk factor.
The committee were also presented with the service’s quarterly performance and resources report which sets out the corporate performance, finance, workforce, risk and capital programme positions as at the end of June 2025.
The report highlighted that all four performance measures are reporting as green status and the fire and rescue service is currently projecting a balanced budget. It also referenced the recently concluded CRMP public consultation, wholetime recruitment process, and the annual staff conference held in June which focused on addressing the implementation of the Grenfell Phase Two recommendations across the service.
Quarter one has seen Fire Safety Regulators undertake 10% more fire safety audits that in the same period last year. The service has also completed 1,395 Safe and Well Visits in households with at least one vulnerability or risk factor and has seen strong performance in emergency response times at critical fires and special service incidents.
Councillor Kevin Boram, Chairman of the scrutiny committee, said: “We were pleased to welcome the fire and rescue service’s new senior leadership team led by Interim Chief Fire Officer Gary Ball, Assistant Director Sabrina Pennington-Down, and Assistant Chief Fire Officer Andy Piller at our first scrutiny committee of 2025/26.
“This quarter has seen continued strong performance across the core measures alongside the development of the new Community Risk Management Plan and processing of 12 new wholetime recruits in preparation for their training.”
You can watch the meeting back here.
