Fire Prevention Plan Guidance ~ Communications Update 4
The EA has now received comments back from independent fire experts at BRE Global relating to the draft FPP guidance. They are making minor amendments before publication. Prior to official publication, the EA will circulate copies of the guidance and consultation response to trade bodies and industry. They intend to publish version 3 of the FPP guidance by the end of July 2016.
Business Impact Assessment Update
In update 2 of the e-bulletin the EA outlined that it was undertaking a business impact assessment. They must assess the impact of the revised FPP guidance in comparison to the previous version (version 2). They have identified five groups that are impacted (positively and negatively) by the guidance:
- the operators who have to comply - all waste sites storing combustible waste
- human health - people and communities near waste fires
- the environment - again surrounding sites and impacted by waste fires
- other business - neighbouring business directly or indirectly affected by fires
- resources - emergency services and other agencies that have to respond to the incidents
Potential Cost Savings for the Fire Service
The EA says the main objectives of the guidance are to reduce the number and scale of waste fires and also to enable active fire fighting to take place so that a fire can be extinguished within four hours. If achieved these could have a significant benefit not only in reducing the impact on health, the environment and business but also on resources needed. Larger fires often take longer to extinguish, which impacts both on the resources of incident responders, such as the Fire and Rescue Service, and ultimately the public purse which pays for this resource.
As part of the Business Impact Target the EA has been calculating potential savings to resources. Using typical attendance rates for active fire fighting, obtained from the Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA), they have estimated some of the potential cost savings. They have evaluated these savings using Environment Agency incident data for 126 serious and significant waste fires, which have taken place on permitted sites since 2012.
These 126 waste fires totalled 4045.2 hours of time spent by the local Fire and Rescue Service, with each incident averaging 35.17 hours. The cost of these fires has totalled £4,715,290, with the average cost per incident of £81,298.
If the objectives of the Fire Prevention Plan Guidance had been achieved, then the total time spent at these incidents should have been 452.45 hours, with each incident averaging 3.61 hours. The total cost would have been £606,908, with an average cost per incident of £9,633 and a total saving of £4.11M. This is a considerable saving on resources and public spending.
RWM conference and exhibition
The EA will be at RWM on 13th September talking about the Fire Prevention Plan guidance. They plan to send some more details in a later bulletin, but in the mean time stakeholders can look out for the EA's blog on the RWM site later this month.
Sign up for future E-bulletins
If you would like to join the EA's distribution list to receive future E-bulletins relating to Fire Prevention Plans then please email your details to reg-interventions@environment-agency.gov.uk, remembering to include your name, email address, company name and sector.
Webpage published: 13/07/2016