Statement of Operational Assurance 2024 – 2025
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Introduction
The York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority (YNYCA) in its capacity as Fire and Rescue Authority has carried out its functions in accordance with the defined statutory and policy framework in which it is required to operate. As such, the view at the end of the 2024-25 financial year, is that requirements associated with operational matters were met.
The key areas of statutory law and non-statutory guidance documents setting this out are:
- the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004
- the Civil Contingencies Act 2004
- the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
- the Fire and Rescue Services (Emergencies) (England) Order 2007
- the Localism Act 2011
- the Fire and Rescue National Framework for England
- the Health and Safety Act at Work etc Act 1974
The Fire and Rescue National Framework states that Fire and Rescue Authorities must make provision to respond to incidents such as fires, road traffic collisions and other emergencies within their area, and in other areas in line with their mutual aid agreements and reflect this in their Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP).
Risk and Resource Model
Our current CRMP is known as the Risk and Resource Model (RRM) 2022-2025. This sets out who we are as a Service, the risk in York and North Yorkshire and the services we provide to prevent, protect and respond to emergencies.
The Risk and Resource Model consultation took place over a 12-week period from the 23rd of May to the 14th of August 2022 and collected opinions on seven proposals for change, developed by North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (NYFRS) and recommended to the Police Fire and Crime Commissioner (now Deputy Mayor for Police, Fire, Crime and Commissioning), by the previous Chief Fire Officer to take forward to consultation.
During the consultation period, residents, businesses, stakeholders/partners, Trade Unions and employees were invited to provide feedback on the proposals via an online survey and in person across 12 district events. 1,378 responses were received. Three resident focus groups were also conducted to further explore views and opinions on the proposals.
Fire and Rescue Plan 2025-29
The Fire and Rescue Plan (FRP) 2025-29 was informed by over 1600 responses to the York and North Yorkshire Mayor’s consultation. It sets out the Mayor’s six strategic priorities for the Service.
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Vision
- York and North Yorkshire are safe places for all.
Priorities
- Targeted Prevention Deliver targeted prevention activities to keep people in York and North Yorkshire safe from fires, road traffic collisions, water hazards and other emergencies.
- Protected Built Environment Provide targeted support and advice to protect people and properties from fires through safer buildings in York and North Yorkshire.
- Effective Emergency Response Provide an effective response to incidents across York and North Yorkshire, as quickly as possible.
- Stronger Communities Prepare for major disruptions, working in collaboration with our partners to support communities across York and North Yorkshire to effectively prepare for and recover from emergencies.
- Supported, Safe and Skilled Staff Foster a culture of excellence and belonging in North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
Invest in training, safety and welfare to maintain a skilled and resilient Workforce. - Financial Stability Ensure the long-term financial sustainability of North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and be transparent in our spending.
Objectives and Measures
- Specific objectives and expected measures have been set for each of the six priorities.
Delivery
- The Fire and Rescue Plan sets out those areas I will be expecting the Chief Fire Officer to deliver over the coming years though his Community Risk Management Plan, as well as identifying work for the Policing, Fire and Crime function of the Combined Authority with other agencies such as Local Authorities.
Assuring Progress
- We will measure progress through the assurance and scrutiny activities outlined in the Policing, Fire and Crime Assurance Framework. If progress against the priorities is not being achieved, we will intervene quickly to support improvement.
Within the FRP consultation, we introduced seven CRMP planning principles. These principles were endorsed by the public, via the Mayor’s consultation and set out high-level objectives for consideration, when drafting our new CRMP. It is the intention of the CRMP to address the priorities set out within the FRP and the planning principles set out below:
- Dynamic resourcing
On a daily basis we will ensure our fire engines are in the best place to meet demand and risk, providing the best possible response times to emergencies across the whole of York and North Yorkshire.
- Protect our communities
We will keep prevention and protection at the forefront of our activities, targeting people and buildings most at risk, as well as areas where response times are unavoidably longer.
- Safety focused
We will ensure we have the right people, in the right places, with the right skills, equipment and training to do their jobs effectively and safely.
- Value for money
We will use our money wisely to ensure we are sustainable now and in the future.
- Support our on-call Firefighters
Continue to work with our on-call Firefighters to maximise the availability of our fire engines, improving how we recruit, retain and recognise them.
- Collaborative working
We will maintain and seek collaboration opportunities with partner organisations to deliver effective, joined up interventions and a better service to our communities.
- Service delivery
We will ensure our operating model (how we deliver our services) is both productive and aligned to the risk presented across York and North Yorkshire.
Community Risk Profile
The resources that we put in place are based on an assessment of risk across the Service area. We call our assessment of risk the Community Risk Profile (CRP). A CRP is a comprehensive assessment carried out by a Fire and Rescue Service to identify and evaluate the various risks within their community. This profile enables each service to understand both current and potential future risks that could impact residents, workers and visitors in the area. Key components of a CRP include identifying all foreseeable fire and rescue related risks, such as accidental dwelling fires, road traffic collisions and water-related incidents.
It involves examining population density, age and other demographic factors to determine who is at risk and why. The assessment also considers the physical characteristics of the area, including urban and rural differences and analyses socio-economic factors to identify areas with higher vulnerability. Reviewing past incidents helps predict and prepare for future risks. We must also consider the impact of climate change and other environmental factors
We have worked with Operational Research in Health Limited (ORH) who have undertaken a review of future Community Risk and Response Modelling, whilst validating the data and analysis undertaken from our previous Community Risk Profile. The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), in collaboration with ORH, produced a methodology for dwelling fire risk categorisation as part of NFCCs Definition of Risk project.
This methodology alongside ORH’s analysis of the risk of being killed or seriously injured on the roads in York and North Yorkshire, provides us with a data-driven approach to understanding the risks within our communities. NFCC and ORH have produced a report on the likelihood, consequence and risk of road traffic collisions (RTCs). The NFCC project required multiple data sources, which enabled us to define the likelihood of RTCs by type of road.
We have also considered the National Risk Register and the Community Risk Register created by the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum (NYLRF) which is a partnership of local agencies working together to manage emergencies covering the whole of North Yorkshire and York.
Community Risk Management Plan
Each fire and rescue authority has a statutory duty under the Fire and Rescue National Framework for England, to produce a Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP). This is informed by the CRP which sets out the key challenges and risks facing our communities and how we intend to meet and reduce them. It demonstrates how our protection, prevention and response activities have and will be used collectively to prevent and/or mitigate fires and other incidents.
In the CRMP, we have included wider strategic objectives which describe the actions we are taking to improve our service. There is a clear link between the work we do to make our communities safer and the improvements we make as an organisation and employer. Essentially, the CRMP serves as our strategic roadmap for the future.
We are currently drafting the CRMP which will be publicly consulted upon, over an eight-week period set to commence in July 2025. Once reviewed and agreed, the areas of focus within the CRMP will be assessed and prioritised to become our four-year service delivery plan. We will report progress to the public periodically through the Deputy Mayor’s Online Public Meeting (OPM) and we will produce an annual update report on progress which will be published.
Operating Context
Our Service area is one of the largest in England covering more than 3,200 square miles and over 6,000 miles of road. Our area has isolated rural settlements and farms, market towns, and larger urban areas such as York, Harrogate, and Scarborough. Our area has two of England’s ten national parks, three designated areas of outstanding natural beauty, over 200 sites of special scientific interest and over 12,000 listed buildings.
Overall, our area is sparsely populated, but there are still over 340,000 households and over 830,000 residents. The resident population is increasing steadily and becoming predominantly older. The City of York is also home to over 21,000 students, with two universities. More than 40 million visitors come to York and North Yorkshire each year. There are over 37,000 active businesses across the York and North Yorkshire, with hospitality and entertainment amongst the main industries.
The road network is the main means of transport connecting small towns and villages. The rural nature of our area means that people often travel further to access work, education, and services. Several major arterial routes also cross our area – the A1(M), M62, A59, A64, A65, A66 and A19.
Two of the major rivers in the county are the River Swale and the River Ure, joining together to form the River Ouse which flows through York. The coastline of North Yorkshire runs for approximately 45 miles from just north of Whitby to south of Filey.
Prevention
Prevention is a fundamental part of our activities as we continue to reduce risk through the advice, interventions and education we provide our communities to help them adopt safer behaviours to improve their safety, health and wellbeing. Our Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Strategy outlines how we will work together as one team, and with others to deliver preventative interventions to reduce the risk of individuals being killed or seriously injured due to fire, roads, water and extreme environmental events.
We will continue to reduce risk and increase community resilience by targeting and delivering prevention services to the most vulnerable and at risk. Working with partner agencies to deliver a joined-up, targeted approach to ensure our support reaches the most vulnerable, prioritising those people and communities who are most at risk, and those in remote rural areas where response times are unavoidably longer.
Our Home Fire Safety Visits (HFSV’s) have increased by 18% this financial year compared to the previous year. This has been supported through our work with the provider Safelincs and the NFCC Strategic Community Health Lead to create a Home Fire Safety Visit referral application for partners for their electronic devices. The 18% increase though doesn’t capture the huge improvement in productivity, through better targeting our High and Very High Risk HFSV’s have increased by 544% on the previous year.
We have also launched our The Post Incident Engagement Policy (PIE) and completed training for all our crews. This has increased post incident HFSVs by 37% compared to the previous year.
Our FireBike deployments, which target motorcyclists on our rural roads and at known accident locations have increased from 32 deployments in 2023/24 to 58 deployments in 2024/25. This equates to 378 hours given by FireBike volunteers.
We have also seen an increase in our water safety and wildfire engagement compared to the previous year.
Protection
We have a responsibility to protect the built environment within North Yorkshire and York; this includes all workplaces and premises to which the public have access. It also includes other premises to which the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies. We provide information, guidance, and advice to businesses and other employers to prevent fires happening in the first instance and to reduce the impact should they occur. Beyond this we also have a statutory duty to enforce compliance with fire safety law.
Staff across the service are involved in protection activity. We have provided training for operational crews to a level 3 in fire safety auditing and use these staff to support the lower risk audits throughout the county.
Our regulatory activity has increased by over 2% compared to the previous year. Our newly implemented Risk Based Intervention Programme will ensure that activity is directed at our highest risk premises.
Our statutory and non-statutory consultations have increased by over 18%. Our response to Building consultations and Licensing consultations, within the allocated timeframe is 100% and 99% respectively.
We have seen a dramatic increase in guidance and advice, with an increase of over 800% on the previous year. This is primarily down to legislative changes impacting tourism across our service area.
Our engagement with businesses following unwanted fire signals has increased by 84% in line with changes we have made to policy.
We have maintained and refreshed our three Primary Authority Schemes, ensuring consistent fire safety advice and guidance for businesses we serve both locally and nationally. This reduces duplication of effort for both businesses and fire services, as one agreed approach can be applied nationally, saving time and resources.
We have introduced a specialist out of hours provision to enforce fire safety legislation at any time of the day.
Resilience
Whilst the Fire and Rescue Authority is primarily a locally based service, mutual aid arrangements are in place with other fire and rescue services to provide resilience for large scale or complex incidents where additional resources need to be called upon. The Fire and Rescue Authority contributes to national resilience and can make several of its assets available to support a national emergency.
We provide support to national resilience through the maintenance and delivery of these assets. We provide:
- Two High Volume Pumps (Harrogate and Richmond)
- Incident Support Unit (Acomb)
- Water and Flood rescue boat (Selby)
- Waste fire tactical advisors
- National Inter Agency Liaison Officers
- High Volume Pump tactical advisor
- Airwave Radio tactical advisor
- National Flood advisors.
- CBRNe tactical advisors
- CBRNe tactical commanders
- Wildfire Tactical Advisor
We maintain these national assets and undertake specialist training to ensure that they are available for a coordinated national response when requested. We also use them within our own county when we need to.
Response
While our primary goal is to prevent emergencies from occurring in the first place, we respond effectively to a broad range of emergencies including fires, road traffic collisions and other emergencies.
When we are called to an incident, our response needs to be the right one. This means having the right arrangements to:
- Receive and deal with emergency calls speedily and accurately whilst supporting those at risk
- Send the appropriate number and type of fire engine
- Get to incidents as quickly and safely as possible
- Work quickly and safely to resolve the incident
Since it is impractical to have fire engines and stations in every location, we strategically position them across our Service area. In our most populated areas, our fire stations are staffed with shift firefighters who provide an immediate response 24/7. In our smaller towns, fire stations are day-crewed with firefighters who provide an immediate response during the day and an on-call response at night. Two-thirds of our fire stations, where we experience fewer emergencies, are On-call stations where firefighters respond via a pager from their home or work.
Since our last Assurance Statement, we consulted the public on a new response time standard.
- The average attendance time of the first fire engine to all incidents will be within 13 minutes.
- The average attendance time of the first fire engine to dwelling fires will be within 11 minutes.
Published Home Office data shows that North Yorkshire had the biggest reduction in response time for all the English Fire and Rescue Services. This was supported by our work with Operational Research in Health (ORH) to undertake our Community Risk Modelling to ensure that our Service aligns to the risk within our whole service area and to validate the findings of our previous Community Risk Profile. We have also invested in a Dynamic Cover Tool (DCT), which allows us to use live time analysis to position fire engines in the best locations for risk and response times, which has led to improved standards. This is part of the Service’s digital transformation.
This has had a positive impact upon efficiency as it has reduced the reliance on the movement of staff to cover stations where risk and demand is low.
Productivity and Efficiency
The National Framework sets a requirement that Fire and Rescue Authorities (FRAs) produce and publish annual efficiency plans. There is a specific ask from the Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire that in 2023/24, FRAs produce plans that not only cover planned efficiencies, but also their plans for increasing productivity.
In addition to this, and as part of the 2021/22 Spending Review, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) and the Local Government Association (LGA) proposed that across Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) in England, could create 2% of non-pay efficiencies and increase productivity by 3% by 2024/25.
Therefore, the Productivity and Efficiency Plan helps the NFCC, LGA and Home Office to collate evidence and to assess likely progress at national level against the agreed Spending Review Goals
Collaboration
Collaborative Support Services
Our collaborative support services bring together the support functions from police and fire, pooling resources to deliver support services, including people services, ICT, estates and finance to North Yorkshire Police and North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service. Our support staff budget is only 7% of the revenue budget, which represents a lean structure and efficient service delivery.
Shared Buildings
We have numerous shared buildings with North Yorkshire Police including our joint Headquarters at Alverton Court, Northallerton and our Transport and Logistics Hub in Thirsk. We also have four Fire stations which are co-located including, Ripon, Bedale, Boroughbridge and Leyburn. Other locations such as Bentham, Kirkbymoorside and Masham are also used as touch down points for North Yorkshire Police staff. This represents an increasing momentum and strategic intent for colocation and collaboration between the Service and the Force.
For NYFRS, the cost recovery for use of our estate, equates to us having access to our Headquarters at Northallerton free of charge. This is a significant efficiency, unique in the sector.
Ripon Fire Station
Our station at Ripon has been shared with North Yorkshire Police for some time. March 2025 marked the successful completion of the refurbishment of the offices, gym and shared facilities at the station.
The refurbishment of Ripon station was a joint investment totalling £926,000, by NYFRS (55%) and North Yorkshire Police (45%), to update and improve the standards of the building for those who work in it and support the services provided to the public from the station. The savings made through joint investment is almost 1% of our total budget. Following stock condition surveys undertaken at all our sites, the predictive future lifespan of the building has extended by 25 years.
The building has been upgraded to support sustainable energy requirements, including increased insulation and LED sensor-controlled lighting and the infrastructure for future Air Source Heat Pump upgrade.
Public Safety Service (PSS)
In February 2024 the Commissioner published a Decision Notice, marking the decision to support moving our Public Safety Service pilot project to business as usual for NYFRS and NYP. The PSS has provided four ‘omni-competent’ practitioners, to deliver primary prevention in rural areas / areas furthest from emergency services. They work on behalf of Fire, Police and ambulance and provide highly localised, place-based prevention activity to resolve underlying causes of crime, fire and health and social issues that lead to acute need. The social value analysis identified a return-on-investment ratio of 1:7.8 which means for every £1 invested in the costs of the service, there would be a return of £7.80 in social value benefits.
Drax Power Station
We support the National Critical Infrastructure through partnership with Drax Power Station. Drax Power LTD, is the UKs largest source renewable generation plant and the third largest energy generator in the UK. We provide a seconded Station Manager to undertake the role of Fire safety Co-ordinator who supports Emergency Team scenario training and Emergency Response planning. This post is fully funded by Drax and offers significant experience to our developing leaders and a funded post for additional resilience on to our Officer operational duty system.
Framework for Change
This is a co-developed, subsidised collaboration with Huddersfield University to deliver cultural improvement. The University have been working with our staff for over a year to develop a behavioural and leadership charter and a toolkit to help us deliver change.
Leadership Programs
Our First Line Leaders Program and the Mid-Level Leaders program have been developed to incorporate the NFCC and College of Policing methodologies. This course is delivered collaboratively to Police, Fire and Support staff and offers distinct advantages, as relationships are built with blue light partners throughout an individual’s leadership journey. High profile incidents have indicated that the principles of JESIP are appropriate, but failings occur when they are not implemented and/or relationships at command levels are not developed. The overall costs are shared as the joint sessions enable multiple opportunities for staff to access the training, including our On-call staff and shared costs across the trainers.
New Breathing Apparatus and Equipment
We have collaboratively procured with Humberside Fire and Rescue Service, a 10-year contract to replace our Breathing Apparatus (BA) and associated equipment. The BA sets and equipment incorporate the most technologically advanced safety features available on the market.
Control Partnership Agreement with Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service
Our Control Partnership Agreement between Cornwall and North Yorkshire enables each service to take each other’s calls during spate circumstances and to provide resilience should there be software mobilisation issues.
Local Collaboration
The service collaborates closely with local partners through several forums, especially the Local Resilience Forum, the York and North Yorkshire Road Safety Partnership, the North Yorkshire Community Safety Partnership and the Safer York partnership, and district community safety hubs.
Organisational Assurance
We have increased our scrutiny; we monitor and measure performance across our organisation through our monthly Service Delivery Performance meeting.
Our performance dashboards allow us to track performance at a station and district level. This monitoring of performance has seen significant improvements in performance across numerous areas of business. It allows us to focus our attention to those areas which require further intervention.
We have introduced a new Performance Audit Process designed to assure operational effectiveness, share good practice, and ensure alignment to the Fire and Rescue Service Plan. The new audit follows five areas of assessment. These areas are:
- Prevention
- Protection
- Response
- Efficiency
- People
The formal performance audit is scored. These audits are carried out by a local Station Manager, a peer or non-district-based Station Manager or Operational Assurance Manager. Specialist staff from Prevention or Protection may also perform audits on their area of expertise to support the Performance Audit Schedule.
The Performance audit is aligned to the three HMICFRS pillars of Efficiency, People and Effectiveness. Effectiveness is assessed under three separate strands of Prevention, Protection and Response. The scoring for each is aligned to the system used by HMICFRS:
1 -Inadequate, 2 – Requires Improvement, 3 Adequate, 4 – Good, 5 – Outstanding.
The scoring system will enable trend analysis across the five key assessment areas for the entire service. This system will also give each watch and station an overall performance score. The data collected will be used by relevant managers to monitor, and where necessary drive improvements in performance.
Incident and training exercise monitoring is another essential aspect of assuring the efficiency, effectiveness, and safety of emergency response operations. Direct observation of response activities will assist organisational learning by identifying areas for improvement and good practices for sharing.
Monitoring of incidents and training exercises focus on five areas:
- Health and Safety
- Incident Command
- JESIP (if used at the incident or training exercise)
- Welfare
- Equipment
These areas of focus will be periodically reviewed to ensure they remain in line with service delivery expectations.
The Assurance Function produce a mid-calendar year and annual report of results and feedback from all incident and training exercise monitoring. The purpose of these reports is to provide additional assurance of emergency response performance and identify any trends that may affect the achievement of the strategic areas of focus. These reports are submitted to the Organisational Effectiveness Board (OEB) meetings for evaluation and actioning as appropriate.
Performance Indicators
We scrutinise our performance at the quarterly Service Delivery Performance meeting. This is chaired by a member of the Strategic leadership team and considers performance across all operational areas, including
- Response Standards
- Incident Data
- Prevention
- Protection
- Training compliance
- Risk Information
- Appliance availability
- Personal Development Performance Record Completion
- Sickness absence
This information is also discussed publicly at each Online Public Meeting (OPM) chaired by the Deputy Mayor. The performance data is published on the York and North Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority website a week in advance and questions are welcomed form the public surrounding our performance.
We are currently developing our Key Performance Indicators for 2025/26 and NYFRS is committed to meeting and surpassing the 2% of non-pay efficiencies and the increased productivity of 3%.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS)
We were rightly disappointed following the publication of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) report in January 2023. The inspection was conducted at a time of significant transition for our Service, as we adjusted to organisational renewal post Covid, a changing Strategic Leadership Team and Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner along with the continued impact of establishing our collaborative support services function with North Yorkshire Police.
Since that inspection we have been committed to delivering the improvements required. We have dedicated time, people and resources to do so. We are committed to drive forward change and improve our Service for our communities and we are hopeful that the work undertaken by all our staff will be recognised within our next HMICFRS report.
This report is expected to be published at some point in June or July.
The Independent Audit Committee
The Committee proactively supports the Deputy mayor and Chief Fire Officer in ensuring the right governance and control mechanisms are in place to support a well-run fire and rescue service. The Committee reviews and scrutinises the adequacy and effectiveness of risk management, internal audit and control, and corporate governance arrangements of the Fire and Rescue Service, as well as reviewing financial management and reporting.
The Service appointed a new internal audit provider in 2022/23 to offer a new robust approach and targeted plan of internal audit on known risk areas which were agreed with Strategic Officers and the Committee. The audit provider noted that the Deputy Chief Fire Officer has established a Risk and Assurance Board with the intention to triangulate all sources of assurance more effectively.