TheLondonfire brigade (LFB) is one of the worst in the country, according to inspectors who found that two and a half years after the Grenfell Tower disaster, incident commanders remain inadequately trained, the service is wasting resources and it is failing to learn from its mistakes.
In a scathing report, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services said the UK’s biggest fire brigade was “inadequate at getting the right people with the right skills” and had been sending commanders to fight blazes who had not been trained for five years, while some engine drivers had not been trained for years.
The findings were “very concerning”, said a spokesperson for the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who this month was involved inforcing out Dany Cotton, the commissioner of the LFB who oversaw firefighting at Grenfell and the aftermath. “It is clear significant changes are needed,” Khan’s spokesperson said.
In similar inspections, 36 of England’s fire and rescue services performed better than the LFB. Other poorly performing services were Gloucestershire, Northumberland and West Sussex. The best included West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Lancashire and Staffordshire.
The inspectorate said it could not understand why the LFB was the only brigade in the country not to follow national operational guidance. It was “disappointed” in the slowness with which the LFB was responding to shortcomings, and it said there was a “worrying” culture that discouraged incident commanders from using their discretion in firefighting operations – something that happened only six times in two years across around (**************************************, (incidents.)
Detailed inspections were carried out between May and July, two years after the Grenfell fire claimed lives.
Matt Parr, HM Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services, said: “There are too many areas where the London Fire Brigade needs to make improvements. It should improve the way it protects the public both through fire regulation and how it responds to fires and other emergencies.
“It is well resourced and exceeds its own standards on response times. But its operational policies don’t reflect national operational guidance, even for risk-critical areas such as incident command. And its incident commanders and emergency drivers are not as well trained by the brigade as they should be. This is something that needs to be urgently addressed. ”
Last week KhanannouncedAndy Roe would replace Cotton as LFB commissioner.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the public inquiry into Grenfell, found that on the night of the fire the LFB’s slowness in changing the advice to residents from stay put to evacuate cost lives, and he said the LFB’s readiness was “gravely inadequate”.
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