This week is Business Fire Safety Week and we’re taking the opportunity to hear from the Protection team at Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service (WFRS) and businesses who have benefited from the ...
This week is Business Fire Safety Week and we’re taking the opportunity to hear from the Protection team at Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service (WFRS) and businesses who have benefited from the important work they carry out in our communities.
Today we’re speaking to Matt Pardoe, who has been working on the Protection team since January 2022.
Matt talks about how he took up his current position:
“I moved from Response to Fire Protection in January 2022, so it's been around 20 months in role. I started as a watch manager team leader in the Fire Protection team but since April of this year I've been working as a Station Manager on a project that sits alongside the fire protection team called ‘Integrated Protection’.”
Matt provides some more background into what the ‘Integrated Protection’ project entails:
“The Integrated Protection project will provide training and skills to Response Crew and Watch Managers as well as staff from the prevention team in auditing simple premises within Warwickshire.
“The training will provide all staff who undertake it with nationally recognised qualification measure against the "Skill for Justice" criterial for the level 3 certificate in fire safety.
Warwickshire Fire & Rescue Authority are the enforcing body for compliance of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 which all commercial premises must adhere to, and auditing a premises is how we measure a business.”
When asked what Response Crews (RC) and Watch Managers (WM) will be able to do that they couldn’t previously, Matt explains:
“All operational Response staff visit premises within their areas as part of the Fire Services Act 2004, gather operational risk information and familiarise themselves on the building's layout and process.
“As part of the visit they will offer fire safety advice through a ‘Business Fire Safety Check’, the successful completion of the Level 3 fire safety course and the additional training will now give them an enhanced knowledge of fire safety issues, why building are built in the way they are and what types of buildings carry the most risk to the communities we serve.”
Matt goes on to explain why this will be a big benefit to the protection work that WFRS carries out:
“Response staff will be able to review and comment upon the businesses attitude towards fire safety, this will include reviewing the fire risk assessment for the building.
“CM & WM will now be able to send legal letters to Responsible Persons for the building, possibly recommending changes to the building or process.
“The Integrated Protection project - once up and running - will increase WFRS auditing of simple premises by hundreds of properties each year, that's hundreds of businesses with increased fire safety knowledge, hundreds of people engaged with, that otherwise would not have any interaction with the Fire Service.”
Matt goes into more detail about the typical interactions the Protection team has with local businesses in Warwickshire:
“The vast majority of business and commercial premises are fully engaged with the Fire Protection role, and are welcomed as an inspection officer, often seeing very interesting buildings or areas. On the flip side you also spend a lot of time in commercial properties looking at travel distances and sprinklers within a building.
“For the whole time I've worked in Response members of the public were happy to see a firefighter because in some way the crew will try and make people’s day better. This is not always the case now working in Fire Protection; business owners sometimes have to be told that they are not taking fire safety measures seriously enough and need to make changes that potentially will financially impact the business.”
A video has been produced to show the typical work the WFRS Protection team carries out in supporting and protecting local businesses, as Matt explains:
“The video was commissioned to provide a visual example of the type of work the officers do. It’s at a care home in Coleshill and they were nice enough to let us film there.”
You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFAXscvGJu4
Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Fire Andy Crump said: “This is a brilliant piece of work that Matt has done, increasing our capacity of business visiting and giving us more opportunity to reach out into our communities.
“It’s vital that we visit local businesses and carry out our work to help make them as safe as they can be from fire. It shows how WFRS not only keeps communities safe but supports the local economy too, helping businesses stay open and keep the County going.”
To find out more information about Fire Safety for Businesses visit: https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/fire-safety-businesses-1
For more information on Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service and the work it carries out across the County, please visit: https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/fireandrescue.