Please see below the answer to your request.
Questions and final response:
Question 1 – Provide Statistics on wildfires attended over last 5 years.
Please find attached Spreadsheet with the data requested
Question 2 – Do you have a formal operational policy and procedures for dealing with wildfires (please provide a copy).
ECFRS do not have a formal operational policy and procedures for dealing with Wildfires.
Question 3 – Do you provide specific operational equipment and PPE for dealing with wildfires.
No
Question 4 - What was the capital expenditure on wildfire resources (not including personnel) between 2017-2022.
I can confirm that Essex County Fire and Rescue Service hold this information, however from our preliminary assessment, we estimate that compliance with your request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
This is currently £450. This limit is calculated 18 hours of work at a cost of £25 per hour.
The information you have requested is not available, because to calculate the average cost to the service and provide the information in scope of your request would involve approximately two hundred and three working days to calculate.
The cost per incident is not easily obtained and each incident would have to be reviewed separately, taking into consideration the number of appliances, firefighters and officers involved, along with additional equipment.
Assuming it would take around 15 minutes to review each of the 6,515 incidents and obtain the relevant costs.
This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 203 working days in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving, and extracting the data. It would take approximately 1628 hours, and at a cost of £25 per hour, a total of £40,700.
This exceeds the cost limit laid out in the Act.
This letter acts as a Refusal Notice in respect of your request.
If you would like to resubmit a reframed request which falls below the cost limit, or if you would like advice and assistance then please do not hesitate to contact us and we will provide further support
Question 5 - Does your service have a set definition of a wildfire
No
Question 6 - What specialist training is given for dealing with wildfires
None at present
Question 7 - Are there specialist teams for dealing with wildfires
No
Question 8 - What measures is your service taking to prepare for more frequent wildfires ?
A review of National Operational Guidance and Operational debrief reports to consider future requirements.
A review of current PPE and equipment. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Incident and other data is published on our transparency site. For further information please follow this link. Incident Data (essex-fire.gov.uk)