Thank you for your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I can confirm that Essex County Fire & Rescue Service does hold this information.
Please see below the answer to your request.
Initial Request:
Do you work in partnership with police in order to reduce the number of deliberate fires? For example, do you have an arson reduction strategy that involves working with the police? If so, how long have you been working in partnership with the police for reducing arson?
Final Response:
We are currently working with Police on arson prevention and the reduction of deliberate fires. We do have an arson prevention strategy which is currently in place since 2012. There is a new National Arson Prevention task and finish group (first meeting in April 2019) that ECFRS will be attending to look at a National toolkit and strategy and the attendance at this group will enable a revision of the current strategy. As part of our current working, processes have been implemented for ECFRS to report deliberate fires to the Police to improve the parity on deliberate fire numbers, whereby it may be recorded by Police under another offence type. We (ECFRS and Police) are also working on joint initiatives for the rural community ? to improve arson and crime prevention.