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:
Part 1
I would like the service to provide me with details of the Retained/On-Call fire appliances that have been off the run over the most recent 12 month period.
I would like these details to be broken down into the number of hours per month that an appliance has been unavailable on a station by station basis and also expressed as a percentage figure of the time that the appliances have been off the run. In addition, if possible, to include whether an appliance's lack of availability has been due to a lack of crew or a lack of skills (BA, OiC etc).
Part 2
Whether the service mobilises a crew of three to emergency incidents and if so, whether the types of incidents responded to with three firefighters is limited.
Part 3
The number of Wholetime operational staff who also have a Retained/On-Call contract.
Part 4
The number of Retained/On-Call personnel expressed as both a headcount and FTE.
Final Response:
1. In response to Part 1, for the amount of data requested, attached in the excel spreadsheet is the closest way we report On-Call Off the Run stats. Information is provided per appliance and duration is recorded in minutes rather than hours.
We don?t express the data as a percentage figure of the time that appliances have been off the run. In the Performance Management System we give the percentage of time available instead (on the run).
The date range provided is 01/11/2017 ? 31/10/2018. However the following appliances were not in service during the entire time-frame:
12P2 (Clacton)
18P2 (Frinton)
2. We only mobilise crews with a minimum of 4 to emergency incidents. The only time a crew of less than 4 would be mobilised would be if we was sending a specialist appliance (such as an Alp) which can only carry 2 crew members, however this would not be mobilised to the incident on its own, this would be in support of a fully attending appliance also.
3. As at 31 October 2018: 64
4. As at 31 October 2018: headcount 487, FTE 386.75
In both cases, numbers exclude those employees who are currently on a career break.
Thank you for your interest in Essex County Fire & Rescue Service