Flooding (Water safety)

Flooding can have a devastating and long- term impact on people’s lives, businesses and infrastructure. Our Rural Plan builds upon the work we currently do be able to rescue people and reduce the impact of flooding.

Whilst the number of responses was relatively small (Graph 9) among the comments received some asked whether it was the responsibility of KFRS to respond to flooding emergencies and why the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) could respond instead.

This is a good question and from a safety perspective it is worth providing some information about this. The reason is because fire and rescue services have a statutory (i.e. legal) requirement to respond to flooding emergencies and inland water rescue (whilst the Fire and Rescue Service’s Act 2004 did not explicitly list flooding as a statutory duty, since 2007 secondary legislation has added this requirement). The RNLI on the other hand operates as a charity that works with HM Coastguard to respond to emergencies at sea and on the coast. This is why in our safety messaging for water rescue we tell people to call 999 and ask for the coastguard if the person is in the sea, or ask for the fire service if it is any other area of water.