Kent Fire and Rescue Service
Annual Governance Statement 2018/19

The Performance Management Framework is well established and includes opportunities for public and staff consultation and feedback on our proposals, plans and performance, which are always taken into account as part of our decision-making. We publish our plans and performance targets on our web site and regularly provide updates of progress against these targets. There have been no major identifiable failures and a number of Service Orders were reviewed against the cyclical programme to ensure they remain either in date or reflect changes to policy and practice.

In April 2018, our Customer and Corporate Plan 2018-2022 was approved by KMFRA. The document has been named the Customer and Corporate Plan in line with our stated focus on the customer. The plan itself is structured in a customer-facing way around safety at home, safety on the roads, community resilience, business safety and operations and underpinning the plan is a set of eight strategies. At the meeting of the Authority held on 18 December 2018, Members were advised that the Authority’s eight strategies had been reviewed and remained fit for purpose. In April 2019, members approved the refreshed Customer and Corporate Plan, and the targets contained within this.

We publish on our website all data required by government, together with additional information for which we receive regular requests or which aids assessment of our performance. This includes the Local Government Transparency Code 2015, the Trade Union (Facility Time Publication Requirements) Regulations 2017 and the Freedom of Information Code of Practice 2018. We have put in place arrangements to enable you to contact us about our services and performance and measures to ensure these are responded to promptly. We regularly review and report on complaints and other feedback received. Although we only receive a small number of  complaints (14 founded complaints in 2018/19, of which the majority are driving-related) we take each one seriously and will always investigate them. In contrast we receive a large amount of positive feedback: for 2018/19 we received 112 compliments.