Recommendation 9

'By 1 August 2025, chief fire officers should introduce a case management system if they don’t already have one. The case management system should allow data to be produced that will help them to better understand and oversee misconduct cases in their services.'

KFRS action:

To ensure that feedback received by the Authority is dealt with fairly and properly, with a commitment to transparency and analysis of feedback received, the Authority will make a publicly available report annually. How complaints are handled is detailed in our Customer Feedback section which can be found on the 'Contact us' page of our website.

Internally, once a concern is raised, the process is as follows:

Within ten working days of a concern being raised, the person with whom you have raised the concern will write to you acknowledging that the concern has been received.

Wherever possible the acknowledgement will:

indicate how the matter is proposed to be dealt with
document whether you have requested confidentiality
give an estimate of how long it will take to provide a final response
advise whether any initial enquiries have been made
advise whether further investigation will take place, and if not, why not

We have an existing Professional Standards team who are responsible for having oversight of cases and ensuring they are conducted in a fair and transparent way and take on the point of contact role.

Any instance of a complaint against a senior manager in the Service will be investigated by a third party.

Cases are managed by the HR team, and our Professional Standards team use data intelligence tools to monitor case management. This is reviewed weekly between the team and their colleagues in the Employee Relations team. This data is also used to identify trends.

After the Thematic Review into Misconduct we improved our case recording based on feedback.