FRV paid firefighters not meeting response time targets

FRV professional career firefighters have failed to meet their response time targets again, but the union is still pushing to take over more CFA stations.

Fire Rescue Victoria crews have fallen short on meeting their response time targets for road rescues.

Fire Rescue Victoria professional career firefighters have once again failed to meet their response time targets, despite the service costing tax payers close to $1bn this financial year.

Independent Fire Services Implementation Monitor Niall Blair’s latest report into FRV shows its firefighters are not only failing to meet response time targets, their performance has declined since the service was formed from the merger of the MFB with 38 CFA stations on July 1, 2020.

The FSIM data shows the percentage of FRV:

ROAD rescue callouts meeting the 13.5 minute benchmark has fallen from 90 per cent to 84.1 per cent since mid-2020.

STRUCTURE fire callouts meeting the 7.7 minute benchmark has fallen from 91 per cent to 88.4 per cent since mid-2020.

TRAINED specialists available to maintain operational capability has fallen from 60 per cent in mid-2021 to just 29.5 per cent by December 31.

Response times have declined despite FRV exceeding its firefighter employment target of 3596 for the 2021-22 financial year, having already recruited 3658 by the end of last year.

The response time declines come amid the ongoing campaign by the United Firefighters Union to rally community support for FRV to take over even more volunteer CFA stations.

The UFU’s Ready for Anything campaign, warns regional Victorians covered by the CFA they are “NOT located in an area that is protected by FRV Professional Career Firefighters”.

The Weekly Times contacted FRV two weeks ago, but failed to gain any response to questions on why it was performing so badly.

However Mr Blair reported FRV was “undertaking various initiatives to address response time shortfalls by “continuing to educate firefighters on the importance of meeting benchmarks” and “analysing response data to identify discrepancies, for example, in specific shifts that may not be meeting response times”.

“FSIM understands this (response times) is of particular concern in the western districts where FRV data shows there is a higher incidence of calls not meeting FRV’s benchmark (of 90 per cent)”.

While Mr Blair has received a detailed copy of FRV’s response times by region, the service has not made its most recent station-by-station response data publicly available.

However FRV station analysis from the first half of last year does show FRV is struggling to get to emergency incidents within the 7.7 minute benchmark in the west, only achieving that target 49 per cent of the time at its Lara station, 58 per cent of the time at Caroline Springs and 65.7 per cent of the time at Greenvale.