Shropshire's fire service praised for inspection improvements

Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service has been praised by the watchdog for improving its performance.

The report, by Her Majesty's Inspectorate, said it had become better at protecting the public since its last inspection.

Response times were faster than expected, but the organisation has work to do to cut the number of false alarms crews have been called to, it said.

The county's chief fire officer said he was "extremely pleased" at the verdict.

Wendy Williams, of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, said it was "pleasing to see that the service has made progress" since 2018.

Her report said strong levels of performance had been further improved, including the fire service's use of social media for campaigns and cutting arson attacks.

The number of deliberate fires in Shropshire has fallen for about a decade with a lowest level of 315 in 2020-21, it added.

Shropshire Fire and Rescue's average response time to serious incidents of 10 minutes and nine seconds was faster than expected for rural fire services, inspectors said.

But the organisation has been told it needs to do better at learning lessons from those incidents it is called to.

The report also said it had only made "limited progress" in reducing the number of false alarms firefighters were called to, with 1,145 cases in 2020-21 - nearly a third of all call-outs.

Rod Hammerton, Shropshire's chief fire officer, said he was proud of his team.

"We've worked tirelessly to improve and have put particular effort into maintaining the best level of service we could in the wake of the pandemic," he said.

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