CASE STUDY
S
outh Yorkshire Fire & Rescue (SYFR)
operates across the UK in Barnsley,
Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield,
serving a population of 3 million. The service
relies on a brave and experienced team to
both respond rapidly to incidents as they
occur and proactively prevent injury and death
by making fire risk assessments of people’s
homes, businesses and public buildings. Crews get frustrated when their home visits
are not targeted as effectively as they could
be. This means their time and resources
could be put to much better use if they had
better information. The data they seek about
vulnerable citizens is typically held by any
local council, social services and charitable
organisations, but getting them to share it
has been a major challenge.
As part of the Safe and Well partnership
scheme, SYFR has a major focus on targeting
and protecting vulnerable citizens, known
to be the most at-risk members of society
in the event of a fire. Every afternoon, fire
crews make home visits to complete fire risk
assessments and fit new fire alarms. By taking
this action, it is hoped that in the event of a
fire a vulnerable citizen will have more time
to call for help and exit a building safely, thus
preventing serious injury or worse. Challenges in South Yorkshire
Vulnerable citizens include the elderly, those
with a physical disability, people suffering
from mental health or dementia who live
alone and many other vulnerable types
that may struggle in the event of a fire. Fire Steven Locking, IT Manager for SYFR, said:
“We are doing our best to help the most
vulnerable people in society, but our work
would be much more effective with a little
help from local partners. It can take several
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INTELLIGENTCIO
As the Information Commissioner’s
Office (ICO) does not regard the sharing
of vulnerable citizen data to be of ‘vital
interest’, the fire and rescue service is often
left on its own to try and negotiate data
sharing agreements with each organisation.
GDPR has made the situation more difficult
regarding data sharing and the willingness
of some local authorities to even consider it.
months to put a data sharing agreement in
place and in the meantime, some of our most
vulnerable members of society remain at risk.”
Barnsley MBC steps up to provide
hope for the future
SYFR has been on a crusade for years to try
and get local organisations to collaborate
and share information, ideally in an
automated way that is safe, secure and
requires little or no human intervention.
Before SYFR could realistically look at
a technical solution, it needed to find a
willing partner prepared to implement the
necessary legal framework that would allow
information to flow between them.
Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council
(MBC) was sympathetic to the cause
and was prepared to help. After a short
consultation period, legal agreements were
drawn up and signed that would allow
information to be shared from datasets held
by the council about citizens that matched
the ‘vulnerable’ criteria, as set out in the Safe
and Well partnership scheme.
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