London Fire Brigade

Working with Which? the consumers' association, a section should be added to the London Fire Brigade's website explaining which products are dangerous and which are safest.
Specific information about brands is needed, along with for example what type of extension lead is safest and how you can tell if you've overloaded a socket.
The London Fire Brigade's website and what it offers, such as home safety checks should then be included in BBC TV and radio programmes, as it's a public service broadcaster.

The LFB should be vehemently lobbying Parliament to force building contractors and atchitects who profited from new builds and renovations to pay for the remedial works. The LFB should also lobby for funfingto allow it (and not privatised subcontractors) to provide proffesional "wake watching" to a high standard. The LFB also offer "wake watching" training and certification to allow residents to self-provide wake watching on a voluntary basis.

Community outreach is good but the LFB could be more proactive in setting it up and not relying on requests.

Finally in trems of communicating fire safety, leaflets through doors are still effective especially if they have links to your website where more info is available.

There should be an IOPC for the Fire Brigade
- Currently they are a disgrace, and not easily accountable

Telling people to stay inside Glenfell Tower for 'health and safety reasons' (to avoid someone tripping over a hose?!) to then burn to death should have lead to Fire Brigade prosecution.

- Fundamentally, Firemen chose to follow a protocol rather than save lives. They could have had compassion, and decided to break an antiquated protocol, but chose not to.
Firemen put job security and rule keeping above compassion. People died as a result.

In my place of work, a fire inspector ordered the land lord to remove pictures from the walls, and plants (non obstructive I might add) from hallways and stairwells on the ludicrous basis of them being flammable. (I am a scientist, they were not particularly flammable.)
- Yet he failed to see that Fire Exit signs illegally pointed AWAY from the nearest fire exit.

Nepotism and incompetent managers and a 'job for life' mentality have left the fire brigade's management with incompetent, low intelligence, low compassion people who from what I see are not good at their job.

And a lack of a Fire Brigade conduct body allows this to continue.

1) Create an IOPC for the Fire Brigade (IOFBC) so anyone who tells people to stay in a burning building are investigated and fired.

2) Create a proper body for building inspections, which does not allow bully tactics and ludicrous recommendations like removing plants and pictures. Of course, plants clean the air, and pictures help with mental health.
Any fire inspector requesting these be removed should be sacked.

I think the work of the LFB is hugely under-appreciated especially at Government level where cutback after cutback has meant that fire personnel are too often prevented from doing the job to the high standards they try so hard to preserve.
Therefore, the LFB senior management should be constantly lobbying parliament for fairer funding & greater recognition for this marvellous public service.

We need more fire stations in Redbridge to improve the response in the emergency.
The response time in case of fire should be under 5 minutes to save vital lives and destructions. There should be explanation what resources are needed to achieve this.

Raise your profile from anonymous first-responders to active members and friends of the community, not just a group who wait around for a bell to ring! Your PR Dept. could advertise the various personalities and interests of brigade members through social media and broader advertising campaigns. Podcasts are also a great avenue. Contact broadcasters and see if they would entertain the idea of having brigade members on quiz shows, tv cooking segments, and radio programs. Hire a BRAND MANAGER to develop a line of merchandise to help raise money and to raise your profile. Hire an ambassador to be "man-or-woman about town" at high-profile events around London. Let's face it: organisations who stand still get left behind, which affects their ability to raise money and attract government investment.

As you are making recommendations for wake watches who residents have to pay for but find most ineffective, e.g. it takes them 2 hours to notice that a flat internal alarm has gone off by which time all residents have checked on each other themselves, it should be you who should be convincing leaseholders why they are paying for this obvious nonsense. You should share effectiveness studies and proof that these teams are doing their work (not just press buttons). It should be you who should be talking to impacted, stressed out, residents who your recommendations is putting under financial stress. Personally, we are feeling a lot less safe with wake watch in the building than we have in the 5 years prior. That is also because fire doors are damaged as a result of wake watch that would likely be more necessary than any warden sleeping in the basement. Personally, we are furious that we are exposed to those recommendations that are no legal requirements but are enforced on us without any choice. And we get nothing!!!
Fire Brigade or whoever came up with this has a lot to answer for and a lot of trust to regain.

Secondly, you should respond to requests for freedom of information and not appear to be working under the same roof as development managers. Trust for them is at zero in many cases while they happily take our money for proposals that come from the Fire Brigade. The trust for fire brigade is accordingly low.

Hi
Your response the cladding scandal has been really poor. The LFB are by no means the biggest offenders in the issues currently facing innocent leaseholders, however your current guidance is causing severe mental and financial issues for 1000s of leaseholders in London.
Due to the advice you’ve given to the freeholder of my building, I’m forced to pay hundreds of pounds a month for 2 waking watch staff to sit in the car park of my building 24 hours a day, despite proof they are completely ineffective and provide no extra support or safety to the lives of the residents of the building.
Our freeholder and management company tell us that you have advised our building is only made safe by their presence which is an outright lie and proven to be entirely false.
We had a recent fire alarm in the block (fortunately a false alarm) and the fire brigade turned up and notified our waking watch that there was a fire.
Residents have also found them smoking weed on shift and seen them standing in one spot for a couple of hours at a time, which doesn’t say much for the safety they’re providing or their ability to support anyone if the worst were to happen.
This clearly indicates your staff do a great job responding to fires so congratulations and thank you for that, but the advice leading to the financial collapse of many fellow leaseholders is unforgivable and a gross simplification of a problem with a “solution” purely leading to financial gain for a few waking watch companies, with huge costs for regular leaseholder, despite no actual safety benefit.

The LFB plays an important part in our lives in London they do a great job from a professional point of view. However, from an engagement point of view in my dealings with them, they appear to be a very cold, isolated organisation. LFB need to engage with the wider community, promote their work and become more transparent. For example getting them to support a communcity day etc is really hard. Locally in Southall it is improving, but still some way to go. I think this is a culture change across the LFB that is required. Another area which needs addressing is partnership work with other services such as the Police in identifying properties of concern and or areas that joint working could help address. Again I fell this is down to long term cultural issues. The fatc that this survey is happening is a positive start.

More widespread knowledge of the home safety checks.
I'm a community occupational therapist, and I know of the home safety checks and have referred clients to them in the past, but don't have a great understanding of what it involves and who I should be referring.
While telling people directly about the service might have it's place, you might be able to reach more people by linking in with community (and possibly inpatient as well) therapy teams (or maybe even GP's, Social Services, etc.) and encouraging them to send referrals (and explaining what you do and who to refer etc.).
Linking in with community therapy teams like mine and teaching us might help us link the right clients in with your service.

I have always been in support of FBS whether in London or else where. However, where I feel the service could be improved is to stop this crazy shift pattern they work. It only goes to serve the personnel who generally use it to have a second job. This does not fit well into my mind of a standard working week and to have a set 8 hours on for each shift with some form of rolling working week would be a much more efficient way for using manpower.

Open days within communities to share best practices and routines especially for tall apartment and office buildings especially as those types of buildings seem to be on the rise! Grenfell Tower fire was caused by the cladding but a fire can happen by a number of means! When situations happen like that happen many people go into panic mode but i'm sure with a a few simple steps and things to do can help save lives.

Hope this helps, have a beautiful day all

I got in the London Fire Brigade in 2012; 200 vacancies were advertised and there were 8000 applicants. It took over a year to get through all of the intense stages an hours and hours of preparation for the interview/physical/written tests…

I end up waiting and waiting a waiting for a start date but it didn’t come; I had turned down job opportunities when I got my successful application letter. I’d get a pathetic email once every 6 months saying something along the lines of “We can’t guarantee a job, we’ll keep you posted”.

Fast forward 3 years later, I have correction surgery on my shoulder then the fire brigade let me know that they’re ready to take me on after all…

I did my medical again and get a pathetic phone call THE NIGHT BEFORE my start date to say I failed my medical due to the correction surgery. I asked if I could retake it in a future recruitment drive as I spent years of my life for that moment and they said their manager would call me the next day (I never heard from them). They also didn’t follow correct procedures of having an independent doctor assess me.

I got my MP involved and they eventually responded and said they’d be in touch (I emailed the contact they provided several times but nothing).

This whole episode made me suicidal, how it was handled was frankly disgusting.

My suggestion is you never put anyone through this ever again.

For me as a disabled person it would be helpful if the local station drew up a list of disabled households in the area and attend to:-

A - Draw up an escape plan/route with them (it isn't just people in tower blocks who may be unable to evacuate themselves).

B - Ensure they know what the needs of the disabled residents are if there is a fire.

C - Regularly contact the households to see if the needs have changed or if the residents want them to come out to reassess/update the escape route.

Outreach work to local schools, youth groups and day centers to offer advice on fire safety.

- Using other gov communications outside the LFB to encourage users to join the LFB Newsletter which is my fav way of getting info about the community (I joined just now).

- A monthly update on the top causes of fires and how they change monthly to the Newsletter. It's just an interesting fact to know that one day I might share at a pub with friends. "Hey, so apparantly batteries are getting worse these days as they're causing more fires than last year"...