FireNet Community
FIRE SERVICE AND GENERAL FIRE SAFETY TOPICS => Operational => Topic started by: steve walker on December 11, 2007, 08:43:45 PM
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Does anyone have any views or information about ways to reduce the number of calls to "person shut in lift?
Ideally the lift shouldn't break down in the first place. If it does there should be arrangements to release the occupants other than call the fire brigade. In London about sixteen thousand of these calls are made to the Brigade each year. About three quarters of the calls are from residential flats and the remainder mostly business/ commercial.
FRS have the option of charging the lift owner / responsible person for their time and resources.
FRS do not have a duty (FRS Act 2004) to release people shut in lifts however most choose to do so.
I think that it is one of those sticky areas; are we subsidising the lift owners and undercutting the commercial lift engineers who will provide this service? Or are we giving a service to the community and preventing distress and injury? Or ...
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Here's a controversial suggestion: surely it would pay to employ a lift engineer or two to specifically deal with those calls!
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If brigades have the power / ability to charge the owner of the lift then why dont they just do this?
Or you could give options on the emergency intercom
For rapid rescue by the fire brigade at a fee of £250 press 1
For a 2 hour wait followed by a free rescue by the lift engineer press 2
To contact the owner of the lift on his luxury yacht press 3 (premium rate)........
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In today's Fire Service I can't see the problem, £250 X 16,000 calls per annum = lots of cash!!! Even if you had some designated engineers at a lesser charge it would pay for itself.
Although it was before my time I did serve with people who manned a chimney van, two firefighters in a van with chimney kit who responded to chimney fires.
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Although it was before my time I did serve with people who manned a chimney van, two firefighters in a van with chimney kit who responded to chimney fires.
Mike, it still happens with small fires but there called Targeted Response Vehicles. Modernisation.
Seriously though, but the charges up - this may act as a deterrent.
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a friend of mine is a lift engineer & he forever cusses about the fire service releasing people from lifts, complaining that we break them even more. It would of course be preferable all round if the lift company were called to do the release
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Depends on how quickly the engineers may respond. 2hrs is typical in the shires. Is it ok to have somone stuck in a lift for all that time? What if theres a fire during that time?
How would we feel if persons were locked in a room in the building and unable to escape? This is worse- they are also in a natural flue.
I think the fire brigade should attend and make a hefty charge on the owner of the building.
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I dont disagree with you Kurnal, fine if we do it lets bill the owners & use some of the money on proper equipment & training to do lift rescue correctly. Now theres an ideal lets do some proper training!
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Depends on how quickly the engineers may respond. 2hrs is typical in the shires. Is it ok to have somone stuck in a lift for all that time? What if theres a fire during that time?
How would we feel if persons were locked in a room in the building and unable to escape? This is worse- they are also in a natural flue.
I think the fire brigade should attend and make a hefty charge on the owner of the building.
Kurnal
Thats a really interesting angle that I will explore. As far as the level of charging goes; FRS can only charge a reasonable fee to cover their expences:
F&RS Act 2004
"In setting the amount of a charge, the authority must secure that, taking one financial year with another, the authority’s income from charges does not exceed the cost to the authority of taking the action for which the charges are imposed. "
Thanks to everyone who has contributed.
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Here's a controversial suggestion: surely it would pay to employ a lift engineer or two to specifically deal with those calls!
Should FRS compete directly with private companies who will provide this service? I know that we can probably think of examples where they do this already - providing commercial training etc.
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Well, when calculating those costs, why not consider the cost of the purchase of the £250,000 fire engine, the wages of the firefighters and control staff, the purchase of all the equipment, the investment in training.....
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Well, when calculating those costs, why not consider the cost of the purchase of the £250,000 fire engine, the wages of the firefighters and control staff, the purchase of all the equipment, the investment in training.....
I agree this should be considered.
Even if we didn't go to any of these routine non-emergency incidents we should have trained firefighters available to respond to a real emergency involing lifts.
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Perhaps one needs to consider how much of the brigades, as a percentage, is spent on this matter (16,000 a year sounds like a significant percentage) and allocate cost on that basis. So if 10% of a brigages time is spent training and responding to such incidents, 10% of the cost of all buildings, vehicles, kit and wages should be attributable to that. £250 per shout might be a little underselling!
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Why does everything have to be laid before the alter of the Almighty Dollar, you are firefighters not accountants.
How much would you actually save if you did not respond, wear and tear on the appliance and the diesel, all other costs would have to be paid. Remember on most occasions these people are in distress and at the very least it is a training exercise for the day when you find somebody wrapped around the machinery. Also there is always a chance for a cupper
What’s happened to the firefighter’s code?
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It all depends what you are trying to achieve by the charging regime.
IMO it should not be looked at as a means of raising more revenue or even necessarily covering costs. The fire service is a publicly funded organisation and we all pay enough in taxes and business rates without additional charges.
But if there are 16000 calls per year it indicates that owners of buildings are not carrying out their responsibilities to maintain their lifts as diligently as they should and perhaps a realistic but nominal fee -say £250- would focus their mind a little. I bet if you looked at the calls there would be a pattern of repeat calls to the same premises.
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Repeat offenders who do nothing,and inconveneience to those trapped.Brigades are looking at ways to reduce calls,to free up time for other activities, and reduce cost.If a retained appliance* turns out then it does cost additional funds in wages and fuel,let alone the 'infrastructure' costs.
*Of couse not much of a consideration in the citys,but relevant in a lot of shire counties.
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If a retained appliance turns out then it does cost additional funds in wages and fuel, let alone the 'infrastructure' costs.
In the areas covered by retained what’s the likelihood of them responding to a lift job?
I agree with Kurnal but is charging going to be the answer, the owners will most probably not call out the FRS and will request a service engineer while those inside the lift who will be waiting maybe two or three hours.
Identify the habitually offenders go out there and kick arse. Sorry I think I may have been watching too many American movies. :|
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We get our share of persons stuck in lifts in our wee retained unit.
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I was only considering my own personal experiences, I spent six years on a station that had been day manning with a retained pump and I cannot recall ever attending any lift jobs. Conversely I spent six years plus on city centre stations and been to many mostly in high rise flats.
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If a retained appliance turns out then it does cost additional funds in wages and fuel, let alone the 'infrastructure' costs.
In the areas covered by retained what’s the likelihood of them responding to a lift job?
I agree with Kurnal but is charging going to be the answer, the owners will most probably not call out the FRS and will request a service engineer while those inside the lift who will be waiting maybe two or three hours.
Identify the habitually offenders go out there and kick arse. Sorry I think I may have been watching too many American movies. :|
The occupants of the lift sometimes call the FRS direct on their mobiles; I dont know the stats on this but wouldn't be surprised if this was common.
Most premises (about 58%) will only make one call in 12 months; this is about 25% of all calls but about 5% of premises make 25% of all calls. This 5% range from about 8 to 30 calls a year. Only about 10% of the high-call premises re-appear year on year over a four year period. It appears that most sort it out after a year or so; there is quite a lot of pressure to do so inspite of the high cost involved.
Most shut in lifts occur in high density inner city areas - not usually covered by retained.
Any inaccuracy with the stats is down to me.
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If a retained appliance turns out then it does cost additional funds in wages and fuel, let alone the 'infrastructure' costs.
In the areas covered by retained what’s the likelihood of them responding to a lift job?
I agree with Kurnal but is charging going to be the answer, the owners will most probably not call out the FRS and will request a service engineer while those inside the lift who will be waiting maybe two or three hours.
Identify the habitually offenders go out there and kick arse. Sorry I think I may have been watching too many American movies. :|
The occupants of the lift sometimes call the FRS direct on their mobiles; I dont know the stats on this but wouldn't be surprised if this was common.
Most premises (about 58%) will only make one call in 12 months; this is about 25% of all calls but about 5% of premises make 25% of all calls. This 5% range from about 8 to 30 calls a year. Only about 10% of the high-call premises re-appear year on year over a four year period. It appears that most sort it out after a year or so; there is quite a lot of pressure to do so inspite of the high cost involved.
Most shut in lifts occur in high density inner city areas - not usually covered by retained.
Any inaccuracy with the stats is down to me.
yes,just making the point that there is an additional cost when retained called out.Majority of lift rescues are carried out by WT,but a significant amount will be carried out in a shire county like mine where there are many towns covered by RDS.
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we in herefordshire get a few calls to stuck lifts ,and we are retained
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Ok, I see your point -a clear additional cost. Is one call to a non-emergency shut in lift acceptable or should the FRS charge? Some stations will only get a few a year; some will get over 500.
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Another point you need to consider if charging for Special Services, how you recover the money. In my former brigade if we intended to charge for the service we had to get a signature on the form before we started. In this situation who will sign the form and if you intend to send it directly to the owner, s/he will most probably say send the bill to the person who asked for the service we would have turned out the service engineer.
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We charge the building owners at Special Service Call rates where people are stuck in the lift car (no injuries or distressed people - yes i know we'd all be distressed, but the IC has the power to recommend no charge based upon any mitigating factors). Any distressed occupants, medical emergencies or people stuck in machinery are emergency responses and won't get charged
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Another point you need to consider if charging for Special Services, how you recover the money. In my former brigade if we intended to charge for the service we had to get a signature on the form before we started. In this situation who will sign the form and if you intend to send it directly to the owner, s/he will most probably say send the bill to the person who asked for the service we would have turned out the service engineer.
Yes, getting the cash is an issue. I think that we would send the bill to the owner / manager rather than get anyone to sign. If they dont pay up then I suppose we could if necessary (and reasonable) go through the courts.
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We charge the building owners at Special Service Call rates where people are stuck in the lift car (no injuries or distressed people - yes i know we'd all be distressed, but the IC has the power to recommend no charge based upon any mitigating factors). Any distressed occupants, medical emergencies or people stuck in machinery are emergency responses and won't get charged
That sounds like a good system - what Brigade is that? Does it appear to work ok?
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The policy was introduced in last year's IRMP plan in Shropshire. Unfortunately, i don't have any figures, but your welcome to contact the IRMP team.
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Finding out how effective this scheme is would be very interesting, could you Dragonmaster or anyone from Salop find out and enlighten us all.
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Since Jan 07, we have attended 22 such calls, with 17 being charged - all against the premises
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Have all the owners coughed up? Fifteen years ago we were advised this was the area were there would be problems. Maybe the new act has made a difference.
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My information is yes
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The policy was introduced in last year's IRMP plan in Shropshire. Unfortunately, i don't have any figures, but your welcome to contact the IRMP team.
Thanks Dragonmaster