East Sussex fire service in the finals for two national awards

The fire service for East Sussex is in the finals of two categories at the national public sector awards.
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East Sussex Fire & Rescue (ESFRS) was named within the finalists of two categories at the iESE Public Sector Transformation Awards. Winners will be announced in September at an awards ceremony.

The awards are an opportunity to celebrate and share the most innovative practice in transforming local public services and focus on recognising organisations which have successfully developed new ways of working and transforming service delivery.

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ESFRS’s GP Practices project is a finalist for the data insight category.

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The service said the aim with this project is to save lives by reaching the most vulnerable people by visiting homes, offering advice and fitting smoke alarms.

This was done by collaborating with a number of GP practices and resulted in fewer admissions to A&E and less people visiting their GP.

The service is also a finalist in the fire and rescue service of the year category on the basis of the performance of the GP Practices and Behavioural Insights projects.

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The Behavioural Insights project was all about reaching out to young people who are far less likely to be injured in fires.

A spokesperson for the service said, “We wanted to help ensure that everyone in the area has great nights out – and in – but safely.”

The service did this by creating Brighton Tribe - a service that offered people living in Brighton incentives to have fun while receiving safety-related messages from the service.

According to the service, this project brought an increase in both awareness of fire safety and public engagement with the service.

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Chief fire officer Dawn Whittaker said, “Whilst getting awards for our work is not the major motivator, it is great that the hard work of the teams that have been directly involved in these projects is recognised, it’s also a good way of sharing learning.

“The most important thing is the real impact these two projects have had on community safety and with 134 fewer admissions to hospital and the lowest ever figure for accidental dwelling fires in 2019, it’s clear these two projects made a real difference.

“We won’t know till September who the winners are, but in one way it doesn’t matter. We should just all feel justifiable proud that the judging panel chose ESFRS as one of only three finalists in two categories because of the work done to make our communities safer.”