Consultation and Engagement

Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue regularly consult with local people and organisations on a number of areas of our service.

2021/22 Budget and Council Tax and Community Risk Management Plan Consultation

Every year, we consult the public on our Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) Action Plan and Council Tax proposals.

Our Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) Annual Action Plan for 2021/22 sets out the key priorities underpinning our 6 strategic aims, which we propose to focus our efforts on delivering next year.

The CRMP Consultation and Budget proposal can be found here.
The consultation survey can be found here.

Our CRMP fulfils our obligations under the Government’s Fire and Rescue Service National Framework.

For our consultation for 2021/22, we want your views on two key areas;

Our Budget / Council Tax proposals for 2021/22
Our draft Annual Action Plan for 2021/22

The consultation closes 31 January 2021

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Customer Satisfaction

In year 2019 -21 the ability of the Fire and Rescue Service to measure customer satisfaction was severely impaired due to Covid19 and routine visits to people’s homes and business premises was suspended to safeguard both staff and the public.

We did receive a very limited number of customer satisfaction returns but for safe and well home visits only. The total received between April 2019 and the commencement of Covid 19 restrictions was 376.

This was much lower than the normal rate of return and utilised the established process which is paper questionnaire based and requires the service user to send to us using a prepaid envelope provided. This methodology is labour intensive to process and it also has a cost.

During the Coronavirus pandemic and in recognition of needing to receive feedback on our services regardless of whatever obstacles are in place, we have been working on new ways to engage with service users to obtain their views. The new methodologies will be online and telephone based and will offer a cost reduction. In 2021/22 we are launching a new online process supported by a telephone customer service function which seeks to engage with a much wider cross section of the public including ethnic and minority groups.

The summary results from the 376 satisfaction surveys returned are: