East Sussex, West Sussex, Kent and Surrey Fire and Rescue Services have signed an agreement to provide a standard and consistent level of fire investigation across the four fire and rescue services.
The Memorandum of Understanding has been designed to provide additional resilience as well as consistency in their approach to fire investigation and the training of all fire investigation officers. It will allow much closer collaboration on areas such as joint training, policies, quality assurance and sharing of officers and equipment.
The fire and rescue services have said new agreement also includes sharing fire data, giving us a larger pool of information and allowing for accidental fire trends to be identified earlier.
Mark Matthews, Assistant Chief Fire Officer for East Sussex Fire and Rescue said:
I am absolutely delighted that the Fire Investigation Memorandum of Understanding has now gone live across all four fire services. Fire Investigation remains a crucial part of our work that not only determines the cause of the fires themselves but also helps influence future prevention activity and operational learning from incidents. Years of preparation has culminated in the memorandum being signed and this is a huge milestone for everyone involved. I look forward to working collaboratively with our colleagues over the border and developing our fire investigation work going forward.
Mark Matthews, Assistant Chief Fire Officer
