Non-fire incidents: medical and collaborating incidents guidance
Updated 29 September 2022
Applies to England
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Publishing Incident Recording System data on the fire and rescue service at an incident level:
Non-fire incidents – medical and collaborating incidents dataset guidance
Produced by the Fire Statistics team
First publication: 30 January 2020
Latest update: 13 January 2022
1. Background
Data Quality
Incident records in the Incident Recording System (IRS) are the responsibility of, and quality assured by, fire and rescue services (FRSs). The Home Office and FRSs work together to improve the data within the IRS and minimise any inconsistencies or errors. However, as the IRS was not designed with record level datasets in mind, a very small number of previously unidentified inconsistencies have been discovered (see project overview for further detail).
IRS incident records are a judgement call of the lead fire officer at the time of the incident. The quality of the information provided by fire and rescue services is variable and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed, especially at a record level. For instance, some records involve estimation by those in attendance.
Dataset rationale
The Home Office has received requests from users of non-fire incident level datasets to complete the suite of this type of incident. Users can achieve this by combining the data from the “Non-fire incidents: medical and collaborating incidents”, “Non-fire incidents: other non-fire incidents” and “Non-fire incidents: road traffic collisions” incident level datasets.
The non-fire incident datasets “flooding and water rescue incidents”, “animal assistance” and “bariatric assistance” give more specific detailed information on these incidents.
The Home Office has, and will continue to, engage with stakeholders, such as statistical users and FRSs, to gauge opinion on the most useful datasets to publish.
Dataset definition
The medical and collaborating incidents dataset covers non-fire incidents attended by FRSs in England that they defined as either “Assist other agencies”, “Effecting entry/exit”, “Medical incident – co responder”, “Medical incident – first responder”, or “Suicide/attempts”.
The Home Office only has jurisdiction for fire policy in England and therefore has published incident data for England only.
The data in this dataset are consistent with records that reached the IRS by 27 September 2021.
2. Variable by variable – Scene Setting
Variable Name: FRS_TERRITORY Variable Description: The FRS in which the incident took place IRS Question: 1.6
The Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) refers to the territory in which the incident took place, not necessarily the FRS which responded. Occasionally an FRS will respond to an incident “over the border”, and because of this, users should be careful about making general comments about particular FRSs as some incidents may have been attended by other FRSs. This dataset only covers incidents that took place in England.
Due to data protection issues, and in line with other datasets, we have merged Isles of Scilly data with Cornwall, as the number of medical and collaborating incidents in Isles of Scilly is minimal (there were 13 between the financial year 2012 to 2013 and the financial year 2020 to 2021). Figures for Dorset and Wiltshire, who merged into one FRS on 1 April 2016, are presented merged.
Figures for Isle of Wight and Hampshire are presented separate as the latest date these incidents were from is 31 March 2021. Isle of Wight and Hampshire merged on 1 April 2021.
Variable Name: E_CODE_TERRITORY Variable Description: The E Code of the FRS IRS Question: 1.6 (based on)
The standard National Statistics code (E Code) of the fire and rescue service (FRS) in FRS_TERRITORY. In this case the code for Cornwall has been used for the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly combined FRS.
Variable Name: FINANCIAL_YEAR Variable Description: The financial year the incident took place IRS Question: 2.1 (based on)
A financial year runs from 1 April to 31 March. Record level information is published from the financial year 2012 to 2013; although the IRS began in April 2009, medical and collaborating incidents are not available in a consistent manner until this point. Incidents are allocated to a financial year depending on the time of the call, which is usually collected through automatic systems. For example, an incident where the call was made at 23.59 on 31 March 2013 but the incident was closed at 01.34 on 1 April 2013 would be allocated to the financial year 2012 to 2013 not the financial year 2013 to 2014.
Variable Name: CALENDAR_YEAR Variable Description: The calendar year the incident took place IRS Question: 2.1 (based on)
A calendar year runs from 1 January to 31 December. Record level information is published from the financial year 2012 to 2013; although the IRS began in April 2009, medical and collaborating incidents are not available in a consistent manner until this point. Incidents are allocated to calendar year depending on the time of the call, which is usually collected through automatic systems. For example, an incident where the call was made at 23.59 on 31 December 2012 but the incident was closed at 01.34 on 1 January 2013 would be allocated to 2012 not 2013. It should be noted that figures for 2012 will be lower because only records from 1 April 2012 are included in the dataset – this is also true of the latest financial year published.
Variable Name: MONTH_NAME Variable Description: The month the incident took place IRS Question: 2.1 (based on)
The month the incident took place. This would return “December” for 25 December 2015.
Variable Name: MONTH_CODE Variable Description: A code to help users analyse data IRS Question: 2.1 (based on)
Because the month variable is not in chronological order when sorted, this code has been added. Month 1 is January, month 2 is February etc. This would return “12” for 25 December 2015.
Variable Name: DAY Variable Description: The day of the month the incident took place IRS Question: 2.1 (based on)
The day of the month the incident took place, this would return “25” for 25 December 2015.
Variable Name: DATE Variable Description: The date the incident took place IRS Question: 2.1 (based on)
The date the incident took place. This would return “25/12/2015” for 25 December 2015.
Variable Name: DAY_OF_WEEK Variable Description: The day of the week the incident took place IRS Question: 2.1 (based on)
The day of the week (e.g. Monday) the incident took place. This would return “Friday” for 25 December 2015.
3. Variable by variable - Situation
Variable Name: INCIDENT_LOCATION_TYPE Variable Description: The type of location the incident occurred in IRS Question: 3.2
Incidents are categorised into one of the four following locations – dwelling, other building, road vehicle or outdoors.
4. Variable by variable – The incident
Variable Name: NON_FIRE_INCIDENT_LEVEL1_CATEGORIES Variable Description: The type of incident IRS Question: 3.3
Incidents are categorised into one of the five following high-level non-fire incident types-
- Assist other agencies
- Effecting entry/exit
- Medical incident – co responder
- Medical incident – first responder
- Suicide/attempts
Variable Name: NON_FIRE_INCIDENT_LEVEL2_CATEGORIES Variable Description: The type of incident IRS Question: 3.3
Incidents are categories into low-level non-fire incident types that correspond to their high-level incident type. See FIRE0902 for the full list.
5. Variable by Variable - Resourcing
Variable Name: VEHICLES Variable Description: The number of fire service vehicles that attended the incident IRS Question: 6.2
The total number of FRS vehicles that attended the incident. This includes all types of vehicle, for example hazardous materials units, fire boats and canteen vans would be included in this total. Large numbers are grouped for ease of use and to reduce the personal data risk of incidents being matched across datasets. For example, there is likely to be few incidents attended by 47 vehicles and this could be matched to other datasets containing this variable but grouping these in the “15 or more” grouping makes this impossible.
Variable Name: VEHICLES_CODE Variable Description: A code to help users analyse data IRS Question: 6.2
Because some of the options in the vehicles variable contains letters (e.g. 15 or more) this code has been added after feedback from users to aid analysis. 99 is used for “don’t know”.
Variable Name: PERSONNEL Variable Description: The number of fire crew and officers that attended the incident IRS Question: Combination of 6.1 and 6.4
The number of FRS personnel that attended the incident on fire service appliances or by other means (e.g. their own vehicle, on foot). Large numbers of personnel are grouped for ease of use and to reduce the personal data risk of incidents being matched across datasets. For example, there are likely to be few incidents attended by 147 officers and this could be matched to other datasets containing this variable but grouping these in the “40 or more” grouping makes this impossible.
Variable Name: PERSONNEL_CODE Variable Description: A code to help users analyse data IRS Question: Combination of 6.1 and 6.4
Because some of the options in the personnel variable contains letters (e.g. 40 or more) this code has been added after feedback from users to aid analysis. 99 is used for “don’t know”.
Variable Name: RESPONSE_TIME Variable Description: The time between the call being made and the first fire service vehicle attending the scene IRS Question: Combination of 2.1 and 6.8
The time of the call is defined as when first call was received to Command & Control. If the call was received by one FRS and relayed to another, then the time of the call to the first FRS is used. Both of these variables are usually collected through automatic systems.
Variable Name: RESPONSE_TIME_CODE Variable Description: A code to help users analyse data IRS Question: Combination of 2.1 and 6.8
Because all of the options in the response time variable contains letters (e.g. 1-2 mins) this code has been added after feedback from users to aid analysis. 99 is used for “don’t know”.
Variable Name: TIME_AT_SCENE Variable Description: The time between the first fire service vehicle attending the scene and the incident being closed. IRS Question: Combination of 6.8 and 2.6
An incident is closed when the last FRS appliance, vehicle or officer left the scene of the incident. Both of these variables are usually collected through automatic systems.
Variable Name: TIME_AT_SCENE_CODE Variable Description: A code to help users analyse data IRS Question: Combination of 6.8 and 2.6
Because all of the options in the time at scene variable contains letters (e.g. 0-15 mins) this code has been added after feedback from users to aid analysis.
6. Variable by Variable - Outcomes
Variable Name: FATALITY_CASUALTY Variable Description: Whether the incident involved a fatality or casualty IRS Question: Combination of 9.6 and 9.21
This records whether the incident involved at least one fatality or one casualty from the incident. Due to data protection considerations no more detailed information on casualties and fatalities is given.
To be consistent with published statistics, the variable combines all “fatalities” and all “non-fatal casualties”.
Casualties include those with injuries requiring hospital attention, those requiring first aid at the scene and those given advice to have precautionary checks (whether they then take that advice or not).