Policy and process review for complex and long-duration incidents

Fire and Emergency must always have people available for all events, including for those large, complex and in long duration. This includes approximately 12,000 volunteers.

Prior to the establishment of Fire and Emergency in 2017, local fire authorities engaged personnel directly under arrangements with varying payment entitlements. These payment arrangements were put in place at a regional level to enable adequate service delivery, particularly in rural areas where access to resource is limited. Fire and Emergency inherited these agreements through integration.

These arrangements challenge the organisation’s strategic goal of unification and fail to address the underlying workforce capacity challenges we face – particularly in delivering services in rural, complex, and long-duration environments.

The Incident Capability and Payments Alignment (ICPA) project aims to review and realign the way our organisation responds to complex and long-duration incidents. This includes reviewing our capacity requirements for these incidents, implementing improved mechanisms to attract the right capability – including through reviewed payment policies, and ensuring our volunteers are engaged in a way reflective of our volunteerism strategy and sector principles.

A Project Indicative Business Case (IBC) was approved by Fire and Emergency’s Executive Leadership team in June 2022. The IBC provides the organisation with an early indication of the preferred way forward, and the likely level of investment required. The approval of the IBC gives endorsement for the project to proceed to development of detailed options – which is currently planned to be presented back to Fire and Emergency’s Board in 2023.

Please visit our project Portal page for more information - including our confirmed indicative scope and timeline.