New Incident Recording System (IRS)

The Incident Recording System (IRS) is a national project led by the Department for Communities and Local Government and forms parts of the Fire and Rescue Service Improvement Programme.

With the active engagement of Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) and other stakeholders this project will enable the data on all incidents attended by the UK Fire and Rescue Service to be collected electronically and verified at source, improving on the timeliness and accuracy of the current manual collection.

The new system will be used to record all incidents attended by UK Fire and Rescue Services. Photos: Merseyside FRS

The IRS will modernise the existing fire and rescue incident data collection system by radically changing methods of data collection to meet new business needs, replacing manual data input of paper records with a fully automated electronic data capture system. This will provide better data for the FRSs Integrated Risk Management Plans (IRMPs) and Best Value Performance indicators (BVPIs). The system will also supply the future data requirements of the Fire Service Emergency Cover project (FSEC), Neighbourhood Statistics (NeSS) and underpinning research and development.

IRS will interface seamlessly with the nine Regional Control Centres (RCC) in England as they go live. FiReControl will use the IRS XML Schema. You don’t have to wait for FiReControl to start using the IRS System.

The IRS system will be available from September 2007.  FRSs will need to decide when they intend to move across to the IRS System and plan appropriately. Every FRS should be using system by 31 March 2009.