Table of contents

Title	Page
Overview	4
The New Zealand Fire Service Commission	6
Mandate and Responsibilities	6
The Legislative Context	7
The Fire Environment	7
Priority Areas	8
Resources	9
Incident Trends	9
Functions and Operations	10
Contributing to Government Priorities	10
Measures of Commission Performance	11
Commission's Emergency Management Framework	12
Organisational Health and Capability	20
Human Capital	20
A Good Employer	21
Volunteerism	22
Capital Equipment	22
How Others View the Organisation's Health	23
Reform of Fire Legislation	23
Evaluation Framework	23
Other Matters	24
Consultation with the Minister	24
Stakeholder Consultation	24
Organisational Risks	25
Statement of Responsibility	26
Prospective Financial Statements and Assumptions	27
Use of information contained in these financial statements	27
Significant Financial Assumptions	27
Updating Financial Statements	28
Main Financial Measures	28
Prospective Financial Statements	29
Statement of Accounting Policies	33
Statement of Forecast Service Performance for 2007/2008	40
Cost of the Outputs	41
Output Classes	42

Overview

The New Zealand Fire Service Commission (Commission) is the Crown's principal fire risk management and service delivery agency. It provides a comprehensive range of risk reduction, fire safety public education, emergency response and rural fire authority co-ordination services to protect New Zealand's 4.2 million residents and visitors, $240 billion stock of buildings and 27 million hectares of forest and grasslands from fire.

This Statement of Intent outlines the plans, programmes and priorities of the Commission over the next three years. It describes:

• The environment within which the Commission operates
• The principal statutory functions and operations of the Commission including the national goals against which the Commission will gauge its success
• How the Commission will sustain the organisation's health and capability Stakeholders the Commission will consult in determining its strategic direction
• The means by which the Commission will monitor, measure and assess its overall performance.

The Commission contributes to two of the Government's priorities for families and communities and economic transformation. It does this by reducing the incidence and consequences of fire for:

• People
• Property
• Communities
• The environment.

The Commission is especially pleased it is achieving a world class performance for avoidable residential fire fatalities with a rate of just 0.31 fatalities per 100,000 population. The national goal for 2007/2008 onwards is to maintain the rate to less than 0.5.

During 2006/2007, the Commission reviewed the strategic framework it employs to structure its high-level intervention strategies and programmes. Following that work it restated its priority areas to guide business planning and service delivery in 2007/2008.

The Commission delivers a range of services (outputs) covering fire safety education and technical advice, emergency preparedness and response, and rural fire leadership and co-ordination. This document describes the services the Commission will deliver in 2007/2008 and detailed performance measures.

The Commission will undertake numerous policy and programme initiatives in 2007/2008. As an example of some of those key initiatives, it will:

• Implement a new measure of brigade readiness designed to provide high-level assurance of capability and capacity to meet community expectations
• Develop a Resilience Standard for fire stations by class of community and do a stock take of all stations against the standard
• Restate the attendance time targets for specified classes of emergency incident and improve performance monitoring against the targets
• Adopt penetration rate targets for smoke and fire detection systems in specified classes of occupancy, with an emphasis on residential housing
• Consult with urban stakeholders on the National Resource Allocation model, including the application of the model to more remote communities
• Separate the incidence measures for structure fires and vegetation fires to permit better analysis of underlying performance in the prevention of fire
• Establish a baseline emissions profile and carbon footprint for the Fire Service against which to assess the effect of emission reduction initiatives in future years
• Deploy a five-year evaluation programme that assesses the impact key programmes have on national goals.

The Commission is committed to ensuring the capability and health of New Zealand's fire services is maintained and enhanced over time. This document sets out how it intends to do this in the coming three years, with particular reference to the volunteer sector which faces significant challenges. It also sets out the Commission's commitment to its employees, to sound public sector employment practices and to the principles of equality of opportunity and diversity.

Included in this document are the forecast costs of providing the services for 2007/2008 by output class. These costs and the forecasts for each of the subsequent two years are presented in the statement of prospective financial performance, the statement of prospective financial position and the statement of prospective cash flows.

The Commission is mindful that the prospective financial statements disclose an operating deficit for the 2007/2008 financial year and for the two out years. The Crown Entities Act requires boards to operate as a going concern on a sustainable basis. The Commission proposes to meet the forecast financial deficits from accumulated past surpluses and to seek an increase in the rate of levy with effect from 2009/2010.

Signed on behalf of the New Zealand Fire Service Commission

Dame Margaret Bazley, DNZM
Chairperson
30 June 2007

Angela Foulkes
Member
30 June 2007