Fire & Rescue

Our Aim – Keep Staffordshire Safe

Our priorities

I continue to be pleased with the progress Staffordshire Fire & Rescue Service has made in recent years, recognised in the most recent inspection report by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS). The improvement in nearly all the areas assessed is testament to the hard work and dedication of the service’s staff, firefighters, leaders and Chief Fire Officer during the past three years.

Staffordshire Fire & Rescue has developed specialist capabilities to enable it to meet new operational challenges, some of which are a consequence of climate change or new battery and energy storage technologies that are rapidly developing in response to it. To support this, I have invested in new appliances to equip the service at the most challenging incidents.

Prevention and protection work are as important as the ability to respond effectively. Alongside specialist staff, more firefighters, staff and volunteers are engaged in prevention work that is ever more focused on those most at risk.

I am very supportive of the service’s ambition to help other agencies to keep people safe, even outside the traditional parameters of Fire & Rescue. Working across Staffordshire with local NHS partners and West Midlands Ambulance Service to respond when people have fallen or need assistance returning home from hospital has helped to keep hundreds of people out of hospital and freed up valuable health resources.

A White Paper on Fire Reform was published by the previous Government in 2021 but has yet to be progressed into legislation. Its intention is to build on the existing framework to ensure Fire & Rescue services operate effectively and efficiently, put the public first and meet community needs, while adapting to societal changes. It focuses on new governance arrangements, drawing on lessons learned from the first cycle of governance transfers to Police, Fire & Crime Commissioners, of which Staffordshire was one of the first. Importantly, it could legislate to create operational independence for Chief Fire Officers which I very much support.

It could also bring much-needed flexibility to firefighters’ terms and conditions to ensure they can be deployed to meet local needs and appropriately compensated for it. This is echoed in the Chief Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services’ most recent State of Fire report, which acknowledges the sector’s good progress in response to previous recommendations but urges the Government to press ahead with reforms.

The report also calls for urgent improvements in values, culture and the management of misconduct across the sector. While I recognise the progress Staffordshire has made in tackling these issues, including its openness to HMICFRS scrutiny as part of its inspection of the handling of misconduct in Fire & Rescue services, I will not be complacent. I will continue to hold the Chief Fire Officer and his senior leadership team to account for delivering the required improvements in organisational culture, diversity and inclusion which are essential to ensure the trust and confidence of our staff and our communities.

Linked to this, HMICFRS highlights that service leaders must take a strategic approach to transformation and service improvement. In Staffordshire, the service has made excellent progress in piloting flexible crewing and other initiatives leading to improved availability of our teams.

Keeping firefighters safe is vitally important so the service will also introduce new equipment and processes to protect them from contaminants. I want to ensure that these initiatives continue to be developed as part of a cohesive and coherent transformation programme, and that the service has the capacity and capability to deliver it.

Fire and Rescue Overview Files

View Archive