What do we do?

Avon Fire & Rescue Service

Avon Fire & Rescue Service provides emergency and protection services to the communities of Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. It covers an area of 134,753 hectares and a population of about one million.

The service has a legal responsibility under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 to promote fire safety, and attend fires and road traffic collisions for firefighting and rescue purposes. The Act (Sections 11 and 12) also gives fire authorities for each fire and rescue service the power to train and equip staff for other emergencies and events, such as responding to major flooding and terrorist incidents.

AF&RS also works with other agencies like the Environment Agency, to prevent or minimise the impact of an incident to the environment, for example if there are chemicals involved, the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) to help trapped animals in distress and Avon & Somerset Cliff Rescue to rescue climbers in trouble.

All fire and rescue services in the UK work to a nationally set framework (Fire and Rescue National Framework), under direction of the DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government).

A large part of AF&RS's role in the community evolves around 'prevention'. The service is fully committed to providing a safer place for people to live, work and visit - its strap line is ‘Preventing, Protecting, Responding’.

The service’s main objectives, set by the Government, are to reduce the number of deaths from accidental fires in the home by 20% and the number of deliberate fires by 10%, by 2010 - a figure AF&RS is well on the way to achieving (September 2006). It therefore continually strives to raise awareness of fire safety via community involvement and education initiatives.

On average AF&RS deals with over 30,000 emergency 999 calls a year from Service Control at Lansdown, Bath.

The service’s headquarters (HQ) are based in Bristol city centre and there are 23 fire stations across the area in: Avonmouth, Bath, Bedminster, Blagdon, Brislington, Chew Magna, Clevedon, Keynsham, Kingswood, Nailsea, Patchway, Paulton, Pill, Portishead, Radstock, Southmead, Speedwell, Temple Back, Thornbury, Weston-Super-Mare, Winscombe, Yate and Yatton.

There are six Community Safety Centres at Bristol HQ and Bath, Keynsham, Speedwell, Weston-super-Mare and Yate fire stations - which provide free safety advice, Internet and meeting room facilities.

Our staff
In total Avon Fire & Rescue Service employs over 1,000 people, made up of:

In Yate, firefighters on the wholetime duty system only crew the station during the day (8am to 5pm).  This system is known as day crewing.  At all other times Yate Fire Station is crewed by firefighters on the retained duty system.

In more rural areas the fire stations are crewed by firefighters on the retained duty system.  These firefighters have other jobs, but when they are alerted by Service Control, they stop whatever they are doing and go to their local fire station ready to respond to the fire or other incident.  These firefighters work alongside those on wholetime duty system. 

At wholetime stations Bath and Weston-super-Mare there is also a retained fire engine, crewed by firefighters on the retained duty system, alongside the wholetime engines and firefighters - this is to ensure there is enough cover during busy times. 

Support staff
Usually when people think of the fire and rescue service they think of firefighting. However, the role of the service is much wider and has many commitments and responsibility to the public, other organisations and staff.

Under its Best Value Plan, the service is also required to 'challenge, consult, compare and compete'. Therefore, as a modern fire and rescue service, AF&RS does not just employ firefighters and operational staff.

The group of staff that provides ‘other’ services are known as support staff. Support staff offer professional, technical and administrative services. These have helped AF&RS to become a particularly progressive service, with many areas of good practice.

The range of services support staff provide include: strategic planning, performance management, information services, media liaison and communication, mapping and data management, statistical analysis, systems development, health and safety, project and fleet (vehicle) management, marketing, web and graphic design, customer consultations, human resources, finance, document production and CAD (Computer Aided Design).