Our commitment to equality

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service is committed to providing excellent services and becoming an employer of choice by ensuring that equality and inclusion are at the heart of everything it does.

The Service will work to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations with the communities that it serves. We will engage with our service users to ensure that we provide services which meet their needs, and that they have equal access to them.

We will also ensure that our employees work in an environment where difference is valued, and discrimination of any sort is not tolerated. We will provide our employees, managers and elected members with access to excellent learning and development opportunities which enable them to understand and meet the demands of changing communities and to meet our obligations under the Equality Act.

The Service will promote employment opportunities to encourage applicants from across all local communities and diverse populations, particularly where they are under-represented in the current workforce. We will create a workplace where our employees feel confident that they will be treated fairly at work, not in spite of who they are, but because of who they are. We will work collaboratively with trade union representatives in order to improve workforce policy and practice in all these areas.

The Service will also use its spending power to encourage its suppliers of goods and services to apply similar values and objectives to their own business.

It is only by adopting this approach that we can truly provide equal access to services and employment to people across Nottinghamshire.

This statement has been endorsed by the Chief Fire Officer, the Combined Fire Authority and all Representative Bodies.