Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service
Annual statement of assurance 2024 - 2025

Strategic Goal 3: We will respond immediately and effectively to emergency incidents

This goal focuses on our statutory duty to respond to emergencies. In 2024/25 our key objectives were to:

  • Respond to incidents within an average time of eight minutes
  • Evaluate the impact of Ashfield Fire Station returning to 24/7 crewing in November ’23
  • Consider recommendations identified within the Fire Cover Review, being undertaken as part of the development of our next CRMP
  • Successfully disaggregate from our current tri-service arrangement, ensuring no discernible impact on our communities because of doing so

Our focus for improvements included:

  • Implement our new Replacement Mobilising System in partnership with our colleagues in Joint Fire Control and Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service
  • Provide our crews with secondary & tertiary hardware devices to ensure they will always have access to risk information, at the right time, in the right place when responding to incidents
  • Provide our National Inter-Agency Liaison Officers (NILOs) with an additional airwave radio to improve their communications
  • Develop & improve the decontamination of firefighting equipment and PPE after firefighting
  • Provide NILOs and Station Managers with Body-worn Cameras to enable us to better learn from incidents

During 2024/25:

  • We attended 10,910 incidents, an increase of 3% compared to the last ASoA reporting year - 2023/24
  • We responded to incidents in an average time of 7 minutes and 58 seconds. This was 2 seconds below the target and a 17 second improvement on 2023/24
  • We attended 2,849 fires, a 1.6% increase on 2023/24
  • We attended 1,425 incidents which involved rescues and humanitarian assistance from either buildings, vehicles, water, confined spaces or heights. This was an increase of 6.7% on 2023/24
  • We attended 628 road traffic collisions, compared to 560 in 2023/24
  • We delivered 797 training courses, attended by 3,498 delegates from a portfolio of 153 different training courses
  • A total of 51,583 eLearning packages were undertaken by staff

In 2024/25 you continued to be served by 30 fire engines and a range of specialised vehicles at 24 fire stations across our county.

When we receive a 999 call for help, we respond immediately with the nearest appropriate operational vehicles and equipment for the size and type of incident.

Our stations are made up of:

  • Eight with wholetime crews
  • Four with a mix of wholetime and on-call crews
  • 12 with on-call crews

Other Highlights

Local resilience

We have continued to work collaboratively alongside our regional partners to provide operational assistance. Agreements with our neighbouring services help to provide mutual resilience, particularly at times of increased demand.

To ensure that we provide an effective response during operational incidents, we use Joint Emergency Services Operating Principles (JESIP) when working alongside other emergency services. By using these operating principles, we can resolve incidents more effectively by working together in a more structured and unified approach.

Larger scale incidents may require partners from many different agencies to work together to resolve the incident. As part of the Nottinghamshire Local Resilience Forum (LRF), we work together to share skills, information and expertise to build, test and exercise the Community Risk Register. This ensures that all agencies within the statutory partnership are prepared to respond effectively when required.

Jointly, NFRS and Nottinghamshire Police host a new LRF team, providing the secretariat function for the LRF. The LRF team have a range of responsibilities that includes delivery of the LRF workplan, supporting the effective running of the LRF, and providing a 24/7 on-call function to establish Tactical Coordinating Groups and Strategic Coordinating Groups within two hours of requests from any LRF partner agencies.

National resilience

The National Resilience Capabilities Programme (NRCP) is the government’s central programme to increase the capability to respond to major incidents. As part of this we can be called upon to provide assistance locally, or if required, regionally or nationally.

Training and competence

Our firefighters are trained to deal with many different types of incident. This requires a high standard of training, which is provided through:

  • Practical and face-to-face training at our training centre
  • Station based training
  • Training exercises based on a variety of scenarios
  • E-learning, through several digital training packages

Exercises

To ensure we are prepared, and to test our response to emergencies, we have a structured exercise programme. Exercises range from small district-level exercises to large multi-agency scenarios.

In 2024/25 we conducted:

  • 33 practical exercises and 61 Tactical Decision Exercises (TDEs) that tested our capability in a range of emergency scenarios including high rise buildings, major road traffic collisions, water rescues, terrorist attacks, and hazardous material releases
  • 5 other specialist training events specifically to test our effectiveness in working with other emergency partners to ensure that we are able to work collectively to resolve incidents. Most notably, one at Trent Bridge Cricket Ground which tested our joint response to a significant emergency incident at a sports entertainment venue

Productivity

The performance of response crews in the delivery of our other services continued to improve in 2024/25. Last year, response crews delivered:

  • 12,581 Safe & Well Visits enabling the service to exceed its target of 15,000
  • 1,546 Business Safety Checks, which is a 50% increase on those completed in 2023/24 and surpassed the target that had been set
  • 180 community befriending scheme activities constituting over 500 hours spent engaging with community groups

In addition, response crews have supported over 500 community safety education events, maintained operational competence through engagement in a full training and exercise programme, and ensured that all 565 documents relating to Site Specific Risk Information are up to date.

On-call availability

We have worked hard over the past year to further develop the sustainability of the on-call workforce, including the ongoing recruitment and training of new firefighters.

With the assistance of our on-call support team throughout 2024/25, our on-call appliance availability averaged 83.8%, making us one of the best performing services for on-call availability in the country.

Specialist appliance review

During 2024/25 we have continued the implementation of the recommendations of the special appliance review which was conducted in 2021/22. The review considered the efficiency and effectiveness of our special appliances fleet; how they meet the needs of our communities, where they are located, how they are crewed, and how they contribute to the mitigation of risk.

Significantly, during 2024/25 we have invested £100,000 on supplementing our capability to respond to wildfire incidents, which included the purchase of the Polaris rural firefighting unit. Projects to replace our aerial ladder capability and command support unit have progressed well (with the latter due to be received into service in 2025).

Evaluation of Ashfield Fire Station crewing changes

Following the reinstatement of 24/7 crewing at Ashfield Fire Station in November 2023, we have evaluated the impact of this adjustment and identified:

  • A reduction in reliance on over border support from Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service
  • An increase in productivity in prevention and protection activities in the Ashfield area
  • Significantly improved attendance times in Ashfield district (with no detrimental impact elsewhere)
  • Increased capacity at Ashfield to undertake Community Befriending activities with local groups

Fire Cover Review

As part of developing our next CRMP, we conducted a comprehensive fire cover review. Emergency response is a critical role of our service and a key aspect of our commitment to public safety. To ensure an objective and evidence-based approach, we worked with independent experts from Operational Research in Health (ORH).

The review examined five years of operational incident data and was carried out using nationally recognised methodologies developed by the NFCC in partnership with ORH.

The review concluded that there is a strong correlation between the locations of our fire stations and the areas of greatest operational demand. This means that our resources are generally well located to meet current demand patterns.

Replacement Mobilising System (RMS)

We have continued to work closely with Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service and Joint Fire Control to develop our new mobilising system. Preparation for the project involved the successful disaggregation of Leicestershire FRS from the tri-service agreement, which was achieved in October 2024. This multi-year project, scheduled for completion in summer 2026, was divided into six key components to enable focused procurement and attract a broader range of suppliers:

  • Integrated Communications and Control System (ICCS) and Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD)
  • Station End Equipment
  • On-Call Alerting
  • Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) Hardware
  • MDT Software
  • Network

Procurements and contracts have all been awarded and we continue to work with suppliers to progress the project, in a staged approach to completion.

To ensure uninterrupted service to our communities during the transition, we have extended our contract with the current system provider.

Operational equipment

During 2024/25 we introduced some new operational equipment to assist our firefighters at incidents. These included:

  • New battery powered ventilation fans which provide our firefighters with more flexibility and capability when ventilating buildings involved in fire
  • Electric vehicle fire blankets to assist crews when dealing with fires involving electric vehicles
  • Upgraded particulate filters to provide greater protection against contaminants, for use with existing respiratory protective equipment
  • Body-worn Cameras, which have been trialled, to provide protection and improved operational learning for crews (expected to be in use during 2025)

National Interagency Liaison Officers (NILO) were issued with a second Airwave Radio handheld receiver in January 2025. The provision of an additional radio enhances our ability to communicate with other agencies and Joint Fire Control during incidents, improving situational awareness.

Decontamination facilities

Protecting our crews from the toxins and contaminants associated with operational incidents they attend is of utmost importance. As part of our ongoing commitment to safety, during 2024/25:

  • Specialised breathing apparatus washing equipment came into use
  • Portable open-air hanging rails were provided to allow contaminated PPE to ‘gas-off’ in open air away from clean PPE
  • External PPE Containers have been supplied on stations, for contaminated equipment, awaiting collection by specialist cleaners
  • Spare helmet cradles were provided, to allow crews to change contaminated parts of their helmets following incidents, while remaining operationally available