Strategic Goal 1: We will help people stay safe from fires and other emergencies

This goal focuses on the work we do to prevent fires and other emergencies and reduce the potential harm such incidents can cause.

Over the life of our CRMP 2025- 28, our focus is on proficiently identifying and reaching those who are at a higher risk of harm and improving our ways of working to deliver personcentred solutions more efficiently. We are also developing our community engagement activities, with a particular emphasis on youth engagement.

We continue to increase our productivity, through systems and process improvements and placing increased emphasis on working more effectively across multiple agencies, tailoring the delivery of our services as we do so.

During 2025-26, our key objectives were to:

• Develop a fully costed business case for a youth engagement programme, with the aim of running pilots during the following year.
• Deliver a co-ordinated programme of community engagement events and campaigns, aligned to the national campaigns calendar promoted by the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC).
• Develop, test and evaluate new ways of identifying and targeting those who are likely to be at a higher risk of involvement in road or water incidents.
• Assess the feasibility of using volunteers to help support or deliver our prevention activities.
• Evaluate the impact the restructure of our prevention team, implemented in 2024, has had on our overall productivity and effectiveness in relation to our community safety and engagement work.
• Review how we resource our approach to fire investigations, aligning to national developments in ISO standards and sector best practice.
• Improve our ways of working to ensure we are fully compliant with the relevant fire standards and that we make effective use of learning from all sources, including feedback from service users, outcomes of fire investigations and serious event reviews.
• Undertake at least 16,000 Safe and Well Visits, targeting those with the highest risk.
• Work with partners to deliver a range of safety messages to at least 2,000 primary school children.
• Strengthen our community befriending scheme, delivering 248 engagements with groups located across the county.

During 2025/26:

• We developed a business case for a new youth engagement programme designed to strengthen our work with young people across Nottinghamshire. The programme will build on the expertise of our Community Engagement and Education Prevention (CEEP) Team, delivering a range of initiatives that promote safety, personal development and positive engagement with the Fire and Rescue Service.

  A key element of this programme will be the introduction of a new Fire Cadet scheme, which is planned to launch during 2026.

• We progressed the development of a coordinated programme of community engagement events and campaigns aligned to the national campaign calendar promoted by the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC).

  The programme brings together operational crews and prevention colleagues to deliver a variety of community safety messages throughout the year, while providing individual stations with the flexibility to tailor activities to the specific risks and needs of their local communities.

  This approach enables us to make effective use of local knowledge, strengthen community relationships and ensures that prevention and safety messages reach the people who will benefit from them most.

• During 2025/26, we continued to develop our approach to identifying those most likely to be at risk of involvement in road traffic collisions and waterrelated incidents.

  By analysing local incident data alongside regional and national trends, we are improving our understanding of the people, behaviours and locations associated with increased risk. This intelligence-led approach enables us to target education programmes, campaigns and prevention initiatives more effectively, ensuring safety messages reach the audiences who are most likely to benefit from them.

• We began exploring the potential role that volunteers could play in supporting the delivery of prevention activities across Nottinghamshire.

  As part of this work, we have been assessing how volunteers may be able to help extend the reach of community safety initiatives, support the delivery of key prevention messages and enhance engagement within local communities.

  This exploratory work remains in development as we attempt to better understand the opportunities and challenges associated with volunteering and determine whether it could provide a sustainable way of increasing our community reach and helping more people stay safe, while making effective use of available resources.

• We evaluated the impact of the Prevention Team restructure, implemented in September 2024. The review found that the changes have strengthened our ability to identify and target risk, provide enhanced support to vulnerable people and improve the efficiency of prevention activity across Nottinghamshire.

  The restructure has helped to create a more sustainable and resilient service, supported by stronger community engagement, improved partnership working and increased use of data and intelligence to inform decisionmaking. Improvements were also seen in the quality and volume of referrals received, helping ensure support is directed to those who need it most.

  Our evaluation concluded that the new model is delivering positive outcomes for both communities and the Service, while also achieving financial efficiencies-releasing funds which have been used to invest in other areas of the Service.

• We reviewed our approach to Fire Investigation in response to changes in national regulatory requirements. As part of this work, we began developing plans to adopt the Forensic Science Regulator’s Code of Practice, helping to ensure our fire investigation activities are delivered to the same high standards of quality and assurance applied across other forensic disciplines.

  Working collaboratively with regional Police Forces and partner organisations, we are supporting the development of a consistent approach to fire investigation across the East Midlands. This work will be delivered through a phased programme of improvements, helping to strengthen quality, consistency and continuous improvement while ensuring our services remain aligned with national best practice.

• We carried out 16,041 Safe and Well Visits to help keep people safe in their homes.
• We delivered safety messages to 2,234 primary school children through our Safety Zone programme.
• We delivered 549 community befriending engagements to groups around the county.

Other highlights

Our Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) 2025– 2028 explains the importance of reducing risk through prevention, education, engagement and partnership working. During 2025/26, we further strengthened our approach to identifying those most at risk, delivering person-centred interventions and improving how we work with communities and partners to prevent harm.

Engagement

During 2025/26, we expanded our community engagement activity, ensuring that prevention messages were targeted towards those communities and individuals most at risk.

We delivered 549 community befriending engagements, strengthening relationships with local residents and increasing the visibility of our frontline staff. The publication of our Community Safety Strategy 2025, (which is referenced later in this document) also provided a clear framework for ongoing engagement activity across Nottinghamshire.

Our engagement activities were further strengthened through the development of improved performance monitoring methods, including work to establish a new Community Safety and Engagement dashboard to better evaluate impact and outcomes.

Education

Education remains a key tool in helping people understand risks and make safer choices.

During the year, we delivered safety education to 2,234 primary school children, exceeding our target of 2,000 children. This was achieved through four Safety Zone weeks, helping young people develop greater awareness of fire, road and water safety risks.

We continued to develop targeted, evidence-led road safety interventions aimed at those most at risk. This included work with the Youth Justice Service, with an impact report being developed to evaluate outcomes and inform future delivery.

Partnership working also enabled the delivery of four Older Driver Roadshows in conjunction with Via, helping older road users understand changing risks and maintain safer driving behaviours.

During 2025/26, we delivered a targeted electric scooter safety project, using local risk data to focus safety messages on those most at risk.

We also delivered three Biker Down events, including engagement through the annual Egg Run, a community initiative where local motorcyclists deliver Easter eggs to disadvantaged children and children with additional needs. These activities helped us reach higher-risk motorcyclist groups and promote key road safety messages.

Water safety education remained a priority. Through our involvement in national and local partnerships, we delivered targeted water safety sessions with King’s Trust programmes, Police Cadets and Military Cadets. A new partnership with the Canal and River Trust further enhanced the reach and quality of water safety education delivered through Safety Zone and wider community activities.

Partnerships

Strong partnerships are essential in helping us identify risk, reach vulnerable individuals and coordinate effective prevention activity.

The Community Advisory Group continued to grow throughout the year and now includes representatives from Sikh, Muslim and Black Majority Churches, minority-owned businesses, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre and professionals from health, policing and local authorities. These diverse voices help inform service delivery and ensure our engagement reflects the needs of our communities.

We strengthened safeguarding arrangements through revised processes and systems designed to improve how concerns are managed and how organisational learning is captured from Serious Adult Reviews, Domestic Homicide Reviews and Child Death Reviews.

Our Community Safety and Engagement Team continued to play an active role in a wide range of strategic partnerships, including the Nottinghamshire Fraud Partnership, Tobacco Control Alliance, Violence Against Women and Girls Partnership, Serious Violence Reduction Partnership, Preventing Violent Extremism Partnership, Modern Slavery Partnership and knife crime prevention initiatives with Nottinghamshire Police.

We also maintained leadership roles within road and water safety partnerships, including chairing the Road Safety Partnership and Nottinghamshire Safety Education Partnership. These forums support a coordinated approach to prevention and help ensure local activity aligns with national best practice.

Supporting Vulnerable People

Supporting those most at risk of harm remains central to our prevention strategy.

During 2025/26, we completed 16,041 Safe and Well Visits, including 2,783 high-risk visits undertaken by our Prevention and Risk Team. We achieved 100% compliance for very high-risk individuals, identified through ‘Charlie P’ referrals, ensuring meaningful interventions were delivered within 96 hours. Our Charlie P tool is used to identify individuals most at risk from fire in the home by evaluating key factors that may increase fire vulnerability.

We introduced a new Threat of Arson Procedure aligned to Police THRIVE assessments, enabling immediate intervention for individuals facing the highest levels of risk.

Our sector-leading Occupational Therapist home visits continued to provide tailored support to vulnerable residents, helping reduce fire risk while supporting people to live safely and independently in their own homes.

We maintained 100% compliance for Youth Justice Service referrals and Fire Safety Interventions, ensuring that children and young people received timely support and intervention where required.

To improve service efficiency and effectiveness, we embedded the use of mobile tablets to conduct Safe and Well visits. We also implemented system improvements (Quick Screens), streamlining Safe and Well Visit delivery, improving data capture and increasing performance visibility. A comprehensive data cleanse of our primary Prevention and Protection database (CFRMIS) has improved data accuracy and reliability, enabling improved reporting and insights.

We strengthened organisational learning through the delivery of Serious Event Review Groups for all serious incidents, ensuring lessons identified are captured and used to inform future prevention activity. In addition, new evaluation frameworks were introduced to monitor customer feedback, improve quality assurance and support Safe and Well Visit delivery standards.

Together, these improvements have strengthened our ability to identify risk, target resources effectively and provide timely, person-centred interventions to those who need them most.

Fire Investigation

Fire investigations play a key role in helping us understand how and why fires start, supporting criminal investigations, providing answers to those affected by fire and helping to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Our specialist Fire Investigation Team investigates the most serious and complex incidents, including fatal fires, fires involving serious injuries, explosions, large commercial incidents and suspected deliberate fires. Working alongside Crime Scene Investigators and other specialist partners, the team identifies the origin and cause of fires, helping to improve community safety and inform future prevention activity.

The team is also supported by two specialist Fire Investigation Dogs and their handlers, who assist in identifying the presence of ignitable liquids at fire scenes. This shared regional resource is funded by Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Services.

During 2025/26, the Fire Investigation Team carried out 116 investigations across Nottinghamshire, including fires involving seven fatalities. The learning gained from these investigations continues to inform our prevention work, helping to reduce risk and keep our communities safe.