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Jo Coles - York and North Yorkshire Deputy Mayor for Policing, Fire and Crime

Jo Coles - North Yorkshire Deputy Mayor for Policing, Fire and Crime

Home - Fire oversight - Did you know? Facts about your fire and rescue service

Did you know? Facts about your fire and rescue service

We’re highlighting some of the work your fire and rescue service do, to keep you safe and feeling safe.

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service plays a crucial role in making our communities safer. They do this by preventing and protecting people from fire and other risks, and by responding effectively to emergencies when they occur. They make sure they have the right equipment, in the right place and at the right time and that our fire fighters and support staff feel safe, supported, happy and healthy in their roles.

Oversight

Working on behalf of the public, David Skaith, Mayor of York and North Yorkshire is responsible for holding the Chief Fire Officer to account for an efficient and effective local fire and rescue service.
The Mayor also sets priorities via the Fire and Rescue Plan, and oversees the fire service budget.

Service area

Fire stations and buildings

There is a control room in Northallerton, a training centre in Easingwold, a shared headquarters with North Yorkshire Police in Northallerton and a joint (with North Yorkshire Police) Transport and Logistics Hub in Thirsk.

There are 38 fire stations across York and North Yorkshire.

These include:

  • 4 wholetime shift stations which are crewed 24 hours a day- Acomb, Harrogate, Scarborough and York
  • 7 wholetime day crewed stations (crewed 0800-1800 every day by firefighters who carry an alerter, and are on call outside of these hours)- Malton, Northallerton, Richmond, Ripon, Selby, Tadcaster and Whitby
  • 25 on-call stations (crewed by firefighters who provide on-call cover from home or their place of work). The following stations are on-call: Bedale, Bentham, Boroughbridge, Colburn, Danby, Easingwold, Filey, Grassington, Hawes, Helmsley, Huntington, Kirkbymoorside, Knaresborough, Leyburn, Lythe, Masham, Pickering, Reeth,  Robin Hood’s Bay, Settle, Sherburn, Skipton, Stokesley, Summerbridge, Thirsk.
  • 2 volunteer stations crewed by volunteers at Lofthouse and Goathland

6 stations have both a wholetime and on-call crew: Acomb, Malton, Northallerton, Ripon, Selby, Tadcaster

Prevention Performance Stats

From 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service

  • Completed 9,821 prevention activities
    • 3,680 Home Fire Safety Visits. Find out more about booking a home fire safety visit Book a Home Fire Safety Visit – North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service
    • Youtube link for video https://youtu.be/S3jBXQRX5_I
    • carried out 304 smoke detector fittings
    • (884 Unable to contact/declined)
    • Carried out 214 Road Safety activities
    • Carried out 169 Water Safety activities
    • 4,570 other community safety activities

Protection (Business fire safety)

From 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service

  • undertook 5,694 protection (business fire safety) jobs which equate to 397 days of activity and includes:
    • 2,181 Fire Safety activities
      • 1,441 of these were scheduled Fire Safety Audits
    • 2,097 Statutory and Non-Statutory jobs incl. Building Regs, Licensing and other consultations
    • 1,348 Guidance and advisory
    • 68 Unwanted Fire Signal reduction activities

The Protection team carried out targeted work at all the high rise residential buildings (HRRBs) in response to national events.

The team also carried out over 300 fire safety audits at premises where Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 led to a change in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. They continue to carry out business engagement work to ensure all relevant premises are aware of this change in legislation.

Incident stats

Between 1 April 2023-31 March 2024 we attended 7589 incidents.

This included:

  • 1,516 fires
  • 3,278 false alarms
  • 2,795 special service calls
    • 456 road traffic collisions
  • 487 people rescued (386 incidents where people were rescued)

Government definition of special service calls/incidents:
Special Service incidents/calls are incidents requiring the attendance of an appliance or officer. They include, but are not limited to: local emergencies e.g. road traffic incidents, responding to medical emergencies, rescue of persons and/or animals or making areas safe.

FireBike

FireBike is an initiative where a team of volunteers use a decommissioned Police Traffic Motorcycle to drive down road accidents and reduce injuries and deaths amongst motorcyclists. By directly engaging with the most vulnerable of road users, FireBike promotes road safety and advanced rider techniques by being able to get into the heart of the motorcycling community. In total, FireBike delivered 1,177 Hours of community engagement and road safety activity during its first year of operation.

Roles

Careers – North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service

Here are just some of the roles who work to keep communities safe and feeling safe:

Firefighter (Control)

Firefighter (Control) staff are based at our control room responding to 999 calls, providing initial advice and guidance to emergency callers to keep members of public safe in the event of an emergency. They mobilise the relevant resources to the incident as well as managing requests from on scene Firefighters and liaising with other emergency services to support the ongoing needs of the incident and the community. In addition to responding to 999 calls they manage the availability of resources and officers across the county to ensure sufficient fire cover is maintained. They also undertake regular training, testing and maintenance of communication and mobilising systems.

Wholetime Firefighter

Wholetime firefighters are based at our shift and day crewed fire stations. They respond to incidents and have an important role to play in delivering fire prevention and protection programmes. This includes visiting homes, schools, community groups, voluntary organisations and businesses to provide advice.

They also undertake training, maintain, clean and test fire service equipment and perform general station routines.

On-Call Firefighter

On-call firefighters are trained firefighters who, rather than being based at a fire station, provide on-call cover from home and/or their place of work. They declare the periods in a week when they are available to respond to emergencies if called upon.

They respond to emergencies when their pager alerts them, so must work and/or live within approximately four minutes travel time from the fire station as they travel from that location to the fire station, where they then travel to the emergency in a fire service vehicle.  NYFRS does continuous recruitment for on-call firefighters so if you’d like to find out more visit the national on-call firefighter recruitment website. https://oncallfire.uk/

Partnership Manager

The Partnership Manager is a support staff role (i.e. not an operational firefighter). There are many organisations in our area, who work with individuals and families that we would also like to reach and offer our prevention and early intervention services to. Our Partnership Manager is our link to these organisations which can include public, private and voluntary sector groups. They nurture relationships with them, provide training to their staff and volunteers, share data (with the right agreements in place) and sometimes to work innovatively together by trying new ways of working. All of this activity has the single aim of ensuring that our prevention and early intervention work as is targeted at those people who we believe are at the greatest risk of being killed or seriously injured due a fire in their home.

Youth and Schools Engagement Manager

The Youth and Schools Engagement Manager’s role is to develop and supervise our delivery of youth engagement, education, and interventions in accordance with the  Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Strategy. This specialist role works to ensure that all education and engagement activities are safe, co-ordinated, evaluated and that Service staff are supported in the development of necessary and safe youth engagement skills. The Youth and Schools Engagement Manager works closely with the Safeguarding Manager to ensure that Fire Safe (fire setting) interventions for children and young people are delivered efficiently, effectively and safely. This role also works to create education packs, for schools and other education providers to deliver to children and young people themselves.

Head of Prevention

The support staff role of Head of Prevention is responsible for leading the dedicated Prevention Team, in all matters relating to prevention, early intervention and safeguarding. They work with the Director for Risk and Resilience to ensure the Service has an achievable Prevention, Early Intervention and Safeguarding Strategy, and works across the whole Service with other Heads of Function / Group Managers to ensure that operational crews and other staff have the resources and training they need, to deliver effective prevention, early intervention and safeguarding in our communities. The Head of Prevention has a lead role in working with strategic leaders both within and outside of the Service to drive forward targeted collaborative activity which includes the Public Safety Service and the York and North Yorkshire Road Safety Partnership.

Public Safety Officers

Public Safety Officers use a combination of skills and training from fire and rescue, policing and the ambulance service, but they are not Police Officers, Police Community Support Officers or Paramedics and they do not respond on blue lights to emergency incidents. Instead, they are uniformed individuals who focus purely on preventing harm and providing early intervention where they can, as well as providing a first responder role to the Ambulance Service. A First Responder is someone who is local, available and able to reach someone and provide help before an ambulance arrives (an example of this could be being the first on scene where someone has experienced a fall).

Service Desk Analyst

Based at Alverton Courts HQ the service desk provide IT support processing telephone calls, issues and requests from the fire service solving what is possible over the phone or remotely and passing remaining calls to other department functions for resolution.

Desktop Support Engineer

With a base at Alverton Court HQ this team provide on-site support to the Fire service. This involves fault resolution, equipment delivery general IT Support in the fire stations

Information Technology Security Officer

Manages the risk and defences against cyber threats, triaging and prioritising remedial and preventative cyber security work  across the department.

ICT Contracts Advisor

Manages the portfolio of ICT contracts and finances alerting business owners of IT contracts coming near their end so that decisions can be made towards renewal or replacement.

Server and Storage Engineer

Manages and maintains the server environment on which all applications depend. This includes backing up data, applying security patches to the server operating systems and general housekeeping of the server estate.

Network Engineer

Manages and maintains the telephony systems and network equipment across the estate which provides connectivity between sites and allows computers and phones to connect to corporate systems and services

Operational Technology Engineer

Provides support and maintenance of in vehicle mobile data terminals, station end equipment used to alert fire fighters of an incident, management of radios and other mobilising equipment.

Application Engineers

This team support all the applications used by the Fire and Rescue Service including Vision, CFRMIS, SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 platform. The team also provide development of simple applications using Microsoft Power Apps and SharePoint.

Development Engineers

This team provide bespoke software development from simple to service wide applications including interfacing systems to improve efficiency and  double keying of data.

Database Engineers

Tis team have specialist skills in managing the databases used by the service. They also assist business intelligence by providing data sets from applications and systems so that report and dashboards can be produced.

Geographic Information System Engineers

The geographic information system team manage all aspects of mapping across the suite of applications used ensuring address data us current and can support major operations with geographic data and situational awareness tools.

Equipment Manager

Our equipment manager plays a critical role in ensuring our firefighters have the right tools and equipment for any situation. They manage the purchasing, testing, and maintenance of a wide range of specialist equipment. This includes breathing apparatus for fighting fires and managing chemical situations, cutting equipment for use in car crashes, and first aid equipment. Their expertise ensures that our firefighters have the resources to tackle any emergency, saving lives and property. 

Vehicle Technician

Our vehicle technicians work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure our diverse fleet of fire vehicles is always ready to respond to emergencies 24/7. They are responsible for maintaining a wide range of vehicles, from operational response cars, traditional fire engines, to high-reach vehicles and water bowsers. Their dedication ensures our firefighters can safely and effectively respond to any incident, from house fires, major road traffic collisions, water rescues and moorland fires. 

Hydrant Technician

You’ll have seen the yellow posts with the big ‘H’ written on them – these are fire hydrants and are where our firefighters draw on water to use to extinguish fires or help deal with chemical incidents.  Our hydrant technicians ensure this extensive network is in top condition, guaranteeing a reliable water supply for our firefighters. Their work is crucial in providing the water resources needed to protect lives and property in emergencies. 

Estates Surveyor

Our estates surveyors are responsible for ensuring our fire stations are safe, well-maintained, and compliant with building regulations. They manage the upkeep of our buildings, ensuring they provide suitable accommodation for our vehicles, equipment, and firefighters. Their work is vital in supporting our operational readiness, providing safe and efficient spaces for our firefighters to train, respond to emergencies, and ultimately, keep our communities safe.

Scrutiny

Jo Coles, Deputy Mayor for Policing, Fire and Crime holds regular online public meetings with North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.

Next meeting Thursday 21 November, full details: “Your Fire Service, Your Say” – Jo Coles, Deputy Mayor for Policing Fire and Crime, to host online public meeting driven by interest from the public.

The technical information

The technical documents which outline the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service statutory duties which enable them to have the right resources in the right place and at the right time are published on their website, here: Introduction – North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service

Useful Links