Gloucestershire local community risks

The Fire and Rescue National Framework for England outline the requirements for every fire and rescue authority to assess all foreseeable fire and rescue related risks that could affect their communities.

GFRS carries out annual risk assessments at a fire station level, each hazardous event relevant to fire and rescue in Gloucestershire is assessed in terms of its likelihood and potential consequences, based on a 'worst-case' scenario to arrive at a risk score. Scoring matrices are in place to ensure clarity and consistency in the approach, and the risk score is a multiplication of the likelihood and consequences assessment.

Likelihood is scored between 1 (low) and 5 (high) and is informed by the number of relevant incidents per year, based on observations over a three-year period.

Consequence is also scored 1 (low) to 5 (high) across a range of relevant categories as listed below:

Casualties

Disruption to essential services

Economic

Environmental

Evacuation and shelter

Fatalities

Public perception

Risk is considered and maintained at an operational ‘station area’ level to enable a more specific and tailored approach to resourcing, equipment, and training of staff. Following assessment, the average score across all station areas is used to describe the county-wide risk level for each fire and rescue related risk.

Public engagement activities were carried out in autumn 2024 ensuring there was opportunity for residents' insights to inform our assessments as we began to build towards this CRMP. This has helped us to understand better where we may be able to make a specific difference. Following this we could see the highest scoring risks at a county level are shown in the table on the right. More risks and further detail against these are in place in our CRP, also available on the GFRS website on our publications and reports page.

GFRS Community Risk Management Plan 2026-2030