| Prevention: As a member of the Gloucestershire Road Safety Partnership, we take a lead for road safety education as part of the Safe Systems Approach, and we use both national and local trends to prioritise our prevention activity. GFRS works closely with the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) and the NFCC to support preventative and educational road safety initiatives throughout the year.
Run by GFRS SkillZONE is the county’s only purpose-built, interactive safety education centre. Designed as a life-size indoor village, it features realistic home, community, road, cyber, and criminal justice zones. Immersive, scenario-based learning experiences for people of all ages, are held here with a particular focus on children and young people. From here we deliver safety education and bespoke programmes for schools, community groups, and individuals. Topics include fire safety, road safety, water safety, online safety, criminal justice, and more.
The prevention team also reach out and visit local schools and sixth form with road safety and driver safety educational content and attend local community events. We actively support for national campaigns as part of regular awareness raising activities.
Response: Every fire engine is equipped with state-of-the-art specialist tools to assist in gaining access, extracting occupants, and working in difficult environments. GFRS provides an enhanced response to incidents involving large vehicles through the deployment of the Special Incident Support Unit (SISU). This is specialist vehicle equipped to support fire crews at complex or large-scale incidents and is equipped with enhanced heavy cutting, lifting and access platforms to meet the demands of such incidents.
Our firefighters are trained and skilled to deal with extrications and medical interventions. | Increasing numbers of alternatively powered vehicles, and new manufacturing techniques and materials pose different challenges for responding fire crews. The population continues to increase, and more people mean more cars on roads. RTCs were raised as a concern by residents of the county, with driving standards in more rural areas, younger people being more at risk, and lithium battery fires highlighted. Nationally, since 2014, there has been a general downward trend in the number of people killed or seriously injured in RTCs in Great Britain. The most recent data we have for Gloucestershire shows that what had been a declining trend in people killed and seriously injured increased in 2023 but fell again slightly in 2024.
We have an aspiration as a county to achieve a 50% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured on Gloucestershire’s roads by 2032. There are ongoing and planned improvement to major road infrastructure over the next five years. |