Prevention: We carry out thousands of activities each year aimed at preventing dwelling fires. We run strong awareness raising and education campaigns both targeted and general. The Service follows the 'Fire Kills' campaign plan throughout the year, with social media posts and videos driven by data, articles in the media, radio interviews, and physical community engagement with operational crews and community safety advisors present at hot spot areas.

Comprehensive HFSVs are carried out by our specialist Community Safety Advisors (CSAs) and by wholetime crews, using data to target those people more vulnerable than others using established risk criteria. GFRS's SkillZONE is the county's 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.

Response: Our response to a dwelling fire is two engines, unless it is known that the property is a specific risk. If there are people trapped in the property, then three engines are sent. Any property with additional risk will be identified by our mobilising team. Internal collaboration is crucial for keeping firefighters and the public safe and information sourced through visits undertaken by our CSAs and fire crews is shared quickly and accurately to ensure a timely, appropriate, and safe response. Externally we securely share information with partners such as district nurses, community teams. GFRS firefighters are trauma-trained, and every single fire engine has

Recruiting and retaining ‘on-call’ firefighters is an increasing challenge faced by all FRSs, however as a predominantly on-call fire service the potential impact of this is high for GFRS. This can impact our ability to get fire engines on the road and to incidents quickly.

The fire sector has seen an increase in dwelling fires due to the increasing use of alternatively powered vehicles that need charging at home, and the number of battery cells supporting solar installations in homes present significant challenges for firefighters. Fires involving this alternative energy supply are difficult to extinguish and is an emerging risk for the community and responders due to the batteries' long burn time and the difficulty extinguishing the fire.

Since March 2020 the number of fire-related fatalities has shown an increase, and until recently the number of fire related injuries has also seen an upward trend.

Deliberate fires have seen a fall since 2022, but there has been a slight upturn observed over the past 12 months. The county has an increasing population that is becoming ‘older’ on average, plus pockets of significant deprivation these are just two examples which increase the chances of accidental fires and fatalities, it is important to increase targeted prevention activities to meet this challenge in areas that are more difficult to reach within our target times and where populations exhibit higher numbers of people that meet one or more nationally recognised risk factors.