Business Administration Apprentice Cheshire Fire & Rescue Service

Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service has a long and proud tradition for innovation and taking a lead on both the safety of the communities it serves and the people it employs. Our vision is ‘a Cheshire where there are no preventable deaths, injuries and damage from fires and other emergencies’ and our mission ‘is to help create safer communities, to rescue people and protect economic, environmental and community interests’. The Service is led by the Chief Fire Officer and the Service Management Team and provides a 24 hour service to emergency incidents to just over 1 million people across the four unitary council areas of: Halton, Warrington, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester. The Service responds to all emergency calls from the public for assistance. Many emergency calls however are not to fires, but to incidents where members of the community are trapped in vehicles following road traffic collisions, trapped in machinery, or trapped in less life threatening circumstances as well as being called to chemical spillages and toxic emissions. The Service is also required to deal with many other domestic situations, such as flooding, storm damage, people unable to gain access to premises, animals in distress etc. Currently, approximately 15,105 emergency calls are received each year, 2,665 of which relate to property fires, 7,288 to other incidents and 4,778 to false alarms, including unfortunately 374 malicious calls. The Service has a comprehensive plan to improve response times across Cheshire, Halton and Warrington. The plan, which has involved the building of four new fire stations at Alsager, Lymm, Penketh and Powey Lane was the subject of a widespread public consultation. Additionally the Service has built a state of the art safety and life skills centre adjoining the fire station at Lymm which delivers educational programmes targeted at schools, new parents and carers of older and vulnerable people. Cheshire Fire & Rescue Service operates: • 28 Fire Stations • 3 Community Safety Centres • 3 Fire Protection Offices • A Headquarters, Training Centre and Workshops based at Sadler Road, Winsford • A safety and life skills centre in Lymm, Safety Central The Service also provides community safety advice, which helps to reduce risks and to improve community and public safety and business safety and safety at work. Staff are employed in a variety of roles including operational fire-fighters, professional, specialist, technical, administrative and manual roles. As at 7th February 2024 the overall staff number within the Service are 864. The split between operational and support staff is 655 and 209 respectively. There are a number of different operational shift patterns in existence across the Service including Wholetime (12 hour shifts), Nucleus crewing, (12 hour day shifts) Day Crewing, DC1, (12 hour day shifts, self rostering and 12 hours on-call at night) and On Call. Cheshire Fire Authority is committed to ensuring its LGBT staff and volunteers feel fully supported and are able to be themselves at work. This is achieved through a staff LGBT Champion, an elected Member Champion for Equality and Diversity and the Chief Fire Officer, as Chair of the Service’s Equality Task Group, who provide leadership and a focus for LGBT issues. The organisation has a vibrant LGBT Staff Network, called Firepride, which is open to all staff. A recently launched Straight Allies Programme enables employees who want to get involved, opportunities to support their LGBT colleagues and communities. The organisation is a member of the Stonewall Diversity Champions programme and in 2023 the Service hacome 5th in Stonewall’s Top 100 Employers in the Workplace Equality Index, which ranks organisations on their approach to LGBT equality. We have once again been ranked the top performing emergency service in the UK and the top North West employer.