We are seeking views on a proposal to change the duty system for the wholetime fire engine at Fleetwood Fire Station from 2/2/4 to flexible day crewing (FDC) for a trial period.
In our Annual Service Plan for 2026-27, we stated our intention to review all our services to meet changing risk and demand in Lancashire, including trialling different ways of working that make better use of our resources and inform our approach to delivering services in the future. This proposal is the first of a series of trials we are planning.
FDC is the best system to meet Fleetwood’s community risk and incident levels. It would mean the fire station is completely staffed by local people.
You can find out more information about the consultation online or download the consultation document.
Take part in the consultation: Fleetwood Fire Station Flexible Day Crewing Trial Consultation – Fill in form
Consultation closes at midnight on Tuesday 30 June 2026.
To change the crewing arrangements at Fleetwood Fire Station for a trial period.
Fleetwood Fire Station is located on Radcliffe Road in the town and has two fire engines:
1. One wholetime fire engine crewed by firefighters working the wholetime 2/2/4 duty system.
2. One on-call fire engine crewed by on-call firefighters.
We propose changing the duty system for the wholetime fire engine from 2/2/4 to flexible day crewing (FDC) for a trial period. FDC is the best system to meet Fleetwood’s community risk and incident levels. It would mean the fire station is completely staffed by local people.
This would mean no change to emergency cover during the daytime however firefighters would respond from their home at night (as per on-call arrangements), instead of from the station. A change to FDC will increase the time it takes to respond to emergencies during the evenings (approximately four minutes) but does not affect our ability to meet our response standards.
In our Annual Service Plan for 2026-27, we stated our intention to review all our services to meet changing risk and demand in Lancashire, including trialling different ways of working that make better use of our resources and inform our approach to delivering services in the future. This proposal is the first of a series of trials we are planning.
If agreed, the trial would begin in summer 2026 for a period of 18 months and would be evaluated every six months to measure any impacts on emergency response, fire engine availability, prevention activity and business fire safety services.
Help make Lancashire safer!
Our Community Risk Management Plan is a five-year plan for how we will make Lancashire safer.
To help shape our next plan, we are consulting residents, businesses, partner agencies, community groups, and employees in two phases.
This is phase one: we want to understand the needs and expectations of the people who live and work in our county. We are not proposing any changes at this stage; we are asking what is important to you and your views on our service.
We will use your feedback to develop our draft plan and develop options for how our services may be delivered in the future before consulting you again in more detail in phase two during summer / autumn 2026.
Phase one of the consultation is now closed. If you require any further information, please email consultation@lancsfirerescue.org.uk
Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service's (LFRS) Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) is a five-year plan for how we will make Lancashire safer. We have started work on our next CRMP, which will set out the direction of the Service from 2027 to 2032, based on the greatest risks to the people and communities of Lancashire. The CRMP 2022-27 can be viewed on our website.
The environment we operate in is constantly changing and new risks to our communities frequently emerge. It is our job to make sure we are equipped to deal with these changing risks by adapting our services and skills to prevent, protect and respond effectively. This is the purpose of our CRMP. It will be supported by six core strategies:
To help shape the CRMP and options for how we may deliver services in the future, we intend to engage and consult with residents, businesses, partner agencies, community groups, and employees in two phases.
This is phase one: we want to understand the needs and expectations of the people who live and work in our county. We will explain the challenges and drivers for change and invite views on our proposed direction of travel.
We will use your feedback to develop our draft plan and develop options for how our services may be delivered in the future before consulting you again in more detail in phase two during summer / autumn.
Our aim is to make Lancashire safer and our priorities are:
· Valuing our people so they can focus on making Lancashire safer
· Preventing fires and other emergencies from happening
· Protecting people and properties when fires happen
· Responding to fires and other emergencies quickly and competently
· Delivering value for money in how we use our resources
Service – Making Lancashire safer is the most important thing we do.
Trust – We trust the people we work with
Respect – We respect each other.
Integrity – We do what we say we will do.
Valued – We actively listen to others.
Empowered – We contribute to decisions and improvements
In 2025, LFRS set the national benchmark for excellence, achieving the best inspection outcome by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services. The Service was awarded six ‘outstanding’ and five ‘good’ ratings across the 11 inspection areas.
More performance information is available on our website.
Our budget in 2025-26 was £77.5 million. This is made up from several funding sources:
Council tax – 54%
Business rates – 28%
Government grants – 18%
Our budget has not matched rising costs and new demands in recent years - real-term funding has dropped by £10 million since 2016.
We are proud of the value for money we provide – we are one of the biggest fire and rescue services in the country, yet our council tax is below the national average. Lancashire residents pay £89.73 per year for our services (on a band D property) and fire and rescue accounts for just 4% of the overall council tax bill.
However, we have a shortfall in our funding – at least £5 million over the next five years - and must make savings to maintain our services and make vital investment in our service.
We have 1,160 employees:
Wholetime firefighters work full-time with LFRS.
On-call firefighters often have another job outside LFRS and respond to emergencies in their communities from home or work when needed.
Service support staff are specialist employees who provide technical expertise in a range of functions.
There are 39 fire stations across the county plus Service headquarters which is located in Fulwood and our Leadership and Development Centre in Chorley.
Our fleet has 58 fire engines:
26 crewed by wholetime firefighters
32 crewed by on-call firefighters
We also have numerous specialist vehicles and equipment ranging from aerial ladder platforms to rescue boats.
Although we have 58 fire engines in total, they are not all available all of the time and availability fluctuates. Through the daytime, particularly during the working week, the number reduces as some of our on-call fire engines are unavailable due to challenges of recruiting and retaining enough on-call firefighters, particularly in our rural areas. This is a national challenge.
Our county is highly diverse in terms of both deprivation and affluence, containing some of the highest and lowest risk areas in the country. LFRS provides a high level of service for a comparatively modest budget and does so more efficiently on a cost per-person basis than many other services. This efficiency is achieved despite facing greater diversity and disparity in population needs than most comparable services.
Prevention: Making safety interventions in the homes of those most at risk of fire and supporting people to adopt safe practices.
We constantly endeavour to prevent fires and other emergencies from happening. Prevention is always preferable to response and is by far the most effective way to make Lancashire safer. Our approach recognises life’s different stages and we focus on helping people start safe, live safe, age safe, and be safe on our roads and around water. We identify those who are most vulnerable in our communities, and design and target our prevention activities to support people to adopt safe practices and reduce their risk. Our main service is the home fire safety check service, where we make practical interventions in the homes of those most at risk of having a fire.
Protection: Supporting businesses and landlords to keep their buildings safe and taking action if they do not.
We aim to reduce the number of fires that occur in commercial premises and the impact on life, property, and business disruption when fires do occur. We support businesses, employers, and landlords to meet their legal duties and keep people safe in their buildings with a county-wide inspection programme. We take a risk-based approach to inspecting businesses: fire safety inspectors focus their activity on complex, high-risk premises and operational crews check lower risk premises such as schools, shops and offices through our business fire safety check service.
Response: Responding to fires and a wide range of other types of emergencies quickly and competently.
We strive to deliver the highest standards of operational response by continuously planning, preparing, and training for emergencies. Risks in communities are changing and the types of emergencies we attend are increasingly varied. We respond to everything from fires and road traffic collisions to flooding and building collapses. We also support other emergency services by responding to missing person searches and gaining entry for medical emergencies to support North West Ambulance Service. We constantly review and adapt our approach to ensure we have the right appliances, equipment, skills, and technology to respond to any incident quickly and competently.
Service support: Specialist functions that support the delivery of frontline prevention, protection and response services.
Support services are essential and incorporate a wide range of vital functions, from human resources to fleet and engineering, that support the delivery of prevention, protection and response services. Support services ensure that operations run smoothly behind the scenes and our frontline staff are equipped to deliver services.
The locations, numbers and types of fire stations, vehicles, equipment and skills with which we operate are matched to community risks and incident levels across the county. Our prevention and protection services are also targeted at reducing incidents in the areas of highest risk. Risks are identified annually in our Strategic Assessment of Risk and our Community Risk Management Plan sets out how we respond to them. Community risks are constantly changing and new risks frequently emerge. Wildfires, illegal waste site incidents, and e-charging fires are all examples of emergencies that have become higher risks in recent years.
The top five risks in Lancashire at present are:
Commercial property fires
Wildfires
Deliberate building fires
Flooding
Accidental house fires
The full list can be viewed in the Strategic Assessment of Risk on the Service’s website.
Demand also changes over time: the number of incidents we respond to has fluctuated over the last 15 years.
What has changed is the type of incidents we respond to:
Fires have dropped from representing 41% to only 28% of all incidents.
False alarms are broadly the same, representing 43% now compared to 48% in 2010-11.
Special service incidents have increased from 11% of all incidents to 29%.
Primary fires are generally serious fires involving property or any fires involving casualties, rescues, or any fire attended by five or more fire engines.
Secondary fires are generally small outdoor fires, not involving people or property.
Special service incidents are made up of many different activities such as such road traffic collisions, flooding, and assisting other agencies (for example gaining entry to properties on behalf of the police and ambulance service during medical emergencies).
False alarms are where we attend a location believing there to be a fire but, on arrival, discover that it was a false alarm. This could be due to a fire alarm operating in error, calls from the public who believe there is a fire, or malicious calls.
Most incidents, including house fires, happen between 10am and 10pm, peaking between 4pm and 8pm.
Changing risk: risks change over time, differ by area and demographic, and need different interventions to reduce the likelihood of happening or to lessen the consequences.
Changing demand: the number and types of fires we attend has gone down and the types of emergencies we respond to has changed, with incidents such as assisting other agencies on the rise, and the challenges of dealing with climate change in respect of flooding and wildfire increasing.
Fire engine availability: the number of fire engines available fluctuates during each day and the lowest availability is now often when demand is highest, particularly in rural areas where on-call firefighter availability is reduced due to recruitment and retention challenges. We want to balance this to a sustainable model that provides more resources when demand is highest.
Lancashire’s population: the demographic profile of communities is changing and more vulnerable people require tailored prevention support.
Budget pressures: funding provided to the Service has not kept pace with rising costs and future funding remains uncertain, requiring efficiency savings to ensure ongoing financial sustainability.
LFRS buildings: many fire stations are outdated and not fit for modern operational needs, maintenance costs are increasing and vital investment is needed.
Technology and innovation: there are opportunities to modernise the types of vehicles we use and how we get the right skilled people and equipment to incidents as quickly and safely as possible.
Future investment: as a high performing fire and rescue service, we need to continually invest in our people, systems, and assets to deliver the best possible services in ever increasingly efficient ways.
Any future changes aim to address our challenges and capitalise on opportunities for the purpose of meeting Lancashire’s needs now and in the future:
Re-locating or merging stations and vehicles to better match risk and demand.
Changing staffing (duty) systems to deploy resources more flexibly based on risk and demand.
Reviewing the response model for attending various types of emergencies and for how we respond to incidents arising from the actuation of a fire alarm system.
Reviewing the way prevention, protection and support services are delivered.
Rationalising our estate, reinvesting in training facilities and improving the efficiency and suitability of our buildings.
Harnessing the benefits of technological change to improve how services are delivered.
For a downloadable copy of this document visit publication and consultation.
The online survey is now closed.
Your feedback is being analysed independently. We will use the feedback to draft our CRMP 2027-32 and develop options for how we deliver our services in the future before consulting again in more detail in phase two during summer / autumn 2026. Thank you for your participation.
Glossary
· CRMP: Community Risk Management Plan
· False alarms: Where the fire and rescue service attends a location believing there to be a fire but, on arrival, discover that it was a false alarm. This could be due to a fire alarm operating in error, calls from the public who believe there is a fire, or malicious calls.
· LFRS: Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service
· Primary fires: Generally serious fires involving property or any fires involving casualties, rescues, or any fire attended by five or more fire engines.
· On-call firefighters: Firefighters who often have another job outside LFRS and respond to emergencies in their communities from home or work when needed.
· Prevention: Making safety interventions in the homes of those most at risk of fire and supporting people to adopt safe practices.
· Protection: Supporting businesses and landlords to keep their buildings safe and taking action if they do not.
· Response: Responding to fires and a wide range of other types of emergencies quickly and competently.
· Secondary fires: Generally small outdoor fires, not involving people or property.
· Special service incidents: Made up of many different activities such as such road traffic collisions, flooding, and assisting other agencies (eg gaining entry to properties on behalf of the police and ambulance service during medical emergencies).
· Service support: Supporting frontline services and ensuring that the service operates effectively.
· Service support staff: Specialist employees who provide technical expertise in a range of functions.
· Wholetime firefighters: Firefighters who work full-time with LFRS.
Results of Council tax precept 2026 - 2027
We consulted on a proposal to increase the fire and rescue service council tax precept for 2026/27 by £5 per year for a Band D property. The precept is the amount households contribute through their council tax towards local fire and rescue services.
What the £5 increase means
A £5 rise for Band D works out at 10 pence per week. Here’s how the change affects each council tax band:
Band A – £63.15 in 2026/27 (was £59.82) — increase of £3.33 per year / 6p per week
Band B – £73.68 in 2026/27 (was £69.79) — increase of £3.89 per year / 7p per week
Band C – £84.20 in 2026/27 (was £79.76) — increase of £4.44 per year / 9p per week
Band D – £94.73 in 2026/27 (was £89.73) — increase of £5.00 per year / 10p per week
Band E – £115.78 in 2026/27 (was £109.67) — increase of £6.11 per year / 12p per week
Band F – £136.83 in 2026/27 (was £129.61) — increase of £7.22 per year / 14p per week
Band G – £157.88 in 2026/27 (was £149.55) — increase of £8.33 per year / 16p per week
Band H – £189.46 in 2026/27 (was £179.46) — increase of £10.00 per year / 19p per week
Public consultation results
Our public consultation ran from 11 December 2025 to 4 February 2026.
We received 970 responses, with the following results:
75% supported the proposed increase
6% neither supported nor opposed
18% did not support
<1% responded “Don’t know”
Feedback from the Fire Brigades Union was considered as part of the budget-setting process.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service consulted the public on its council tax precept for the year ahead.
The precept is the amount people pay through their council tax for fire and rescue services.
Our council tax precept is currently below the national average for fire and rescue services, and fire accounts for a small portion of council tax in Lancashire – around 4% of your total bill.
The consultation closed on Wednesday 4 February 2026.
Our budget
Our budget is made up of council tax precept (54%), business rates (28%), and government grants (18%).
Our council tax precept is currently below the national average for fire and rescue services, and fire accounts for a small portion of council tax in Lancashire – around 4% of your total bill.
Most of our budget is spent on the day-to-day expenditure needed to provide our services including employee pay, firefighting equipment, energy, and fuel.
We have a strong track record of balancing the budget and maintaining vital services that represent excellent value for money to the people of Lancashire.
However, our budget has not matched rising costs and new demands in recent years. Real-term funding has dropped by £10 million since 2016. There is a shortfall in our funding, at least £5 million over the next five years, and we must make savings to maintain our services and make vital investment in our service.
Consultation
We were asking for your support for a small increase to the council tax precept in 2026-27 - the equivalent of £5 per year (on a Band D property). This would still be below the national average for fire and rescue services.
The impact on each band of property would be as follows:
Band A – an increase of £3.33 per year, taking the total from £59.82 to £63.15
Band B – an increase of £3.89 per year, taking the total from £69.79 to £73.68
Band C – an increase of £4.44 per year, taking the total from £79.76 to £84.20
Band D – an increase of £5.00 per year, taking the total from £89.73 to £94.73
Band E – an increase of £6.11 per year, taking the total from £109.67 to £115.78
Band F – an increase of £7.22 per year, taking the total from £129.61 to £136.83
Band G – an increase of £8.33 per year, taking the total from £149.55 to £157.88
Band H – an increase of £10.00 per year, taking the total from £179.46 to £189.46
This increase means our services will cost 14p per person per day overall.
Delivering value for money
In 2024-25, some of our services included:
16,963 incidents attended
23,533 home fire safety checks delivered in Lancashire homes
69,466 children and young people received prevention education
32,549 people took part in road safety education
3,637 business fire safety checks delivered in Lancashire businesses
You can find out much more about the services we provided last year at www.lancsfirerescue.org.uk/performance.
Our financial planning
Making sure we continue to provide quality services to the public and at the same time meet future community needs are priorities in our financial planning.
Our plans for 2026 and beyond include investment in our buildings, training facilities, vehicles, and equipment, in line with our community risk management plan, which sets out how we will keep people in Lancashire safe.
We will continue to use our resources efficiently and provide the best services for the whole of Lancashire. View our financial strategy.
Next steps
Lancashire’s Combined Fire Authority will consider the responses from budget consultation at a meeting on Monday 23 February 2026 and will decide whether to increase the council tax precept.
The Service consulted on its proposed council tax precept for 2025-26 from 7 January to 3 February 2025.
The precept is the amount people pay through their council tax for fire and rescue services.
We asked for support for a small increase in 2025-26 - the equivalent of £5 per year (on a Band D property). The impact on each band of property was as follows:
Band A – an increase of £3.33 per year, taking the total from £56.49 to £59.82
Band B – an increase of £3.89 per year, taking the total from £65.90 to £69.79
Band C – an increase of £4.44 per year, taking the total from £75.32 to £79.76
Band D – an increase of £5.00 per year, taking the total from £84.73 to £89.73
Band E – an increase of £6.11 per year, taking the total from £103.56 to £109.67
Band F – an increase of £7.22 per year, taking the total from £122.39 to £129.61
Band G – an increase of £8.33 per year, taking the total from £141.22 to £149.55
Band H – an increase of £10.00 per year, taking the total from £169.46 to £179.46
Results
602 people responded to the consultation. Overall, 76% supported the increase:
Strongly support 57%
Support 19%
Neither support nor oppose 6%
Oppose 6%
Strongly oppose 11%
Don’t know 0%
The results were considered and the council tax increase agreed by Lancashire’s Combined Fire Authority on 17 February 2025. Read the full report .
Our council tax precept is below the national average for fire and rescue services, and fire accounts for a small portion of council tax in Lancashire – around 4% of the total bill. Find out more about how we are funded.
Thank you to everyone who participated.
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