The consultation has now closed. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their views on our draft Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) 2027-2032. We are currently reviewing all the feedback received from members of the public, partners and our employees. The responses will help shape the final version of the CRMP and inform how Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service delivers services over the next five years. We will publish a summary of the consultation findings and explain how the feedback has influenced the final plan once the review process has been completed.
Earlier this year Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service consulted the public, partners, and employees to understand the needs and expectations of people who live and work in our county. We received over 2,000 responses and used the feedback to help draft our new Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP).
The draft CRMP sets out how we will make Lancashire safer over the next five years (2027 to 2032) based on the greatest risks to the people and communities of Lancashire. It explains the outcomes we want to achieve, the areas we will focus on, and how we will measure success. This is phase two of our consultation: we want your views on the community risks identified in our plan and how we intend to prevent and respond to them. Your feedback will be used to shape the final version of the CRMP and how we deliver services in the future. Phase two of the consultation has closed.
Welcome to our consultation. I am pleased to present our draft Community Risk Management Plan for 2027-2032, which sets out how Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service will continue to make the county safer. This plan explains foreseeable safety risks in Lancashire and how we will deliver services that aim to protect our communities from those risks.
Lancashire is a diverse and changing county. It is home to more than 1.6 million people and a wide range of risks - from fire and road traffic collisions to flooding and wildfires. These risks are not evenly distributed, which means our approach must be evidence-led, targeted, and adaptable.
Over recent years, we have seen a shift in demand. Fires now make up a smaller proportion of our work, while other types of emergencies such as rescues, severe weather incidents, and humanitarian activities are increasing in both scale and complexity. At the same time, we are operating in a challenging financial environment, with rising costs, global instability and uncertainty in future funding.
Despite these challenges, we have strong foundations. Our last inspection results recognised that we are one of the highest performing services in the country, reflecting our commitment to providing the best possible services.
This plan builds on those foundations. Our focus remains clear: preventing emergencies wherever possible with targeted outreach to our most vulnerable residents; protecting people and property in the built environment and supporting local businesses to comply with fire safety legislation; and providing a swift and competent response when incidents do occur. Alongside this, we will continue to invest in our people, use digital, data and technological advancements to drive continuous improvement, and strive to deliver improving value for money for the communities we serve.
Importantly, this plan has been shaped through engagement and consultation with our communities, staff, and partners. Thank you to everyone who took part in the first phase of our consultation earlier this year; your views helped us to understand what matters most and ensure that our priorities reflect the needs of Lancashire. Now we want to know what you think about the plan, and I encourage those living and working in Lancashire to take part in this second phase of consultation. Your views at this stage will help us to refine it further, before the plan is published early next year.
Looking ahead, we know that risk will continue to evolve. Environmental changes, population shifts, and wider global and societal pressures will influence the demands placed on our Service. This plan aims to ensure that we are sustainable, forward-looking, responsive and ready to adapt where needed, so that we can continue to make Lancashire safer.
Jon Charters
Chief Fire Officer
Our purpose is to make Lancashire safer. It is what we are here for. We are committed to ensuring that everything we do contributes to improving the safety of Lancashire’s diverse communities.
An innovative and efficient fire and rescue service delivering outstanding services in Lancashire’s communities. Our vision is what we aspire to achieve over the life of this plan. We aim to be sustainable, adaptable, and ready to respond to future risks in Lancashire. Digital, data, and evidence drive our approach to making communities safer.
Our priorities define the areas upon which we concentrate our activities and resources. They represent those matters we deem most significant in supporting the achievement of our purpose to make Lancashire safer and, each year, are translated into specific actions as set out in our Annual Service Plan. Continuous digital improvement supports efficiency and innovation across all our priorities.
Valuing our people so they can focus on making Lancashire safer.
Preventing fires and other emergencies from happening.
Protecting people and property when they happen.
Responding to fires and other emergencies quickly and competently.
Using digital, data and technology to drive continuous improvement.
Delivering value for money in how we use our resources.
Our values are the qualities that we believe are the most important to us and describe the expectations the public have of us and that we have of each other. We use them every day to influence how we work to achieve our priorities and guide the professional behaviours we expect of our staff. We strive to make Lancashire safer in a way that is guided by strong principles of:
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.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service exists to make Lancashire safer. We serve a large and diverse county with densely populated urban areas, coastal communities, historic market towns, and extensive rural locations. Our role is broader than responding to fires. We work every day to prevent harm, protect people, property, and the environment, respond to emergencies, support national resilience, and work with partners to keep communities safe.
Our team is made up of firefighters, specialist teams and support services, alongside our shared emergency control room at Northwest Fire Control, who all operate cohesively to keep Lancashire safe. Together, we provide prevention activity in homes and communities, fire protection and business safety work, and emergency response. Our operational capability is undertaken by our firefighters, either wholetime where this is their primary job or on-call where they respond to incidents from home or work as needed. Our flexible duty officers provide 24/7 cover across the county to deal with larger incidents offering tactical and strategic support. They are trained in a range of specialist skills that strengthen our frontline capability.
In addition to our fire engines, we have a range of specialist vehicles positioned across the county that include aerial ladder platforms, command units, boats and swift water responders, specialist wildfire vehicles, drones and urban search and rescue. We use dynamic resourcing to ensure our fire engines are in the best place to respond to local risk and demand as it is needed.
Our operational capability is supported by a dedicated Leadership and Development Centre and vital support departments whose knowledge and expertise ensure effective and efficient delivery of our services.
We are governed by the Lancashire Combined Fire Authority, which provides strategic leadership, scrutiny and oversight, and ensures that the Service meets its statutory responsibilities and uses public money effectively.
Lancashire is one of the most populated and urbanised shire counties within Great Britain, with a legacy of historical and industrial heritage. It includes significant urban growth, areas of high deprivation, expansive coastlines, major transport routes, industrial sites, ports, waterways, and locations of national importance. These features create varied types of risk and different demands on our Service.
Lancashire borders Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside moving to the south and the Irish sea to the west. It comprises 14 districts: the major conurbations are Lancaster, Preston, Burnley, Blackburn, Accrington, Chorley, and the seaside town of Blackpool which receives over 20 million visitors per year.
The county’s population is growing and changing. Over the last 15 years the population of Lancashire has grown by approximately 10%, rising to an estimated 1,601,645 by mid-2024. The number of domestic houses has grown by 15% over the same 15 year period. The county contains significant deprivation with five districts ranking in England’s top 20 most deprived. Blackpool is the most deprived district in the country, whilst the Ribble Valley is in the least deprived 10%.
More people are living longer, some communities experience poorer health outcomes, and climate-related risks such as flooding, heat, and wildfire are becoming more significant. Risk is not evenly distributed across Lancashire, so our approach must be targeted, evidence-led, and flexible.
Changing community risk: Climate change, emerging technologies, demographic change, deprivation, the built environment, major transport networks and evolving patterns of vulnerability are reshaping risk across Lancashire.
Demand and complexity: Demand is not only about volume. Incidents are increasingly varied and some are more complex, protracted and resource intensive than ever before.
Digital and data opportunity: Better use of data, digital tools, AI and automation can improve targeting, mobilising, productivity, learning and decision-making across the organisation.
Partnership working: No single organisation can manage every risk alone. Strong collaboration with local authorities, health partners, police, other fire and rescue services, resilience partners, and voluntary agencies remains essential.
The drivers influencing our plan create strategic challenges for our service. To meet these demands we must adapt to the changing risk whilst maintaining affordability and supporting our workforce.
The Service faces sustained financial pressures that will impact how we plan and deliver resources over the life of the CRMP. While overall demand may appear stable, the complexity of incidents is increasing, requiring broader investment in capability and response. At the same time, there is uncertainty around future government funding and pay awards, making long-term financial planning more difficult. Inflationary pressures across pay, energy, construction and supplies continue to drive up costs, reducing flexibility in budgets. The Service also faces rising capital and infrastructure costs, with ageing buildings requiring greater maintenance and investment, and significant increases in the cost of key assets such as fire engines and other specialist assets. Overall, these combined factors create a challenging financial environment, requiring careful prioritisation and ongoing efficiency to maintain service delivery.
As society changes, public sector workforce retention and availability are becoming more challenging across the Service. Sustainability is being affected by a mix of financial, social, wellbeing and labour market pressures, all of which influence the Service’s ability to attract, retain and effectively use its people. On-call availability is a national challenge and whilst in Lancashire we have above average availability, we still face significant challenges. We need a skilled, healthy, inclusive, and adaptable workforce with the leadership, competence and confidence, to meet current and future risk. Over the life of this plan, we will focus on improving retention, strengthening on-call and wholetime availability and making best use of our people, aligned to risk, demand and community needs.
In response to these pressures facing the Service, a sustained focus on productivity and efficiency is helping to mitigate costs while maintaining operational standards. Efficiencies have been achieved through better use of existing resources, including reducing overtime expenditure and aligning crewing models with sector norms, delivering significant savings without adversely affecting emergency response. Data and digital tools are helping the Service be more efficient in how resources are deployed, and further value is being realised by extending the life of fleet assets to maximise return on investment, helping to offset rising capital costs. Our latest fleet of fire engines will have a 20 year lifespan, as opposed to 12 years in recent times. In addition, our Modern Ways of Working Forum is driving ongoing efficiencies and workforce capacity through digital innovation and improved use of technology across the organisation. Collectively, these measures demonstrate how the Service is actively managing challenges by improving efficiency, prioritising resources, and maintaining service delivery within a constrained funding environment. Our productivity and efficiency plans can be seen on our website.
Providing an overview of the foreseeable fire and rescue related risks covering a five-year period from 2027 to 2032, supported by a strategic assessment of risk and suite of core strategies. It sets out our high-level plans for tackling those risks through our people, prevention, protection, response, digital, and financial strategies, explaining the outcomes we want to achieve, the areas we will focus on and how we will measure success.
We use the National Fire Chief’s Council (NFCC) strategic framework as best practice, following the five essential components.
Defining Scope: Understanding and expanding what the CRMP process is seeking to achieve.
Hazard Identification: Recognising and describing hazards the CRMP process needs to mitigate.
Risk Analysis: Involves the process within the CRMP where the risk level of an identified hazard is determined.
Decision-Making: Key CRMP based decisions are required to ensure appropriate control measures are implemented to mitigate the risks identified.
Evaluation: Provides assurance that the CRMP is achieving the desired outcome.
Over the life of this plan, we must continue to identify new risks, reduce preventable harm, protect people, property, and the environment, and provide a resilient emergency response. To do this well, we need a CRMP that is clear about what matters most, explains how our strategies connect, and outlines how we will measure progress.
Demand changes over time. Fires make up a smaller proportion of our incidents than they once did, while special service incidents, including road traffic collisions, flooding, water rescues and assisting other agencies, now account for a greater share of our activity. At the same time, some incidents are less frequent now but more complex, protracted and resource intensive.
Whilst the number of incidents we respond to has fluctuated over the last 15 years, we have seen more overall demand in recent years than 10 or even 15 years ago. The type of incidents we respond to has also changed.
Fires have dropped from representing 42% to only 30% of all incidents. Primary fires are generally serious fires involving property or any fires involving casualties, rescues, or a fire attended by five or more fire engines. Lancashire has higher levels of primary fires compared to the national average. This can be linked to the areas of higher deprivation with increased risk factors. Secondary fires are generally small outdoor fires, not involving people or property. Through our prevention work, we continue to reduce the likelihood of fires occurring.
False alarms are broadly the same, representing 43% now compared to 46% in 2011-12. False alarms are where we attend a location believing there to be an emergency but, on arrival, discover that it was a false alarm. This could be due to calls from the public who believe there is an emergency, malicious calls, or an automatic fire alarm (AFA) operating in error.
Through our protection work, we have reduced the number of incidents we attend triggered by AFAs in commercial buildings. Only 0.4% of AFA incidents actually turn into a primary fire. We will continue to review how we can reduce false alarms further and adapt how and where we respond to fire alarm activations.
Special service incidents have increased from 12% of all incidents to 27%. Special service incidents are made up of many different activities such as 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. We have a legal duty to collaborate with police and ambulance services under the Police and Crime Act 2017 and will continue to work in partnership to ensure the best outcomes for communities across Lancashire.
To meet these demands LFRS currently provides 58 fire engines across 39 fire stations. We strive to have the first fire engine at each of the 39 fire stations available 90% of the time.
Fire engine availability (wholetime and on-call) fluctuates throughout every 24-hour period. First fire engine availability is currently 89.55% on average.
Availability peaks between 22:00 and 05:00 with an average 54 fire engines (93%) available. During this period there are an average of two incidents per hour, which is our lowest period of demand.
Availability is lowest between 08:00 and 17:00 with an average 42 fire engines available (72%). During this period there are an average of five incidents per hour, one of which is a critical fire, and one a critical emergency special service call.
Peak demand is between 17:00 and 20:00, with an average of six incidents per hour, one of which is a critical fire, and one is a critical special service call. Availability of fire engines during this period is between 46 - 52 (79% - 90%).
Peak availability and peak demand, and conversely, lowest availability and lowest demand currently do not align. Even when availability is the lowest or when demand peaks, we have sufficient resources to deal with incidents and have strong response time performance. Lancashire is the 10th largest service nationally for annual budget, per population served, fire stations provided and number of primary fires. However, LFRS is eighth in terms of total number of fire engines and joint fourth for wholetime crewed fire engines. During the lifecycle of this CRMP, we are committed to adapting our resourcing availability to align with our risk and demand, including how we measure this.
We are committed to valuing and understanding the needs of all our communities. We know the importance of giving support to our residents at greater risk of fire. There are clear links between deprivation and risk of fire. Health outcomes in some areas of Lancashire lag behind England averages, with particularly low life expectancy in Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen.
Lancashire’s population is also changing, demographically the county is predominantly White, at 86.6%, with 13.4% of residents from Black and minority ethnic groups. The population aged 65 and over is growing faster than younger age groups, and a notable share of households consist of people aged 65 and over living alone, particularly in Fylde and Wyre.
Economic pressures also affect risk and access to support. Fuel poverty affects 13% of households in Lancashire, compared with 11% nationally.
Climate change can further increase inequality in risk. It can disproportionately affect specific groups, including older people during heatwaves, people living in poor-quality housing, communities in flood-prone or highly deprived areas, and rural or isolated communities.
We recognise that barriers such as health, ethnicity, language, beliefs, poverty and other societal factors may prevent some people from accessing our services. This means we must understand where risk is greatest, remove barriers wherever we can, and tailor our prevention, protection and response activity to meet different community needs.
We seek to meet the different needs of our residents by:
Tailoring fire safety advice to meet the needs of individuals by adopting a person-centred approach.
Undertaking proactive education with integrated personalised safety measures, and advanced people protection.
Identifying potential fire hazards to particular groups, promoting safety.
Tailoring safety measures to meet individual needs.
Delivering a collaborative approach to safeguarding.
Assessing the impact of our policies, plans and decisions on different communities, mitigating negative impact on groups and continually improving.
We live in an increasingly volatile world and as our risk landscape continues to evolve, we too must continue to adapt to better prepare for, respond to and recover from the various threats that impact our Service and communities.
In order to adapt, we have a robust risk management process which identifies and assesses risk from across international, national, regional, and local hazards. To identify and assess international and national risks that we may have to prepare for and respond to, we utilise the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) and National Risk Register which is the government’s assessment of the most serious risks facing the United Kingdom. On a regional and local level, we utilise the Lancashire Resilience Forum Community Risk Register (LRF) which provides an assessment of emergencies that are likely to occur locally and the impacts if they do.
Through close working with LRF partners, we share information, data and intelligence, to strengthen our understanding of the risks and vulnerabilities facing our diverse communities. This also supports our ability to identify current and emerging organisational risks and to prepare our firefighters for potential emergencies. We draw on information from a wide range of sources, including other emergency services, the NHS, and a broad range of public and private sector partners. This joined-up approach provides a more complete and informed understanding of risk, enabling us to design and deliver public services that are more relevant, efficient and effective.
As a fire and rescue service we play a crucial role in community resilience by shifting beyond traditional emergency response to focus on proactive risk reduction, public education, and emergency preparedness alongside LRF partners. To supplement our response arrangements, we work collaboratively with partners and draw on support from specialist organisations. Where appropriate and practicable, we will continue to pursue collaborative opportunities with partners, including the police, local authorities and other emergency services to deliver activities where this demonstrably adds value for our communities.
Risk identification within our service is also informed by PESTELO analysis and supported by our Strategic Assessment of Risk which is updated annually. The risk management framework provides the ongoing assessment of emerging and changing risks and for the prioritisation of an appropriate response.
Our risk management process enables us to identify existing and emerging risks that occur in the day-to-day management of our fire and rescue service. We also analyse the types of incidents we attend including their likelihood and impact, alongside understanding community needs, and assessing current and future threats. This creates a clear picture of where and who are most at risk, allowing us to plan, resource and take targeted action through our prevention, protection, and response activities.
Read the on our website for a full analysis.
The Service’s blend of data driven identification and assessment of risk through extensive engagement with fire service professionals, community leaders and stakeholders across various sectors highlights the incident types that present the greatest risks to the communities and people of Lancashire.
Our commitment is that we will continue to carry out a significant amount of proactive work to prevent adverse events from happening and as a result, reduce the risk to communities and our workforce.
When an event does occur, we commit to being fully prepared to respond and to minimising the impact caused. Given the varied incident types we continue to respond to, this will include responding collaboratively with partner agencies, cross border with other fire and rescue services, and nationally as part of national resilience assistance. Through this assessment of risk, we have identified all the incident types that we are likely to encounter. Our highest risk activities have been identified and are outlined on the next pages.
These include domestic fires, tall building fires, commercial and industrial property fires, deliberate fires, road vehicle fires, buildings under construction fires, and waste disposal site fires.
Sadly, every year, we witness devastating fires in people’s homes that result in injuries and fatalities. Fires in tall buildings present an increased fire risk due to factors like their height, occupancy density, and potential for complex structure with limited access or egress. These incidents have the potential for severe injury and large scale loss of life, and pose significant hazards to responding agencies.
We also experience fires in commercial properties, such as the retail sector, industrial, manufacturing, hospital and educational facilities. These incidents can have a lasting impact on people, communities, economy and local infrastructure.
Road vehicle fires are primary fires occurring in vehicles used for transportation on public roads, including cars, vans, buses, motorcycles, lorries, and heavy goods vehicles. With emerging technologies and alternative fuelled vehicles, the way we fight and deal with road vehicle fires is changing.
With an increasing population more properties are being developed, when buildings are under construction, they are more susceptible to fires and are likely to spread easily.
Fires at waste disposal sites can be complex and protracted causing a significant impact on local communities, residents’ health, infrastructure and the environment.
Each year we also experience deliberate fires in buildings that are completely unavoidable, these can cause severe injury and even death as well as significant damage.
These include wildfires, flooding and hazardous materials. The impacts of climate change, increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires and wide area flooding, have required us to adapt our strategies and resources to deal with these evolving threats. Both wildfires and floods can lead to significant economic and environmental damage, necessitating the need for increased preparedness, effective techniques and post-incident recovery efforts to minimise these impacts.
Due to the diverse nature of the Lancashire landscape, our communities can be at risk from coastal and tidal flooding, river flooding (fluvial), surface water (pluvial) and reservoir flooding, albeit the likelihood of these events occurring varies from 1 in 5 years to 1 in 1000 years.
It has been identified through the Lancashire Resilience Forum Community Risk Register that there are approximately 65,000 properties at high or very high risk from flooding within Lancashire. Widespread flooding can devastate communities with the impact lasting for months and even years.
The wildfire season, severity and size of wildfires is increasing in duration. This could be attributed to climate change and other factors that have sustained or increased the fuel layer on moorland such as changes in land management, reduced animal grazing and competing priorities for moorland management.
Wildfires have historically occurred in spring and summer months and have the potential to spread rapidly over large geographic areas, leading to significant disruptions for life, property, and infrastructure. Hot, dry and windy weather are ideal conditions for wildfires to start and spread, and we are seeing more periods of these conditions. These types of incidents require vast quantities of water far in excess of what conventional firefighting appliances can deliver.
This includes road traffic collisions (RTCs), rescues from collapsed structures or confined spaces, rescues from water and other rescues.
Each year, residents of Lancashire, as well as people from other areas, experience deaths and serious injuries on our county’s roads because of road traffic collisions.
Incidents involving collapsed structures can often be life threatening to those involved, pose significant hazards to responding agencies and can cause disruption and environmental risks within local communities.
There are several water-related risks across Lancashire including numerous rivers and reservoirs. Tragically, we observe drownings in these waterways each year. As a service, we routinely prepare for water rescue incidents, familiarisation of risk sites, and provide a significant rescue capability.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service carries out a number of activities to support other agencies, such as gaining entry to properties where there’s a medical emergency, bariatric rescues, persons in crisis, and searching for missing people.
Sadly, we are also responding to more suicides and suicide attempts. These have lasting effects on individuals, their social networks, communities and the emergency responders attending.
The threat of terrorism profoundly impacts fire and rescue services alongside other emergency services, necessitating preparedness and response capabilities to effectively mitigate risks and manage emergencies.
Terrorist incidents may involve complex and coordinated attacks that pose significant challenges. Operational readiness ensures we can respond swiftly and decisively to save lives and reduce harm.
Lancashire is split into small geographic areas that are known as Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOA). These each contain between 1,000 and 3,000 people and there are currently 945 LSOAs within the county. We have an indicator which measures the fire risk in each LSOA. Risk is determined using fire activity over the previous three fiscal years along with a range of demographic data, such as population and deprivation. The fire risk score for each LSOA is calculated using the formula shown below. Each LSOA is categorised by risk grade from low, medium, high, to very high, which in turn underpins our resource allocation, proactive prevention activities and currently, our response performance criteria within our key performance indicators.
Each fire and rescue service sets their own response standards, and in Lancashire we set some of the most robust standards in the country. Our standards measure from the ‘time of call’ to the ‘time in attendance’ of the first fire engine arriving at the incident.
Critical fire incidents are defined as incidents that are likely to involve a significant threat to life, structures or the environment. Currently, we utilise our fire risk map to categorise each LSOA and set a response standard of:
Very high risk area 6 minutes
High risk area 8 minutes
Medium risk area 10 minutes
Low risk area 12 minutes
Our latest four year overall average response time to critical fire incidents is 7 minutes 32 seconds
Critical special service incidents are non-fire incidents where there is a risk to life, for example, road traffic collisions, rescues and hazardous materials incidents. For these incidents there is a single response standard of 13 minutes.
Our latest four year overall average response time to critical special service incidents is 8 minutes 35 seconds
As part of this CRMP consultation, we want to gauge views on whether our current response standard model is appropriate, or whether we should move to simpler single response standards whilst retaining the fire risk formula for prevention and resource allocation.
Valuing our people so they can focus on making Lancashire safer
We will develop and sustain a professional, skilled, diverse and resilient workforce, ensuring we have the right people, with the right skills, in the right place at the right time to deliver our CRMP and make Lancashire safer. We seek to recruit people with a wide range of backgrounds, skills knowledge and experience.
Our approach links; people, capability, performance, outcomes
ensuring we remain adaptable, inclusive and able to respond to change, financial pressures and emerging risks.
Our people strategy enables:
A skilled and competent workforce aligned to risk
A diverse and inclusive organisation reflecting our communities
A resilient workforce able to adapt to change
A high performing culture driven by values and leadership
These ensure our workforce directly supports the delivery of the CRMP and Service priorities.
1. Culture, values, standards and behaviours
Area of focus
Create a workplace where STRIVE values, inclusion and the Code of Ethics are embedded, and everyone feels valued, respected and able to contribute.
What we will do:
- Embed Service values through training, leadership and everyday behaviours
- Strengthen professional standards and organisational learning
- Ensure open and transparent decision-making processes where staff are consulted and engaged
- Improve confidence in speaking up and raising concerns
- Use employee voice and feedback to shape policy and practice
- Consult with community members and blue light partners to identify barriers to recruitment and work to remove those barriers
- Be open and transparent in relation to our recruitment processes
How we will measure progress
- Staff survey results (values, inclusion, trust)
- Organisational learning submissions and debriefs
- Number and timeliness of professional standards cases
- Confidence in reporting concerns
2. Employer of choice and workforce planning
Area of focus
Be recognised as an employer of choice, attracting and retaining a diverse, skilled workforce aligned to service risk and demand.
What we will do:
- Strengthen employer brand and recruitment campaigns
- Deliver inclusive recruitment for wholetime and on-call roles
- Develop alternative entry routes and career pathways
- Improve on-call recruitment and availability
- Use data to inform workforce planning and future demand
How we will measure progress
- Workforce diversity and representation
- On-call availability levels aligned to risk and demand
- The diversity of applicants to roles within LFRS
3. Leadership and management capability
Area of focus
Develop leaders who model the Service values, lead change, manage performance and inspire high performance.
What we will do:
- Deliver leadership and management development programmes
- Promote coaching, mentoring and continuous development
- Give leaders the confidence to manage performance and challenge poor standards of behaviour
- Promote access to leadership qualifications and development opportunities
How we will measure progress
- Completion of management development programmes
- Performance management outcomes
- Staff feedback on leadership effectiveness
4. Talent management and succession planning
Area of focus
Identify and develop talent to ensure future leadership, critical skills and workforce sustainability.
What we will do:
- Develop a shared understanding of talent
- Align workforce planning with retirement, risk and future roles
- Strengthen succession planning and career pathways
- Use workforce data to inform strategic decisions
How we will measure progress
- Internal promotion rates
- Succession plans in place for key roles
- Workforce risk gaps identified and mitigated
- Appraisal completion and quality
5. Wellbeing, skills and workforce capability
Area of focus
Support a healthy, resilient and highly trained workforce capable of delivering operational excellence.
What we will do:
- Promote mental health, wellbeing and resilience initiatives
- Maintain fitness, health and safety standards
- Reduce the risk of contaminants exposure
- Deliver risk-based training aligned to operational needs
- Address skills gaps and emerging risks (e.g. contaminants, digital)
- Support neurodiversity and inclusive working environments
How we will measure progress
- Sickness absence indicators
- Competence and training completion rates
- Injury and safety trends
6. Engagement, communication and change
Area of focus
Create a culture where staff are engaged, informed and actively involved in shaping the Service.
What we will do:
- Strengthen engagement with staff, unions and representative bodies
- Improve leadership communications at all levels of the Service
- Provide opportunities for people to share their ideas, solutions and improvements
- Involve staff in planning, decision-making, and change programmes
- Consult with employee voice groups to identify impacts on people
How we will measure progress
- Staff engagement and survey results
- Participation in consultations and feedback mechanisms
- Delivery of change programmes
- Efficiency and productivity improvements
- Feedback from training and operational assurance
Our intent
We will prevent fires and other emergencies and reduce harm, focusing our resources where they will have the greatest impact. Our approach is risk-based, person-centered and evidence-led, targeting those most at risk while supporting safer, stronger and more resilient communities across Lancashire. We will make the most efficient use of our resources through a flexible delivery model utilising community fire safety teams, operational firefighters and digital and self service solutions.
Delivering prevention excellence
Our prevention approach ensures:
- A targeted approach, focusing on those most at risk
- A consistent and evidence-led service across Lancashire
- An effective use of resources and digital offerings aligned to risk and demand
- A learning driven culture that continuously improves outcomes
1. Home Fire Safety
Area of focus
Reduce the likelihood and impact of accidental dwelling fires by targeting high risk people, homes and communities.
What we will do:
- Deliver risk-based Home Fire Safety Checks (HFSC) using a tiered approach
- Prioritise vulnerable individuals and high-risk households
- Use data and intelligence to target deprivation, vulnerability and housing risk
- Deliver face-to-face interventions where risk is highest
- Maintain accessible advice for all through digital and self-service options
How we will measure progress
- Number and proportion of HFSCs delivered to high-risk households
- Reduction in accidental dwelling fires and related harm
- Evidence of effective risk-based targeting
- Outcomes from HFSC interventions and safeguarding activity
2. Prevent Fires
Area of focus
Reduce deliberate fires, wildfires and secondary fires through targeted prevention, early intervention and partnership working.
What we will do:
- Deliver multi-agency arson reduction initiatives
- Target high-risk locations, including vacant properties and custodial settings
- Provide education through youth engagement and early intervention programmes
- Deliver seasonal and place-based wildfire campaigns
- Work with landowners, local authorities and communities to reduce risk
How we will measure progress
- Reduction in deliberate fires, secondary fires and wildfires
- Number and effectiveness of targeted interventions and campaigns
- Engagement with young people and at-risk groups
3. Resilience to Severe Weather
Area of focus
Reduce harm from flooding and water-related incidents by building community resilience and awareness.
What we will do:
- Deliver targeted water safety education and prevention activity
- Support and enable partnership approaches to flooding and water risk
- Focus activity where it adds value and avoids duplication
- Promote community awareness and preparedness
How we will measure progress
- Reduction in water-related fatalities and incidents
- Reach and impact of water safety campaigns
- Evidence of effective partnership delivery
- Community awareness and engagement outcomes
- Outcomes from partner-led initiatives and joint working
4. Safer Roads
Area of focus
Reduce harm from road traffic collisions by influencing behaviour and targeting those most at risk.
What we will do:
- Deliver evidence-based road safety interventions
- Work with partners to target high-risk groups and locations
- Focus on behaviour change and prevention campaigns
- Support multi-agency approaches to reducing serious injuries and fatalities
How we will measure progress
- Reduction in road traffic collision (RTC) fatalities and serious injuries
- Delivery and impact of targeted road safety campaigns
- Evidence of behaviour change in priority groups
5. Stronger Resilient Communities
Area of focus
Improve outcomes by reducing vulnerability, safeguarding those at risk and supporting community resilience.
What we will do:
- Identify, signpost, and safeguard vulnerable individuals
- Work with community safety partnerships to improve outcomes beyond emergency response
- Deliver early interventions to reduce risk and harm
- Use data, learning and intelligence to continuously improve services
- Support community programmes and engagement activity
How we will measure progress
- Number and outcomes of safeguarding referrals and interventions
- Evidence of reduced vulnerability and improved outcomes
- Impact of community engagement and prevention programmes
- Continuous improvement driven by data, learning and evaluation
- Partner feedback and joint outcomes
Our intent
We will reduce fire risk in buildings by ensuring those responsible for premises understand and meet their legal duties, and that buildings are safe, compliant and protect people if a fire occurs. This will be delivered through intelligence-led regulation, partnership working and proportionate enforcement, aligned to risk and harm.
Delivering protection excellence
Our protection approach ensures:
- A risk-based, intelligence-led approach that targets the highest risk premises and greatest threats to life
- A consistent and proportionate regulatory service, balancing advice, engagement and enforcement
- Effective use of resources and a competent workforce to manage risk, demand and complex buildings
- A partnership-driven approach that improves compliance, strengthens systems and delivers safer buildings
Performance will be managed through a balanced framework of activity, quality and impact, ensuring protection activity delivers measurable improvements in compliance, building safty and risk reduction.
Our protection priorities
1. Target Risk
Area of focus
Identify high-risk and regulated premises, prioritise activity, reducing the likelihood and impact of fire where it would present the greatest risk to life.
What we will do:
- Target inspection, audit and engagement activity at the highest risk premises
- Support responsible persons to improve compliance through advice, engagement and education
- Deliver a risk-based intervention programme across all risk levels
- Use enforcement confidently and proportionately where serious noncompliance exists
- Increase business safety engagement and campaigns to drive self-compliance
How we will measure progress
- Delivery against the risk-based intervention programme (activity vs plan)
- Number and outcome of audits, inspections and enforcement actions
- Levels of compliance in high-risk premises
- Impact of business safety campaigns and engagement activity
- Reduction in serious fire safety breaches identified
2. Safer Buildings
Area of focus
Improving safety in complex and higher-risk buildings, ensuring robust fire safety management and compliance with evolving legislation.
What we will do:
- Deliver responsibilities arising from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and fire safety legislation
- Work with accountable persons, residents and regulators to provide assurance
- Focus on ongoing safety management and system performance in higher-risk buildings
- Strengthen engagement to improve compliance and safety outcomes
- Maintain a competent workforce with the technical skills to manage complex buildings
How we will measure progress
- Compliance levels in higher-risk and high-rise residential buildings
- Number and quality of interactions with accountable persons and regulators
- Outcomes from building safety case reviews and audits
3. Stronger Systems
Area of focus
Enabling system-wide risk reduction through intelligence, workforce capability and integrated working across prevention, protection and response.
What we will do:
- Use intelligence, incident learning and assurance to continuously improve risk profiling
- Strengthen links between protection, prevention and operational response
- Develop workforce capability through training, assessment and succession planning
- Work with partners to drive compliance across organisations and building portfolios
- Deliver Business Fire Safety Checks (BFSCs) to improve compliance in lower-risk premises
- Enhance fire safety awareness across staff and partner functions
How we will measure progress
- Workforce competence levels in protection and complex risk
- Reduction in fire safety deficiencies in complex buildings
- Number of building regulation consultations within timeframe
- Quality and use of risk and intelligence data
- Completion of BFSC activity and outcomes
- Workforce competent and in-date for protection roles
- Evidence of learning from incidents influencing activity
- Effectiveness of cross-service working (prevention–protection–response)
4. Supporting delivery and performance
Area of focus
Deliver a high-performing, risk-led protection service, focused on outcomes and continuous improvement.
What we will do:
- Deliver targeted risk-based inspections and campaigns
- Maintain compliance in high-rise and regulated premises
- Reduce unwanted fire signals in commercial properties
- Deliver through annual service planning and protection delivery plans
How we will measure progress
- Volume and type of protection activity delivered
- Outcomes from intervention activity and enforcement
- Progress against risk-based intervention programme
- Evaluation of campaigns and assurance activity
Our intent
We will provide a safe, effective and timely emergency response, aligned to risk and demand. Our approach ensures we have the right people, skills and resources in the right place at the right time, supported by strong leadership, risk intelligence and continuous improvement.
This strategy creates a clear link between: risk, activity, performance
ensuring our response is resilient, intelligence-led and high performing, underpinned by a strong health and safety culture and operational excellence.
1. Availability
Area of focus
Deliver a sustainable, efficient and effective response model, with people and resources aligned to risk and demand.
What we will do:
- Ensure response arrangements deliver effective attendance and performance across incident types
- Use all operational staff in a flexible way to improve response and availability
- Maintain wholetime and on-call availability, strengthening recruitment, retention and availability
- Use real-time visibility and forecasting to manage staffing and appliance availability
- Align workforce planning to retirement profiles, succession and emerging risks
- Maintain national resilience capabilities and assure against national standards
- Adopt a flexible, risk-based deployment model aligned to risk and demand through use of pilots and evidence
How we will measure progress
- Appliance and staff availability levels
- Attendance times and response performance
- On-call recruitment and retention
- Accuracy of availability and forecasting systems
2. Competence
Area of focus
Ensure our workforce is competent, confident and adaptable, able to respond safely to current and emerging risks.
What we will do:
- Deliver risk-based, realistic training aligned to operational requirements
- Increase training at high-risk sites and multi-agency exercises
- Embed organisational learning from incidents and training
- Align training to local and national learning and risk intelligence
- Build capability to respond to emerging risks, including climate impacts
- Maintain fitness, wellbeing and specialist capability
- Deliver training in a flexible way, using digital and innovation opportunities to ensure efficiency and effectiveness
How we will measure progress
- Staff competence for risk-critical skills
- Completion of training plans and exercises
- Delivery of learning actions from debriefs
- Fitness levels and health indicators
3. Preparedness
Area of focus
Be a risk-informed, well-prepared organisation, ready to respond to complex, large-scale and emerging incidents.
What we will do:
- Maintain accurate, accessible and consistent risk information
- Strengthen multi-agency planning through Lancashire Resilience Forum partners
- Align response activity with prevention and protection strategies
- Enhance preparedness for major incidents, severe weather, terrorism and disruption
- Strengthen business continuity and organisational resilience
- Ensure staff are prepared for emerging and climate-driven risks
How we will measure progress
- Accurate risk information which is current and accessible
- Delivery of multi-agency plans and exercises
- Outcomes from business continuity testing
- Preparedness for major and emerging risks
4. Operational excellence and continuous improvement
Area of focus
Deliver high-performing, learning-driven emergency response, achieving the best outcomes for communities.
What we will do:
- Embed continuous improvement through assurance and learning
- Strengthen incident command, leadership and decision-making
- Use performance data and key performance indicators to drive improvement
- Maintain a strong focus on firefighter and public safety
How we will measure progress
- Incident outcomes and effectiveness
- Firefighter safety indicators and learning
- Completion of assurance and improvement actions
- Evidence of continuous improvement
Delivering operational excellence
Our response model integrates availability, competence and preparedness to deliver:
A safer response – protecting firefighter and the public.
An effective response – resolving incidents and reducing harm.
An efficient response – using resources proportionately.
A learning-driven response – continually improving through experience.
We will provide a resilient, risk-based and intelligence-led response service with the people skills, vehicles, equipment and command arrangements needed to deal with both routine and complex incidents quickly, safely and effectively.
Our intent
We will use digital, data and technology to deliver a more effective, efficient and resilient fire and rescue service, ensuring our workforce has the tools, skills and information needed to serve our communities safely.
Our approach links data, insights, decision-making, improvements.
Supporting prevention, protection and response activity, while maintaining secure, reliable and modern systems.
1. Digitally enabled workforce
Area of focus
Ensure all staff have access to the right technology, data and skills, enabling them to work efficiently, collaborate effectively and deliver high-quality services.
What we will do:
- Expand access to digital tools, mobile technology and modern workplace platforms
- Build digital skills and confidence, supporting a culture of digital-first working
- Digitise key operational processes (mobilising, incident ground, reporting and learning)
- Strengthen collaboration through shared platforms and communities of practice
- Deliver digital change aligned to people, inclusion and wellbeing priorities
How we will measure progress
- Staff with access to mobile and digital tools
- Workforce digital skills and confidence levels
- Uptake of automation, digital forms and collaboration tools
- Reduction in manual processes / administrative time
2. Data maturity and insight
Area of focus
Develop trusted, accessible and connected data, enabling evidence-based decision making across all service areas.
What we will do:
- Improve data quality, ownership and governance across key datasets
- Increase data literacy for staff based on role requirements
- Provide consistent, accessible data and reporting tools
- Integrate systems to ensure data flows across prevention, protection and response
- Develop a modern, cloud-based data architecture and shared datasets
How we will measure progress
- Data quality scores against defined standards
- Datasets with clear ownership and governance
- Usage levels of data dashboards and insight tools
- Evidence of data-driven decision making in key areas
3. Strong technical foundations
Area of focus
Provide a modern, resilient and integrated technology estate that supports operational delivery and future innovation.
What we will do:
- Replace legacy systems with secure, cloud-based and integrated solutions
- Implement modern mobilising and operational systems
- Strengthen digital capabilities on appliances and the fireground
- Maximise value from platforms such as Microsoft 365 and automation tools
- Modernise infrastructure to ensure resilience, scalability and performance
How we will measure progress
- Reduction in legacy systems and technical risk
- System availability and reliability performance
- User satisfaction with digital services and tools
- Efficiency gains through automation and integration
4. Cyber security and resilience
Area of focus
Protect our systems, data and services through strong, proportionate cyber security and resilience arrangements.
What we will do:
- Identify, protect, detect and respond to cyber risks and threats
- Strengthen monitoring, testing and assurance of security controls
- Maintain robust incident response and recovery arrangements
- Improve workforce awareness of cyber risks and responsibilities
- Align with national cyber and information governance standards
How we will measure progress
- Number and severity of cyber incidents
- Compliance with national standards and frameworks
- Workforce completion of cyber training and awareness
- Results from audits, testing and assurance activity
5. Value for money and continuous improvement
Area of focus
Ensure investment in digital, data and technology delivers efficiency, value for money and continuous improvement.
What we will do:
- Apply reuse, buy, build principles to maximise efficiency
- Embed automation and digital redesign of services
- Collaborate with partners to achieve economies of scale
- Use a structured plan-do-check-review approach
- Continuously identify opportunities for innovation and improvement
How we will measure progress
- Financial savings and return on investment
- Services digitised or redesigned
- Evidence of efficiency improvements
- Delivery of planned change and improvement programmes
6. Emerging technology
Area of focus
Use emerging technologies, including AI and automation, to improve productivity, decision making and service delivery.
What we will do:
- Explore and adopt automation and AI solutions where they add value
- Focus on measurable productivity and efficiency gains
- Ensure appropriate governance and human oversight
- Work with partners and stakeholders to develop innovative solutions
- Align use of AI with ethical and national frameworks
How we will measure progress
- Number of AI/automation use cases implemented
- Measurable productivity and efficiency gains
- Compliance with AI governance and ethics standards
- User adoption of new technologies
7. National alignment and collaboration
Area of focus
Align with national standards and work with partners to deliver consistent, collaborative and future-ready digital services.
What we will do:
- Align with NFCC, government and sector standards
- Participate in national and regional collaboration programmes
- Share and adopt best practice across fire and rescue services
- Explore opportunities for joint solutions and procurement
How we will measure progress
- Level of alignment with national frameworks and standards
- Participation in collaborative initiatives
- Evidence of shared solutions and efficiencies
- External feedback and sector benchmarking
Delivering digital transformation
Our strategy underpins all areas of service delivery by ensuring:
- Better risk identification and targeting
- Improved decision making and operational effectiveness
- More efficient and modern ways of working
- A secure and resilient service
Our intent
Value for money is achieved by balancing economy, efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring that resources are used proportionately to reduce risk and improve outcomes. We will ensure that public money is used responsibly, transparently and sustainably, aligning resources to risk and demand while maintaining financial resilience.
Our approach links resource, risk, performance, outcomes.
Ensuring that investment decisions deliver the greatest impact for our communities and support the long-term sustainability of the Service.
The delivery of this plan is aligned to the Medium-Term Financial Strategy, ensuring that proposals are affordable, sustainable and consistent with the Combined Fire Authority’s financial planning assumptions. We will drive continuous improvement by redesigning services, embracing innovation and making best use of digital, data and technology to maximise value from our resources.
1. Financial sustainability and resilience
Area of focus
Maintaining a stable and sustainable financial position, ensuring the Service can deliver its priorities both now and in the future.
What we will do:
- Maintain a robust Medium Term Financial Strategy aligned to the CRMP
- Monitor and manage financial risks including funding uncertainty, inflation and pay pressures
- Use reserves and financial planning to manage uncertainty and maintain resilience
- Ensure budgets are realistic, balanced and regularly reviewed
How we will measure progress
- Delivery of balanced budgets across the planning period
- Accuracy of financial forecasting and variance against budget
- Level of reserves in line with agreed strategy
- Effective management of financial risks and issues
- Evidence of improved outcomes from investment decisions
- Demonstration that resources are delivering measurable reductions in risk and demand over time
2. Prioritisation and resource allocation
Area of focus
Directing resources to activity that has the greatest impact on risk reduction, statutory compliance and service delivery.
What we will do:
- Align workforce, estate, fleet and investment decisions to risk and demand
- Use data and intelligence to inform resource allocation and prioritisation
- Ensure all major investment decisions are supported by a clear business case
- Regularly review resource deployment to ensure it remains aligned to risk
- Where appropriate deliver efficiencies through collaboration, shared services and joint procurement
- Prioritise resources toward activities that deliver the greatest impact on risk, recognising that lower-value activity may be reduced or ceased where necessary
- Work collaborating with partners to deliver services efficiently, helping keep Lancashire safe.
How we will measure progress
- Evidence of resource allocation aligned to risk profiles
- Delivery of investment programmes against agreed priorities
- Outcomes delivered from key investment decisions
- Ongoing review and adjustment of resource deployment
3. Productivity and efficiency
Area of focus
Improving productivity and efficiency to maximise the value delivered from available resources.
What we will do:
- Deliver productivity and efficiency programmes across all service areas
- Improve utilisation of workforce, fleet and estate assets
- Reduce unnecessary demand and non-value-adding activity
- Use digital, data and technology to streamline processes and improve delivery
- Continuously improve services through redesign, automation and innovation to increase productivity and reduce unnecessary activity
- Benchmark our costs, performance and where available productivity against other fire and rescue services and sector standards
- Consider appropriate opportunities for income generation and cost recovery, where this supports service delivery and represents value for money
- Improve workforce productivity through effective utilisation, skills mix and flexible deployment aligned to risk and demand
- Ensure investment in digital, data and technology delivers measurable improvements in productivity, efficiency and decision-making
How we will measure progress
- Delivery of agreed efficiency and productivity improvements
- Reduction in avoidable costs and inefficiencies
- Improved utilisation rates of key assets
- Measurable time or cost savings from digital and process improvements
- Evidence of measurable efficiency gains and productivity improvements from service redesign, innovation and digital use.
- Performance against national and sector benchmarks where available
- Income generated and reinvested to support service delivery
- Where available utilize workforce utilization and productivity indicators to measure progress.
- Demonstrated efficiency gains and performance improvements resulting from digital investment.
4. Asset sustainability and investment
Area of focus
Ensuring that estate, fleet and equipment are safe, effective and sustainable, supporting current and future service needs.
What we will do:
- Deliver a long-term capital programme aligned to risk and operational requirements
- Maintain and invest in buildings, fleet and equipment to ensure fitness for purpose
- Extend asset life where appropriate to maximise value for money
- Transition to more sustainable and efficient assets over time
- Ensure all capital investment decisions are assessed for affordability, sustainability and prudence in line with the Prudential Code
- Seek opportunities to innovate to keep firefighters and communities safe
How we will measure progress
- Delivery of capital programme within budget and timescales
- Condition and performance of estate and fleet assets
- Whole-life cost management of key assets
- Progress in improving sustainability and efficiency of assets
- Capital investment delivered within approved affordability limits
5. Assurance, transparency and accountability
Area of focus
Ensuring strong governance, transparency and accountability for how resources are used.
What we will do:
- Maintain clear financial governance and oversight through the Combined Fire Authority
- Monitor performance, benefits and risks through established governance arrangements
- Publish clear and transparent financial and performance information
- Ensure compliance with statutory financial responsibilities
- Evidence that improvement activity delivers sustained benefits and value for money
- Track and evaluate the benefits of investment and improvement programmes through structured benefits realisation and post-implementation review
- Ensure that financial decisions deliver improved outcomes for communities and reflect public expectations of value
How we will measure progress
- Timely and accurate financial and performance reporting
- Evidence of effective governance and scrutiny
- Audit outcomes and external assurance findings
- Stakeholder and public confidence in the use of resources
- Evidence that planned benefits from investment and efficiency programmes are delivered and sustained
- User, stakeholder and public satisfaction with service delivery and outcomes
Delivering value for money
Our approach ensures:
- Resources are aligned to risk and demand
- Investment decisions are evidence-based and outcome-focused
- The Service remains financially sustainable and resilient
- Value for money is demonstrated through measurable outcomes and performance
This CRMP is the Service’s medium-term strategic plan. It is supported by the Strategic Assessment of Risk, core strategies for prevention, protection, response, people, digital and finance and the annual service planning process. Each year, the Service produces an Annual Service Plan which sets out the key projects, milestones and measures for the coming year. This will align to available resources, emerging risk, corporate governance and the outcomes in this plan.
Our planning framework is presented on the previous page which shows the inter-dependencies between the various elements of the planning strategy. Delivery will be overseen through the Service’s governance framework, with progress monitored through performance reporting, strategic reviews, risk management arrangements and the scrutiny of the Combined Fire Authority. The plan will be reviewed annually, and we will refresh it when there is a significant change in risk, legislation, policy, funding or organisational design. We will keep the public, staff and stakeholders informed through transparent reporting.
Engagement and consultation are central to the development of our CRMP, ensuring that the views of the public, staff and stakeholders shape our Service’s priorities and approach. We undertake structured engagement with a wide range of groups, including residents, businesses, partners and employees. This helps us to understand what matters most to our communities and how proposed changes may affect them. Our two-phased approach to consultation allows us to gather early insight to inform the development of options for how we deliver our services in the future, while the second phase provides a full consultation on the draft CRMP. Feedback from both stages helps ensure the final plan reflects community needs and expectations and helps us to ensure that our resources are prioritised effectively to manage risk, demand and vulnerability across Lancashire.
Key performance indicators
To ensure we are effective, efficient and provide value for money, we use a range of targets to measure performance which are scrutinised under our governance arrangements. These are known as key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are quantifiable measures used to evaluate success in meeting our objectives. They help to monitor and measure our performance and are scrutinised quarterly by the Combined Fire Authority, and subsequently published in our Measuring Progress Reports, which are available on our website at www.lancsfirerescue.org.uk/performance. We also use local internal indicators to monitor trends and changes in activity and risk, which help us to plan local activities and resource allocation accordingly. Our current KPIs are outlined on the next page, however through this consultation, we are seeking views on whether they are still relevant, need refreshing or indeed, new measures need introducing.
KPI 1: Valuing our people so they can focus on making Lancashire safer
1.1 Overall staff engagement
1.2.1 Staff absence – wholetime
1.2.2 Staff absence – on-call
1.2.3 Staff absence – green book
1.3.1 Workforce diversity
1.3.2 Workforce diversity recruited
1.4 Staff accidents
KPI 2: Preventing fires and other emergencies from happening / Protecting people and property when fires happen
2.1 Critical fire risk map score
2.2 Overall activity
2.3 Accidental dwelling fires (ADF)
2.3.1 ADF – harm to people – casualties
2.3.2 ADF – harm to property – extent of damage (fire severity)
2.4 Accidental building fires (ABF) (commercial premises)
2.4.1 ABF (commercial premises) – harm to property - extent of damage (fire severity)
2.5 ABF (non-commercial premises)
2.5.1 ABF (non-commercial premises: private garages and sheds) – harm to property – extent of damage (fire severity)
2.6 Deliberate fires total
2.6.1 Deliberate fires – dwellings
2.6.2 Deliberate fires – commercial premises
2.6.3 Deliberate fires – other (rubbish, grassland, vehicles etc)
2.7 Home fire safety checks
2.8 Numbers of other prevention activities delivered such as Childsafe / Wasted Lives
2.9 Business fire safety checks
2.9.1 Fire safety activity
2.10 Building regulation consultations (number and completed on time)
KPI 3: Responding to fires and other emergencies quickly and competently
3.1 Critical fire response – 1st fire engine attendance
3.2 Critical special service response – 1st fire engine attendance
3.3 Fire engine availability
KPI 4: Delivering value for money in how we use our resources
4.1 Progress against allocated budget
4.2 Partnership collaboration
4.3 Overall user satisfaction
What have we achieved?
These achievements provide a strong foundation, but the environment in which we operate continues to change and new risks are emerging.
For our communities
- Continued delivery of targeted prevention activity for those most at risk of fire and other emergencies.
- Strong protection performance, including risk-based inspection activity and continued work to reduce unwanted fire signals.
- Sustained response standards and strong performance in HMICFRS inspections.
For our workforce
- Investment in training, leadership and workforce development.
- Continued focus on staff wellbeing and a supportive culture where everyone feels respected.
- Development of specialist skills and innovation in operational capability to meet changing risk.
For our organisation and partners
- Improved use of data, technology, and performance management to support decision-making.
- Ongoing collaboration through the Lancashire Resilience Forum and wider partnerships.
- Continued focus on productivity, efficiency and value for money.
These achievements provide a strong foundation, but the environment we operate continues to change and new risks are emerging.
HMICFRS plays a crucial role in fire and rescue services in England by providing independent assessments and reports on their effectiveness and efficiency.
In 2025, LFRS set the national benchmark for excellence, achieving the best ever 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. Five areas of promising practice were also recognised in the report.
“Outstanding”
· At understanding the risk of fire and other emergencies.
· At protecting the public through fire regulation.
· At responding to major incidents and multi-agency incidents.
· At making best use of resources.
· At promoting the right values and culture.
· At getting the right people with the right skills.
“Good”
· At preventing fires and other risks.
· At responding to fires and other emergencies.
· At making the Fire and Rescue Service affordable now and in the future.
· At ensuring fairness and diversity.
· At managing performance and developing leaders.
Some of the highlights from the report include:
- Our excellent performance at keeping people safe and secure from fire and other risks.
- Our outstanding understanding of risk and how we use data and technology to keep our communities safe.
- Our sector-leading protection work, including our risk-based intervention programme and our commitment to reducing unwanted fire signals.
- Our strong values and inclusive culture, with staff feeling supported, listened to, and proud to work here.
- Our innovative use of resources, from mobile data terminals and drones to our investment in training and development.
The inspectorate praised the Service for its excellent performance and recognised our collaborative approach with partners, and our ability to adapt to new challenges and legislation. The Service’s commitment to inclusivity, staff wellbeing, and community engagement were also highlighted as sector leading. Our commitment to continuous improvement was also recognised. As a service we recognise the importance of developing areas for improvement and learning from other services best practice. The full report can be read on the HMICFRS website.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service has continued to make Lancashire safer by preventing emergencies, protecting people and buildings, responding effectively, and investing in staff, equipment, technology, and partnerships.
Continued to embed STRIVE values and the national Core Code of Ethics, supported by engagement, training, and clearer expectations of behaviour
Expanded development opportunities through leadership programmes, ILM qualifications, mentoring, coaching, project management training, and improved development handbooks
Improved wellbeing and safety through peer support ambassadors, trauma and emotions training, body worn camera trials, additional PPE, and improved fitness equipment
Invested in better facilities at fire stations and progressed long-term plans for modern training, office, and headquarters facilities
Strengthened culture and accountability through equality impact assessments, confidential reporting, criminal records checks, and professional standards arrangements
Delivered more than 22,000 Home Fire Safety Checks each year, increasing to over 23,000 annually, targeted at people most at risk
Reduction in the number of accidental dwelling fires
Improved access to home fire safety support through better partner referrals, online forms, training, and use of risk data.
Reached children, young people, and road users through school fire safety, Fire Cadets, King’s Trust courses, and road safety education
Strengthened water safety and wildfire prevention through partnerships, moorland protection orders, public campaigns, and targeted advice
Introduced and expanded Business Fire Safety Checks, helping lower-risk premises while specialist staff focus on complex and higher-risk buildings
Delivered 3,348 checks in 2023-24 and 3,637 in 2024-25, helping more businesses understand and meet their fire safety duties
Improved how higher-risk premises are identified, inspected, and supported in line with changing fire safety legislation
Responded to Grenfell Tower Inquiry learning through tall building inspections, regulator engagement, and strengthened building safety work
Improved protection services through digital tools, mobile working, built environment training, and enforcement where serious failings were found
Kept all 39 fire stations and 58 fire appliances while implementing emergency cover review changes to strengthen resilience and efficiency
Used dynamic cover software to place crews and fire engines where they are needed most using real-time risk and demand information
Invested in 13 new fire engines, incident command units, technical rescue units, water towers, and a 45-metre aerial ladder platform
Strengthened high-rise, commercial building, water rescue, wildfire, flooding, and rural response capability through new equipment and specialist training
Introduced UK-leading innovation including an underwater drone, advanced sonar scanner, drone testing for wildfire prevention, and a UK-first on-call planning tool
Applied national learning from Grenfell Tower and Manchester Arena through improved evacuation, trauma care, joint working, and incident command arrangements.Digital, data, productivity, and value for money
Made greater use of digital technology and data through a new data warehouse, Power BI dashboards, mobile device management, and digital tools for services
Fitted fire engines with rear demountable mobile data terminals so crews can access information more easily at incidents and in communities
Installed CCTV on frontline appliances and service vehicles to improve safety and help reduce collision-related costs
Delivered productivity and efficiency plans, improved rota management, and worked with other fire and rescue services to achieve better value for money
Progressed environmental sustainability through electric and hybrid vehicles, charging points, building surveys, and future carbon reduction planning
For more information on our performance, visit www.lancsfirerescue.org.uk/performance
We have shaped our CRMP by thoroughly analysing local and incident data, demographic shifts, and environmental hazards. This evidence is combined with extensive public consultation and financial forecasting to strategically deploy firefighters, equipment, and prevention programs to optimise public safety.
Engagement and consultation are central to the development if the CRMP, ensuring that the views of the public, staff and stakeholders shape the Service's priorities and approach. We are understanding a two-phased approach to consultation, widespread consultation was undertaken in phase one (from 13 January to 15 March 2026) which allowed us to gather early insights to inform the development of this CRMP document.
In phase two we will undertake the structured engagement with a wide range of groups, including residents, businesses, partners, employees, to help us to understand what matters to Lancashire communities and how proposed changes may affect them.
Feedback from both stages will help us ensure the final plan reflects community needs and expectations and that our resources are prioritised effectively to mange risks and vulnerability across Lancashire.
We will measure and explain the difference our actions are making so that we can remain accountable, improve how we work, and make best use of our resources. We will do this by using a mix of data, evaluation, feedback, and learning to understand both what is changing and why. Ensuring the successful delivery of our CRMP and our priorities and objectives will be accomplished by monitoring the Service’s plans. This includes our Annual Service Plan and our district and departmental plans. Our plans will have a diverse range of activities within them that link into the outcomes of the strategies. Governance arrangements for these activities will vary. The Combined Fire Authority will oversee key areas, with other actions monitored and challenged throughout the year depending on their corporate significance through the Senior Management Team, departmental and other management meetings. Our governance structure reviews and measures all workstreams across the organisation and ensures they align to the strategic objectives set out in the strategies. Our business planning assesses workstreams with a finer level of detail and shares best practice across departments to ensure a collaborative approach. This work is reflected in individual appraisals, so every member of staff understands and appreciates the impact their role has for our communities.
Our service level key performance indicators (KPIs), are aligned to our core strategies and include staff engagement, staff accidents and workforce absence, prevention and protection activities, attendance times, the number and type of incidents and fire-related injuries or fatalities. We also measure value for money, progress against allocated budget and partnership collaboration. Advanced data analytics and reporting tools such as PowerBI help us assess our effectiveness in real time. Qualitative measures like community feedback also play a role in illustrating the Service’s broader social impact.
We have shaped our CRMP by thoroughly analysing local incident data, demographic shifts, and environmental hazards. This evidence is combined with extensive public consultation and financial forecasting to strategically deploy firefighters, equipment, and prevention programs to optimise public safety. Engagement and consultation are central to the development of the CRMP, ensuring that the views of the public, staff and stakeholders shape the Service’s priorities and approach. We are undertaking a two-phased approach to consultation, widespread consultation was undertaken in phase one (from 13 January to 15 March 2026) which allowed us to gather early insight to inform the development of this CRMP document. In phase two we will undertake structured engagement with a wide range of groups, including residents, businesses, partners and employees, to help us to understand what matters most to Lancashire’s communities and how proposed changes may affect them. Feedback from both stages will help ensure the final plan reflects community needs and expectations and that our resources are prioritised effectively to manage risk, demand and vulnerability across Lancashire.
AFA - Automatic Fire Alarm
BME - Black or Minority Ethnic groups
CFA - Combined Fire Authority
CRMP - Community Risk Management Plan
Cross border working - Different fire services have different geographical areas of responsibilities. When we work with other services, we work across our borders
CRR - Community Risk Register
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
FRS’s - Fire and Rescue Services
Hazmat - Hazardous Materials
IMD - Indices of Multiple Deprivation - the official measure of relative deprivation for small areas in England. The IMD combines the individual seven domains to produce an overall relative measure of deprivation
LFRS - Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service
LRF - Lancashire Resilience Forum
LSOA’s - Lower-layer Super Output Areas - a standardised geographic hierarchy used in the UK for compiling and reporting small-area statistics
MHCLG - Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
MOU - Memorandum of Understanding
MTA - Marauding Terrorist Attack
NFCC - National Fire Chiefs Council - represents fire and rescue services at a national level
NOG - National Operational Guidance
NRR - National Risk Register
NWAS - North West Ambulance Service
On-call firefighters - Firefighters who often have another job outside LFRS and respond to emergencies in their communities from home or work when needed
PESTELO - Political, Economic, Socio-cultural, Technological and Infrastructure, Environmental, Legislative, and Organisational risk analysis
Prevention - Making safety interventions in the homes of those most at risk of fire and supporting people to adopt safe practices
Primary fires - Generally serious fires involving property or any fires involving casualties, rescues, or any fire attended by five or more fire engines
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
RTC - Road Traffic Collision
SAoR - Strategic Assessment of Risk
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 (for example gaining entry to properties on behalf of the police and ambulance service during medical emergencies)
Service support - Specialist functions that support 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
Proposal to trial the flexible day crewing (FDC) duty system at Fleetwood Fire Station
A decision to proceed with the trial has been made by the Chair of the Combined Fire Authority and the Chief Fire Officer.
This decision was informed by a detailed review of operational evidence, community risk data and feedback received through the consultation. Views from employees, representative bodies, local residents, and other stakeholders were carefully considered before a decision was reached.
The proposal received the support of the Fire Brigades Union and a majority of employees who responded during the consultation period.
A public survey was conducted and a public information event was held at the fire station to give residents the opportunity to share their views and ask questions directly. 8 people attended the public event.
There were 148 responses to the public survey:
18% strongly agreed or agreed with the proposed trial in principle
2% neither agreed nor disagreed with the proposed trial in principle
80% disagreed or strongly disagreed with the proposed trial in principle
We recognise that respondents who disagreed expressed concerns about the potential impact on response times at night and community safety. These concerns have been carefully considered and assessed against operational evidence.
The FDC duty system aligns firefighter availability with community risk and incident levels in Fleetwood and FDC maintains our ability to meet our emergency response standards. We also have robust systems in place to monitor and manage risk and incident levels across the county in real-time, enabling us to move fire engines and firefighters to where they are needed at any given time.
Importantly, emergency response deals with the consequences of risk, while prevention activity reduces or removes the risk in the first place. Our dedicated prevention services will continue in communities throughout the trial to keep reducing the likelihood of fires and other emergencies occurring. These include our home fire safety check and business safety services, fire safety education, and prevention campaigns.
The FDC duty system is already operating successfully at five other Lancashire fire stations, providing valuable experience and evidence to support this trial.
The 18-month trial will be closely monitored and evaluated at regular intervals to ensure no adverse impacts on public safety. This will include emergency response, fire engine availability, prevention activity, and business fire safety services.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to participate in the consultation and share their views.
A full report will be presented to the Combined Fire Authority in due course.
Consultation activity involved:
Staff engagement with firefighters at Fleetwood Fire Station.
Consultation with the Fire Brigades Union.
Online survey – the consultation webpage received 3,447 views and there were 148 consultation responses.
Social media promotion – reached over 45,000 people.
Media coverage generated 11 news articles.
Over 3,000 messages were sent to email subscribers in the Fleetwood area.
Public event at Fleetwood Fire Station on 18 June – 8 people attended.
Discussion at Fleetwood Town Council meeting on 30 June.
Engagement with key stakeholders including partners.
What is the proposal?
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.
We use Microsoft Forms to collect consultation feedback. As part of the consultation, we are required to understand if we are talking to all parts of the community and to understand if there are different views across Lancashire. At the end of the survey, you will be asked about your personal details, however, you are not required to answer.
This survey is now closed. We are reviewing your responses and will report back.
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.
Thank you to everyone who took part in phase one of our consultation.
We received 2,223 responses from residents, community groups, businesses, partners and employees.
Your views helped us to understand what matters most and ensure that our priorities reflect the needs of Lancashire.
We used this feedback to help to shape our draft Community Risk Management Plan before further consultation in more detail.
View the full consultation report: (Public Pack)Agenda Document for Planning Committee, 13/07/2026 10:00
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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