About West Midlands Fire Service
We serve one of the most diverse and multi-cultural communities in the country, spread across seven local authorities, which are Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton.
Our region contains some of the most deprived communities anywhere in the country, where socio-economic and health factors mean the risk of fire and other emergencies is particularly high. At the same time our major urban centres and industrial areas contain some of the highest risk infrastructure in the UK.
Stations
fighters*
personnel *
Support
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Vehicles *
Our strategic commitments
public body we have several strategic commitments we will always deliver for the people of the West Midlands. These derive from our statutory duties and the public’s expectation of the service. Our communities always be reassured that:
How we keep the West Midlands safe
Our vision
Our mission statement
The CRMP is an assessment of the foreseeable challenges and risks facing our communities and what needs to be done to meet them.
We use this analysis to inform the strategic goals, as well as to determine the specific projects we will undertake to achieve those goals and address the risks.
Our strategic goals, based on our Community Risk Management Plan, is presented in four areas aligned to how we organise our service.
These all contribute to our vision of making the West Midlands safer, stronger and healthier. Explore our new strategy via the button below.
It helps us to understand risks across the areas we serve. We use it to create our Community Risk Management Plan and three-year rolling strategy.
Now, you, our communities, can explore some of this data yourself in our new 'Risk Explorer' tool!
All you need to do is enter your postcode, then you can explore and interact with the same data we use! You'll be able to see incidents to which we’ve responded near you, our response times, and even the different levels of risk for various emergency types. There’s also lots of handy demographic info, and you can turn different data on and off.
Everything.
Connected.
West Midlands Fire Service is the second largest fire and rescue service in England, covering an area of 902 square kilometres which include areas with the highest risk in England outside of London.
We operate 38 fire stations across the West Midlands with 1,164 firefighters working to make the West Midlands safer, stronger and healthier.
But there’s a lot more to West Midlands Fire Service than putting out fires. From the risk-based locations of our stations and how we’re governed, to Our Plan and Community Risk Management Plans - everything is connected.
Our vision
Everything we do across all our areas of work is connected and driven by this vision.
Community Risk Management Plan and Our Plan
Our Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) takes account of risks our communities might face, as well as their views and needs.
Our Plan and our three-year rolling priorites are then created from the outcomes and identified risks from the CRMP.
How
None of our community risk reduction activities would be possible without the expert teams who work in the background.
They support all of our people. And we all strive to deliver excellent, value-for-money services to our communities.
Our Values
Our ethics and values guide how we work together - as one, inclusive team - and help us to improve our culture and workforce diversity.
How we're run
West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority
West Midlands Fire Service is governed by a fire authority made up of 15 councillors representing our local councils. They are also joined by a West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner representative and two co-opted members.
There are four decision-making committees and two advisory panels/forums, in addition to the full Fire Authority, that aid in either decision making or advisory capacities. The list of the committees and their terms of reference can be found here: Committees and their terms of reference
A full list of the councillors, as well as the public meetings and documents relating to fire authority governance, can be found on our Committee Management Information Service system.
Our leadership team
Our leadership team comprises our 'Executive Leadership Team' and our 'Senior Leadership Team'. Between them, they're dedicated to guiding the shape and direction of our service and ensuring that we’re meeting our legal responsibilities.
A diverse group of managers from teams across the service, they ensure that we remain focused on our core priorities and objectives outlined through our Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP) and Our Strategy. This enables us to remain adaptable and responsive to the ever-evolving environment of the public sector.
To find out more about leadership team members and their roles and responsibilities, click/tap their bios below.
What we publish
We publish a lot of information and documents to ensure we are transparent and open about how we operate. Our documents section contains all of our publications and information which is released and categorised in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office publication scheme.
Our freedom of information section holds all our published information requests we receive, you can also make a new request for information if what you want isn’t already published.
If you or someone you represent requires an incident report, sometimes called a fire report, we can provide this. Typically it’s used by insurance companies. Depending on the type of information required, there is sometimes a charge for this information.
Finally, for details around our procurement and contracts procedures and you can find this on our site as well.
