The Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service (HWFRS) is the
statutory
A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed wil ...
fire and rescue service covering
Herefordshire
Herefordshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England, bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh ...
and
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands (county), West ...
in the
West Midlands region
The West Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the ITL 1 statistical regions of England, first level of International Territorial Level for Statistics, statistical purposes. It covers the western half of the area known tradit ...
of
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
. The service covers an area of , and a population of around 780,000 people.
The service was created in 1974 when The County Of Hereford Fire Brigade and The Worcester City & County Fire Brigade were merged to create The County Of Hereford and Worcester Fire Brigade. The two counties split up again in 1998 but the fire service remained, and is now run by a joint
fire authority
In England and Wales a fire authority or fire and rescue authority is a statutory body made up of a committee of local councillors which oversees the policy and service delivery of a fire and rescue service. Prior to the Fire Services Act 2004 ma ...
.
Operations
The service's Chief Fire Officer is Jonathon Pryce, replacing Nathan Travis, who retired in March 2021.
In October 2019, HWFRS entered into a formal alliance with neighbouring
Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service. The alliance covers procurement, following previous cooperation on computer systems, fire control and risk management. In June 2020, the two services announced that they were considering a single fire control centre.
HWFRS has 332 wholetime operational staff, 369 retained (part-time) staff, 21 Fire Control staff, as well as about 98 non-uniformed support staff.
Neighbouring fire services include: Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Mid and West Wales, South Wales and the West Midlands.
Performance
Every fire and rescue service in
England and Wales
England and Wales () is one of the Law of the United Kingdom#Legal jurisdictions, three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. Th ...
is periodically subjected to a statutory inspection by
(HMICFRS). The inspections investigate how well the service performs in each of three areas. On a scale of outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate, Herefordshire Fire and Rescue Service was rated as follows:
Fire stations
HWFRS splits its fire stations into three districts North and South, both of which are located in Worcestershire, and West in Herefordshire.
Each fire station is crewed using one of three duty systems, or a combination:
*Wholetime five fire stations are crewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by full-time
firefighters,
working on a variety of shift patterns of two nine-hour day shifts and two 15-hour night shifts followed by four days off.
*Retained the majority of fire stations use
retained firefighter
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, a retained firefighter, also known as an RDS firefighter or on-call firefighter, is a firefighter who does not work on a fire station full-time but is paid to spend long periods of time on call to respond to eme ...
s, who are on call and live or work within five minutes of the station.
*Day-crewed three day-crewed stations are crewed for 12hours a day by full-time firefighters working on a shift pattern of four 12-hour shifts (07:0019:00) then four days off. The fire station is crewed by the retained firefighters at night
, there were 228 wholetime and 379 retained firefighters across the 25 fire stations.
See also
*
List of British firefighters killed in the line of duty
This article is a list of British firefighters killed in the line of duty since 1900. As such, it only lists those firefightersThe term ''firefighter'' is used as it is not gender-specific. Most deaths will have originally been reported as the ge ...
References
External links
*
Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Serviceat
HMICFRS
His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), formerly Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), has statutory responsibility for the inspection of the police forces of England and Wales, and since ...
{{UK fire service
Organisations based in Herefordshire
Organisations based in Worcestershire
Hereford and Worcester
Fire and rescue services of England