Benjy Bush

Benjy Bush - Bradford District Commander

"The Bradford district annual plan 2024–2025 sets out our priorities and areas of focus over the next 12 months. Bradford’s priorities are aligned with the wider service priorities as determined in the Community Risk Management Plan 2022-2025.  You will see from the plan that we remain committed to driving down risk, reducing vulnerability and to help those most in need.

We are committed to working with partner agencies across the city and share a vision with Bradford Community Safety partnership and Safer Bradford. Bradford is the youngest city in the UK with more than 26% of its population under the age of 18 yrs. Our shared vision includes giving people the best start in life, reducing crime and anti-social behaviour and making people feel safe in their neighbourhoods. We will contribute to Bradford’s Serious Violence Duty and support the local authority and West Yorkshire Police in driving down violence in the city.

 

Bradford has won the UK City of Culture 2025. It is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary cultural heritage of the young and ethnically diverse population. WYFRS will come together with partner agencies promote this great achievement and seek opportunity to promote our key safety messages.

This years plan also highlights our continued emphasis on ‘Safe and Well’ and our commitment, with partner agencies, to help those most at risk from fire. Our focus remains on identifying vulnerability, and we will continue to seek appropriate partnerships to help achieve this.

I want to further improve community education and engagement in topics such as water safety, road safety and wildfire. Using OneView data will ensure a targeted approach in the areas most at risk from these types of incidents. We have already seen some fantastic initiatives in Bradford, working with Schools and colleges and ensuring young people are receiving education, to keep themselves and their families safe.

I plan to increase the Youth Intervention programmes across many areas of Bradford, providing engaging programmes for those young people most likely to make poor decisions relating to anti-social behaviour and road safety.

Firefighters in Bradford are professional, highly trained and remain focused on providing a first- class service to the communities we serve. Ensuring firefighters remaining highly skilled is a top priority and Bradford district will host numerous exercises throughout the year to support the learning outcomes of local and national incidents of note.

The district plan 2024-25 shows our confidence in the fire prevention, risk reduction and collaboration strategies to achieve our goals. The plan hopefully demonstrates to the community of Bradford, our commitment to making Bradford a safer place."

Our Ambition: Making West Yorkshire Safer
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To improve community safety and wellbeing, reduce the risk to life, property and the environment from fire and other emergencies.

Our Guiding Principles

To achieve our ambition, we will:

  • Focus on risk and vulnerability
  • Be part of our communities
  • Work in partnership with partner organisations
  • Be at our best and strive to improve
  • Make a positive difference in everything we do
  • Promote diversity and create an inclusive workplace
     

Our Priorities

This plan sets out how we aim to use our resources to manage the risks we face in West Yorkshire and keep you safe from fire and other emergencies:

  • Improve the safety and effectiveness of our firefighters.
  • Promote the health, safety, and well-being of all our people.
  • Encourage a learning environment in which we support, develop, and enable all our people to be at their best.
  • Focus our prevention and protection activities on reducing risk and vulnerability.
  • Provide ethical governance and value for money.
  • Collaborate with partners to improve the service we offer.
  • Work in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way.
  • Achieve a more inclusive workforce, which reflects the diverse communities we serve.
  • Continuously improve using digital and data platforms to innovate and work smarter.
  • Plan and deploy our resources based on risk.

Delivering Our Priorities

Plan and deploy our resources based on risk:

  • We will ensure firefighters are trained, equipped, and positioned appropriately to respond to incidents with sufficient speed and weight. 
  • We will manage and continue to review the risk within Bradford and ensure that our operational response is appropriate.
  • We will ensure the availability of specialist equipment, vehicles, and personnel in areas where risk is identified as requiring a more ‘specialist response’, for example, Water rescue teams and specialist
  • Wildfire equipment and personnel.
  • We will work alongside partners and voluntary organisations to further identify risk within the community of Bradford.
  • Improve the safety and effectiveness of our firefighters.
  • We will undertake training and exercising to ensure a safe and effective response to the varying risk identified in Bradford. 
  • Following on from last years high rise exercises at York House, we will train and implement changes to our operational procedures for fighting fires in tall buildings. We will debrief and feedback after attending incidents and exercises to identify best practice and promote improvements to procedures and equipment.
  • We will train and upskill all firefighters in Hazardous Material incidents including working with Bradford based COMAH sites to improve knowledge, understanding and effectiveness.
  • We will continue our training days with partner agencies including local authority, environment agency, Police and the Ambulance to improve how we respond to wide area flooding and wildfire across Bradford.
  • We will work alongside community and faith leaders, youth intervention and the police providing education with the aim of reducing the number of attacks on firefighters.

Promote health, safety, and well-being for all our people:

  • We will continue to promote and embed the post incident cleaning policy on fire stations and the building projects at Keighley and
  • Bingley will see greater protection against cross contamination of fire contaminants.
  • We will promote post incident welfare where our crews have attended challenging incidents.
    We will champion mental health awareness training and discussions.
  • We will align to health and safety policy and ensure risk assessments are appropriate to task.

Encourage a learning environment in which we support, develop, and enable our people to be at their best:

  • We will identify and nurture talent and provide support for those expressing an interest in developing and progressing within the service.
  • We will embed the new district performance dashboard which will support organisational improvement within the district.
  • We will work with partners to identify opportunities for multi-agency development which will strengthen our collaborative approach to reducing incidents.
  • We will support and develop our managers using modules from our leadership strategy.
  • We will promote coaching and mentoring of our people, developing operational and managerial skills.

Focus our prevention and protection activities on reducing risk and vulnerability:

  • We will re-energise our partnership within communities, Bradford district Care Trust and children services to ensure high risk and vulnerable members of the public are identified, and work is carried out to improve their health, safety and wellbeing.
  • We will develop new ways of working alongside Bradford district care trust ensuring those most vulnerable within the community receive the needed support.
  • We will train our people to the highest standard through internal and partnership education so those in the community receive the most up to date and appropriate safety input.
  • We will work with Bradford Council and other partners to identify vulnerable residents in areas prone to flooding and ensure a proactive approach.
  • We will continue to deliver the Safer Communities Prevention Strategy and continually review and assure the service we undertake.
  • We will continue to work alongside the Protection department to identify and report those building that do not meet the requirements of The Regulator Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
  • We will focus on the emerging risk of lithium-ion batteries and work collaboratively with other agencies to raise awareness of the associated dangers.

Provide ethical governance and value for money:

  • Construction has started to build a more energy efficient fire station at Keighley, with Bingley fire station in the design stage. Resulting in more efficient and cost-effective property.
  • We will ensure the best use of district resources in providing an efficient and value for money response to incidents.
  • We will continue to integrate online training and meetings that can reduce the number of unnecessary journeys and our fuel costs.
  • We will continue to explore opportunities to be more efficient in how we operate across Prevention, Protection, Response and Resilience.

Collaborate with partners to improve our services:

  • We will undertake and learn from multi-agency exercises to develop and improve the response to the risks identified within the district.
  • We will continue to build on our relationships with neighbouring Fire and Rescue Services through training and exercising.
  • We will work with blue light and Local Authority partners to develop robust plans for our high-risk areas including our COMAH sites, moorland, river and canal networks.
  • We will provide support to our staff, our partners, and members of the community in the recovery.
  • We will lead on prevention and risk reduction activities in preparation for the bonfire period and aim to reduce incidents working in collaboration with key agencies.

Work in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way:

  • We will continue to implement a recycling programme at all Bradford stations and encourage ‘greener’ ways of working.
  • We will work in partnership to prevent climate driven emergencies and develop ways of working to respond more effectively.
  • We will continue to look at hybrid ways of working to reduce travelling, paper, and waste within Bradford District.
  • We will continue to support Bradford's clean air zone and promote the use of low emission vehicles.

Your Fire and Rescue Service

Our CRMP sets out the essential work we will carry out over the next three years to manage and reduce fire-related risks and other emergencies to protect the communities of West Yorkshire. This plan has been developed to reassure you that we carefully consider how we meet the demands of our ever-changing society.

Click here to view

Fire Stations in Bradford District:

To contact Fire Stations across West Yorkshire:

To email please use SDAH@westyorksfire.gov.uk

To call please use 0800 587 4536

 

Contact Bradford District:

Tel: 01274 385410 

Email: bradford.prevention@westyorksfire.gov.uk 

Address: Bradford District Office, 540 Leeds Road, Bradford, BD3 9DB

Social Media: X (twitter) @WYFRS @WYFRSBfdTeam 

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