Our Ambition: Making West Yorkshire Safer 

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 wellbeing 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.