NFCC Impact Report

Contents

Introduction

Mission, Vision and Strategic Objectives

People, Culture and Leadership

Prevention

Protection

Digital, Data and Technology

Operational Response and Fire Control

Resilience

Leadership and Influence

Looking Forward: Future Plans

Introduction

The last year has been a pivotal time for fire and rescue services and for NFCC in supporting them to protect their communities.

During the 2024–25 financial year, we made significant progress across all our strategic priority areas – Prevention, Protection, People, Response, Resilience, and Leadership, as well as seeing some major developments in our Digital, Data and Technology workstreams.

We continued to support and represent UK fire and rescue services in driving forward improvements, influencing policy, and delivering vital public safety initiatives. This period was marked by a strong focus on enhanced safety standards, workforce development, national resilience planning, and influence and engagement.

In this short report, we summarise NFCC’s key activities and achievements over the year, aligned to these strategic priorities. The end of the year was also marked as we said ‘goodbye and thank you’ to outgoing Chair Mark Hardingham and welcomed former Merseyside Chief Fire Officer Phil Garrigan as our new NFCC Chair.

People, Culture and Leadership

The work to support culture and inclusion remained one of our key priorities throughout the year. NFCC’s strategic priorities within the People, Culture and Leadership Hub focused on supporting the workforce and cultivating a positive, inclusive culture across fire and rescue services. Over the past year, we drove a number of initiatives to invest in leadership development, promote diversity and inclusion, and enhance the wellbeing of staff.

In 2024/25, we:

• Published a progress report on our Culture Action Plan, outlining the actions taken to support a positive culture, promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and address inappropriate behaviour in the workplace’
• Launched a “Challenging Behaviour” toolkit – a practical resource compiling positive practices and clear guidance for all FRSs on how to empower staff and leaders to call out and correct poor behaviour.
• Established a new “Lived Experience Advocacy Forum” to bring together representatives from under-represented groups and networks – including Women in the Fire Service, the Asian Fire Service Association, LGBTQ+ employee groups, and others – to act as a national advisory forum.
• Rolled out a new Middle Leadership Programme (MLP) to further professionalise development for existing fire officers and managers.
• Evaluated the first cohort on the Direct Entry scheme recruitment in 2023/24, capturing lessons in order to refine the process going forward.
• Continued to support services in embedding the Core Code of Ethics into everything from induction training to performance management, reaffirming the sector’s shared values of integrity, honesty, inclusivity, and respect.
• Placed a strong focus on firefighter health and wellbeing, including working in partnership with The Fire Fighters Charity in supporting the establishment and maintenance of The Fire Fighters Charity’s National Suicide Prevention Crisis Line.
• Started work on creating a National Fire and Rescue Staff Survey in partnership with key stakeholders, including the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and the Local Government Association.
• Fostered greater collaboration and sharing of best practice through events including the NFCC Culture Conference 2024, which brought together practitioners and leaders from across the country to discuss progress and challenges in reforming culture.

Prevention

Prevention remained at the core of NFCC’s mission, with concerted efforts to prevent fires and other emergencies before they occur. Fire and rescue services, supported by NFCC guidance and campaigns, carried out an expanding programme of community safety work.

In 2024/25:

• The NFCC Online Home Fire Safety Check has continued to be embedded by 95% of fire and rescue services, with 127,730 referrals being completed. Additional tools have been developed and launched to support the sector with a more consistent approach to Home Fire Safety Visits, which has included the launch of the competency framework, eight core component e-learning videos and an evaluation framework.
• We ran another successful Be Water Aware campaign week, highlighting everyday water risks and drowning prevention strategies across the UK. Fire and rescue services were provided with toolkits and messaging to promote water safety locally. Similarly, Wildfire Aware campaigns provided advice on preventing outdoor fires. We continued to collaborate on national initiatives such as Charge Safe, raising awareness of the fire risks from lithium-ion batteries in e-bikes and e-scooters, and Know the Fire Risk, which educates about flammable skin creams.
• There has been a continued focus on youth engagement with new training developed on working with children and young people, which will equip FRS staff and volunteers with further skills and accreditation. The Fire Cadets programme expanded its reach, with 209 Fire Cadet Units involving 2,553 young people across the UK. NFCC’s StayWise digital education platform involved young people in further platform development and its resources.
• We have driven forward work under the new Serious Violence Duty, recognising the fire and rescue service’s role in early intervention to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour. We hosted a national learning seminar, bringing together services to share effective practices in violence prevention, and updated key guidance – including safeguarding policies for children and adults – to reflect new legislation, and provided training such as Safer Recruitment.
• Road safety remained a priority, given the pivotal role of fire and rescue services in responding to road traffic collisions and promoting safer driving. A national Road Safety Position Statement was published which aims to unify messaging and objectives across all services. We also launched a central Road Safety Resource Portal for sharing educational materials and best practices, which FRSs are populating with local initiatives to enable nationwide learning.
• Throughout the year, NFCC webinars and seminars addressed topics including young driver education, fleet safety (“Driving for Better Business”), and offender rehabilitation programmes – all reflecting NFCC’s broad approach to preventing emergencies before they happen.

Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT)

2024/25 marked the launch of our two-year DDaT Strategy and Roadmap, driving a step change in how the sector uses digital, data and technology to improve outcomes. We prioritised building capability, setting clear standards, and accelerating practical tools in AI, data quality and cyber to enable rapid adoption across services. Engagement remains strong, with an expanding network of practitioners and experts turning strategy into delivery.

In 2024/25:

• We launched the two-year DDaT Strategy and Roadmap and delivered against its priority workstreams spanning AI, data, cyber, standards and skills.
• We expanded the DDaT ecosystem to approximately 500 colleagues, including Subject Matter Expert SPOCs for AI, Data, Information Governance, ICT and Cyber; further growth planned across GIS and digital transformation roles.
• We rolled out our Learning Bytes CPD programme (well attended sessions across eight topics) and piloted a Digital Leadership Programme (100 participants) and Data Masterclass (89 participants) for evaluation and scale up in 2025/26.
• We launched the AI document transformation suite (including the NFCC Document Translation Portal and Simply Readable) enabling translation into approximately 75 languages while preserving layout and improving accessibility; now 80+ users across 32+ services to better serve multilingual communities.
• We published the Ethical Framework for AI, setting human centred principles to guide safe, transparent and accountable AI use across the sector.
• We recruited a national AI Lead; established active working groups (122 members across five topics) producing sector guidance, evaluating M365 Copilot options, and prioritising GenAI use cases toward funding and build.
• We launched the Data Quality Methodology to consistently assess and uplift data quality across FRS datasets; implementation sessions scheduled through 2025/26.
• We developed Data Entry Conventions for Productivity & Efficiency (P&E) to enable consistent local measurement and national aggregation, forming the foundation for a proposed national P&E app.

Resilience

NFCC’s strategic priority of Resilience is about preparing for major incidents and ensuring that the fire and rescue service (and the nation as a whole) can respond to and recover from large-scale emergencies or disruptive challenges.

In 2024/25:

• We published a Climate Change Position Statement in February 2025, which warned that the UK is not yet fully prepared for the escalating impacts of climate change on emergency services and stressed the need for increased investment in fire and rescue capabilities to meet these challenges, which were also set out in three extreme weather policy position statements published in August 2024.
• At an international level, NFCC took a leading role in global fire resilience and cooperation, co-hosting the inaugural World Fire Congress held in May 2024 in Washington, D.C. which convened senior fire officials and Government ministers from around the world to direct attention to the most pressing issues facing fire and rescue services globally.
• A major outcome of World Fire Congress 2024 was the establishment of a global fire service leadership network, formalised by the signing of the World Fire Congress Charter by participating nations. Looking ahead, it was announced that the United Kingdom will host the next World Fire Congress in 2026, with NFCC coordinating that event.
• Beyond the World Fire Congress, NFCC engaged in other international resilience initiatives including Dubai Civil Defence’s “1 Billion Readiness” initiative – the largest global campaign ever undertaken for fire safety awareness. This ambitious initiative aims to train 1 billion people worldwide in fire prevention between 2025 and 2027.
• We continued our partnership with the UK’s Fire Aid charity, the Fire Industry Association, and others in support of Ukraine’s fire and rescue services – coordinating donations of equipment and apparatus to replace resources lost in the conflict and providing technical advice through international working groups.
• We worked closely with the Government and other agencies to strengthen national resilience mechanisms, including collaboration on the development of the new Emergency Alerts System for public warning of major incidents. During 2024, we assisted the Home Office and Cabinet Office by reviewing guidance and crafting training for FRS responders regarding these mobile alerts.
• We also used our convening power to address emerging national risks –including establishing working groups on issues such as the Active Cyber Defence for critical emergency service infrastructure.

Leadership and Influence

As the professional voice of the UK Fire and Rescue Service, we exerted influence across Government and the wider sector, including in our advisory role to central Government, and stewardship of national programmes and standards. We continued to make a strong case into government for sustained investment in fire and rescue services, including through the spending review process.

In 2024/25:

• Following the change in UK Government in 2024, the Home Office created a Ministerial Fire Advisory Board – later evolved into the Ministerial Advisory Group (MAG) – to provide a forum for senior fire stakeholders to advise Ministers on key issues. The NFCC Chair is a core member of the group, alongside the Fire Brigades Union, fire sector employers, the Local Government Association, HMICFRS and others.
• In February 2025, following the publication of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 report recommendations, the Prime Minister announced that responsibility for fire and rescue policy would transfer from the Home Office to MHCLG in April 2025. NFCC had been closely engaged on these plans, writing to Ministers in late 2024 to outline considerations for any departmental reorganisation.
• We continued to be a prominent advocate in Parliament and Whitehall on fire-related legislation and policy, engaging with numerous Government consultations and parliamentary inquiries, submitting expert evidence on key issues including the reform of building regulations.
• Within the fire sector, we continued to work closely with the Fire Standards Board to create and roll out Fire Standards that drive consistency and excellence. This saw the publication of a new Digital and Cyber Fire Standard which we helped to craft to ensure that all services meet baseline requirements for digital resilience and cybersecurity.
• We also played a coordinating role in improving inter-operability and collaboration across emergency services, continuing to work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and Association of Ambulance Chief Executives on joint initiatives under the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles (JESIP)
• We provided a sector-relevant annual programme of events for FRS personnel and the wider sector, which aims to provide professional development, updates on professional policies and standards, and a platform for networking with peers nationally.
• We continued to rally the sector’s voice through media appearances and at conferences to speak on issues such as firefighter safety, diversity, and climate emergency preparedness.