Deputy Chief Fire Officer – West Midlands Fire Service

Deputy Chief Fire Officer
Publish date: 17 March 2025
Closing date: 14th April 2025 at 12 noon
Salary: Please see recruitment pack
Hours: 37 hours per week
Overview
West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) is the second largest fire and rescue service in England, serving an area of 902km square and a population of over 2.9 million people.
Our vision is ‘Making the West Midlands safer, stronger and healthier’.
This vision and the strategic goals outlined in ‘Our Strategy’ are what drives the people, professionalism and pride with which we serve our communities.
Are you ready for an exciting and rewarding opportunity to be a part of one of the country’s biggest and most progressive fire and rescue services?
Following the recent appointment of our new Chief Fire Officer (CFO), WMFS is seeking a Deputy Chief Fire Officer to join our team.

As one of our Brigade Commanders, you will support the strategic priorities of our service, providing leadership, vision, and direction to support the CFO on all service-related matters. With an engaging personality, you will be a strategic thinker with the ability to apply innovation and creativity to meet the challenges of a transformational fire and rescue service. The role will be challenging, exciting and very rewarding, providing the opportunity to demonstrate how you build workforce capacity and capability.

Reporting to the CFO, you will be responsible for the safe and effective delivery of fire and rescue services to the communities of the West Midlands. Through your proven ability to lead, you will support the CFO in the provision of strategic choices for West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority, to ensure that the service continues to be agile and adaptable to the cultural, financial, and operational challenges facing the sector.

Demonstrating excellence and commitment to continuous improvement, you will display strategic level behaviours to an outstanding degree and have a proven track record of positively driving change. With a collaborative approach, you will have significant commitment to our core values and principles. Excellent communication skills mean you will be comfortable engaging with a range of people, adapting your style to meet the demands of your audience. Engaging effectively will come naturally to you, be it with peers, employees, fire authority members, trade union and representative bodies, external agencies or partners.

You will provide an operational emergency response as part of the Principal Officer Group (Gold Command), including a national response on a locally agreed continuous duty system.  You may be required to attend incidents as the Incident Commander, as dictated by the WMFS Incident Command System, or as WMFS Gold Commander at Multi-Agency Gold level briefings or meetings at any location throughout the West Midlands.