Fire service advice during the dark nights period:

• Attend organised bonfire and firework displays – they are cheaper and more spectacular than doing your own
• Keep your wheelie bins in and clean any loose rubbish off the streets
• In the event you are having your own bonfire – call it in beforehand to our control room on 0114 275 6839

A campaign is being launched today (Friday 25 October) to keep people safe and reduce demand on our emergency services across South Yorkshire, during the Halloween and bonfire period.

South Yorkshire Police, South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue and Yorkshire Ambulance Service run operation Dark Nights jointly each year.

The campaign has already seen police and fire officers visiting schools over the past few weeks to educate children on staying safe, and during and over the holiday and bonfire period, will see officers patrolling hot spot areas.

The services are asking people across the county to be 999 wise – especially on bonfire night – to help keep their resources free for genuine emergencies.

For the police, this means only calling 999 if you are experiencing an emergency or someone’s life is in danger and using alternative ways to report non-emergency crime.

Superintendent Sarah Poolman said: “Your neighbourhood teams will be out and about in the evenings throughout this period, working hard to make sure that everyone can have an enjoyable and safe time.

However, this is an extremely busy time for officers and our call takers in the control room and we are therefore asking our communities to help us ensure we are able to respond to the people who need us the most by thinking before you call 999 or 101.

“Our call takers have to prioritise the calls coming into our control room. So if you are wanting to report a non-emergency crime, please make use of online reporting on our website- https://www.southyorks.police.uk/contact-us/report-something/.”

Whereas fire officers are asking people to ring the service’s control room to tell them about planned bonfires – to avoid unnecessary calls during the bonfire period.

The fire service is also urging people to attend organised fireworks displays, which they say are safer and more spectacular, rather than having their own.

“Each year we get a small spike in incidents on, and around, bonfire night. We want to make South Yorkshire safer and stronger, so this is clearly something we’re keen to tackle,” said Station Manager Steve Jones, who works within the joint fire and police community safety department.

“We know, from last year’s incident analysis, how this spike happened, and have identified three things the public can do to help us reduce incidents and keep people safe.

“Firstly, make sure your bins are in and there’s no loose rubbish on your street that could be set alight. Secondly, if you are having a bonfire, make sure you stay with it and keep it in hand.

“Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, by letting our control room staff know you’re having a bonfire you can potentially reduce the amount of times we get called out to garden bonfires.

“The people that call these in are well meaning callers, and we’d always encourage people to call 999 if they discover a fire or need our help, but if we know you’re having a bonfire we will know not to send firefighters to spoil your party.”

A campaign that asked people to help reduce small fires during the summer has helped cut incidents by a quarter, the fire service has revealed.

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue launched its ‘Do Your Bit’ campaign on Monday 22 July – to tie in with the six week school holidays when there is normally a spike in incidents.

The service asked people to play their part in reducing secondary fires – which involve grass, rubbish, bins and other non-insurable property – during a traditionally busy summer period.

And according to fire service analysis, the 744 of these fires that crews attended during the Do Your Bit campaign period is a 26 percent reduction compared to the average across the last three years.

“We’re prepared to deal with all eventualities but endless summer fires can be really frustrating for us. We want to be available to help people who are in real, life-threatening situations,” said T/Group Manager Matt Gillatt, head of the joint police and fire community safety team.

“Through this campaign we wanted to show the public that we were taking this issue seriously, but our core aim was to reduce these fires altogether. Clearly we’re really pleased with the result.

“This is another example of our commitment to making South Yorkshire safer and stronger and is credit to the commitment of our staff. A lot of work went into this incident reduction, with staff from various departments involved, and this work will continue.”

The campaign asked the public to help tackle arson, in particular, by taking specific action to shut down opportunities for people to start fires.

This included not leaving wheelie bins out overnight, keeping streets and gardens clear of loose rubbish and reporting details of arson to police via the 101 service.

“We knew before the campaign started what the root causes were, so we set out to tackle those. We wanted people to remove the opportunities for fires to start,” added Matt.

According to the service’s analysis, the three year average for secondary fires between 22 July and 22 September is 1007 – compared to the 744 calls dealt with this summer.

Deliberate secondary fires specifically dropped by 23 percent, going from a three year average of 802 to 620 this year.

Hundreds of police and fire staff have benefitted from more than 1,500 hours joint training, as collaboration between the two emergency services gathers pace.

South Yorkshire Police and South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue say more than 500 of their staff have taken part in shared courses from driver to first aid training- helping to save taxpayers thousands in the process.

The organisations now use each other’s premises to host training for their respective staff- including at the fire service’s development hub in Handsworth, Sheffield and the police training suite at Robert Dyson House in Rotherham.

Minibus, LGV driver, water rescue and health and safety training are amongst the specific courses delivered by fire service training instructors to police staff.

Police trainers have provided conflict management training and first aid courses to fire staff in return.

Managers from both organisations now routinely observe each other’s training exercises in a bid to improve understanding of responses to major incidents.

Fire officers have also benefitted from police led ‘joint decision making’ training, which improves the way managers make fast decisions at emergency incidents.

Managers say joint approaches to training like this save cash because it means organisations don’t have to needlessly buy in courses from specialist providers.

Group Manager for operational training at South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue, Matt Walker said: “Since signing a joint collaboration agreement last year, we have been working closely with South Yorkshire Police to develop new ways of working together. This has focused heavily on sharing of best practice and looking at how we can build on and develop existing and future activities to improve the way we operate.

“Not only does collaborating on training like this save both services and the public money, but it also ensures we are delivering the best possible service to the people of South Yorkshire.”

Claire Hayle, Head of Learning and Development at South Yorkshire Police, added: “South Yorkshire Police recognise the collective benefits that can be achieved through closer working with emergency service partners, and this is just one of the ways we are working in collaboration with South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue.

“We are delighted to be able to deliver joint training to operational and support departments within both organisations, in turn gaining a greater understanding of each other’s organisations, saving public money and improving our services for the people of South Yorkshire.”

The Policing & Crime Act 2017 placed a new statutory duty on all three emergency services to look at opportunities to work with one another better to improve efficiency and effectiveness.