Community Fire Safety plays a major role in the work of the fire service and we now have teams of Outreach Workers well established and fully operational throughout our Brigade area.  The public of South Yorkshire are receiving the previously promised residential risk assessments and fitting of smoke alarms in at risk properties. 

These teams deliver a professional service and are establishing a well founded foothold in making the County a safer place.  It is our desire to fully involve all our staff in the CFS programme and the uniformed section have assisted the new groups and passed on their expertise.  It is reassuring to see the two groups of CFS staff working so well together.

It remains our intention to prioritise the residential fire risk within the County and establish the principle of knocking on every door at some time and ensuring that we make every home as safe as possible.  It is heartening to realise the extent to which our many partners around the Brigade area are "spreading the word" and involving themselves in the fitting of smoke alarms on our behalf and feeding information through to our Community Fire Safety Centre where they visit especially high risk homes. 

It is intended to increase the number of partnership arrangements.  All this adds to increasing the tolerability in our at risk areas and provides an excellent platform on which to base future Integrated Risk Plans.

We continue to strive to reduce the number of fire related fatalities and injuries (our core aim) and have set ourselves challenging targets.  I am confident that we will achieve our goals given the determination of our staff and the added resources committed to this area of activity.  We will not be complacent however, there is still much to be done.