About us

We are responsible for delivering a fire and rescue service to the 700,000 people of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

We operate from 28 fire stations which vary in status from being staffed 24/7, 365 days a year, to being completely retained, which means firefighters are on call day and night and are alerted to incidents by a pager.  The Fire Service Headquarters is based in Huntingdon and houses the senior management team, our control room, central operational teams and many of our support staff, who work in a variety of roles to support frontline activity.

We are accountable to the Fire Authority and our responsibilities as an emergency service are set out in the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 and also the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

There are three main strands to our emergency service role - prevention, protection and response.

Prevention

Although we are always available to respond if there is a fire, we want to stop fires from happening in the first place.  We have a whole programme of community safety work in place, from school visits and group talks to carrying out free home fire safety checks in people's homes and fitting free smoke alarms if they do not have them.  Our community safety work is prioritised so that we help those most at risk of a fire in the home first.  The Fire Safety in the Home section of this website gives you advice on how you can stay safe from fire.  We are also proactive in arson prevention and road safety, working closely with partner organisations to achieve reductions in these areas.

Protection

It's not just in the home where fire safety is important.  All non-domestic premises by law must have fire risk assessments carried out by the owners or responsible person within that premises to ensure that any visitors, including staff, are as protected as they can be from fire and that they could evacuate safely if there was a fire.  This is part of the Fire Safety Order and our role is to offer advice, ensure premises abide by the legislation and do all they can to limit the risk of fire.

Response

Our crews of highly trained firefighters are ready to respond in an instant.  The county has a number of major trunk roads running through it, including the A1 and A14, and a large network of rural roads, so as well as responding to around 4,000 fires a year, we also attend around 900 road traffic collisions where our specialist skills and equipment are needed to free people trapped in wreckages.  There are lots of other emergencies we respond to as well, from rescuing trapped people and animals, to chemical incidents and flooding.  On our website, you can learn more about the vehicles and equipment we use to deal with these different types of emergencies.

If you would like to be part of Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service, in any role, operational or support, check out our recruitment section.

We are always seeking feedback about how we can improve the service we offer to everyone in the community.  If you have a comment to make about our Service, please use our feedback form.