Become a Volunteer

Whatever your skills and knowledge the most important thing is your time. We have opportunites for people with time to offer in the daytime, evening and at weekends.

YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Our volunteers do many different activities! Volunteers make a vital contribution by helping us to provide fire safety advice and practical assistance.  You don’t have to want to be a firefighter to volunteer.  Our volunteers come from all walks of life.  We want people like you to help in your local community. 

As well as helping to keep people safe volunteering can also bring you benefits.  It gives you the chance to meet new people, learn and develop your skills -possibly as a way of re-entering the job market and to gain new experiences.

Examples of the types of activites our volunteers have helped with included:

Daytime

• Grill pan cleans (helping elderly or vunerable people in the community to stay safe)
• Pride in our Neighbourhood (litter picks, garden tidy, talks in schools)
  Wheelie bin campaign (stickers warning residents of the dangers of wheelie bin fires)
• Beatsweep (clean up of a specific area to make the community safer)

Weekend

• Charity Carwashes
• Festivals (e.g. Manchester Pride/Moss Side Carnival)
• Home Fire Risk Assessments (fitting free smoke alarms and giving fire safety advice)
• Multicultural events

Evening

• Hazard spotting
• Void Property Spotting
• Neighbourhood Forums
• Bonfire Builds
• Road Marshalling (events)

As a volunteer with the Community Action Team you can expect to get involved with a wide variety of community safety based activities within the local community. Although you will not be expected to do anything you are not comfortable doing.

Each member of the Community Action Team will be given training, a uniform and will operate within a formal structure to ensure high standards of service are maintained.  

If you think you could help…

If you have time in the daytime, evening or weekend and would be interested in helping to keep people safe please print off a copy of our application pack including covering letter, application form, equal opportunites monitoring form and our equality and dignity at work statement. Alternatively you can contact us on 0161 608 9225 or email: volunteers@manchesterfire.gov.uk.

Community Action Team Application Form (WRD 167 KB)
Covering Letter (PDF 154 KB)
Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form (PDF 133 KB)
Equality Dignity Statement (PDF 131 KB)

Once you have sent in your application form you will go through the following process:

If successful, you will be invited to attend for an interview. If you are then successful at interview, we will ask for two satisfactory references. We will then undertake a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) clearance.

On completion of checks you will be invited to attend a four-day induction course. You must attend all four days, usually over two weekends.  The course covers:

• Overview of Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service
• Policy and procedures to Volunteering
• Volunteering activities and why
• Home fire risk assessment (HFRA) Training
• Basic life support training
• Health and safety
• Equality and Diversity

On successful completion of the course you will be accepted to Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service’s Community Action Team.

You will then be given your uniform and you will start volunteering.

Getting the information in different formats!
If you would like any of the above information in another format, please do not hesitate to contact us by filling in the contact form.

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