Annual Delivery Report 2022/23

Every summer we take the opportunity to look back over the last 12 months and think about what we have achieved.

Over the past year we've made significant progress towards the goals we set: protecting communities, working together and saving lives.

In the last 12 months, we've responded to thousands of incidents, including a major hazmat incident at a food processing plant, an e-bike fire at a Salford high rise building, and sent 35 fire engines to a mill fire next to a recycling plant.

We rescued more than 2200 people from fires and other emergencies. That's an average of six people per day.

And our crews are getting to these incidents 98 seconds quicker than the England average.

We sent a team of firefighters to help international rescue efforts in Turkey following the devastating earthquakes in the region.

And every fire engine in every station now carries ballistic kit to protect firefighters who might need to respond to a terrorist attack.

Every firefighter has gone through a bespoke training course we developed alongside partners to give them new capabilities and keep them safe.

They carry fast evac stretchers, and enhanced trauma kit.

We've invested heavily in our new Wildfire Suppression Burns Team. These are a specialist team who will battle wildfires. Climate change is making wildfires more dangerous and more likely.

So, we've sent firefighters to train with other agencies from around the UK and abroad to try and build the kind of effective and well-equipped team we will need next time an incident like this occurs.

We've developed great working relationships with our neighbouring fire services and we practice regularly with them so when a big fire breaks out, we can stop it.

In Bury at our training centre, we've invested over £5 million to build the kind of world class facility that we need to keep ahead of the changing risks we face.

And with our new leadership academy, we're creating the next generation of leaders straight from the best of our local talent pool.

As well as responding to fires and other emergencies, we have also worked hard to prevent them from happening in the first place.

We visit schools and speak to young people.

We develop learning materials and we've expanded the size of our partnership with the Prince's Trust, which has been in place for over 20 years.

One of our Prevention highlights this year has been the Atlas Adult Fire Setters program. There is simply no other project like this in the world.

Atlas works directly with people who have been convicted of fire related crimes.

It is in partnership with the Probation Service, psychologists, universities and others, and it's designed to give them wraparound support as they adjust to life after their convictions.

It reduces re-offending and improves the safety of the general public. It's been a huge success and the project will be even bigger this year.

We also made our Home Fire Safety assessment system accessible via our website and nearly 24,000 people used it.

We've increased the number of fire safety regulators and our High Rise and Building Safety Taskforce have been working closely with government, councils, landlords, tenants, owners and other partners to enforce fire safety regulations and to prohibit the use of dangerous buildings.

We've given advice covering nearly 40,000 business premises.

We've inspected well over 10,000 water hydrants, plus we've actively supported police and council operations like Op Vulcan in Cheetham Hill.

That touches on one of the massive strengths we have here.

Our fire service is a central part of an integrated family of organisations with shared goals and a shared mission to make Greater Manchester better for all.

We work with councils, schools, GMCA, charities and other emergency services to try and help solve complex problems that we couldn't solve alone.

A really important example is around water safety.

Every summer we see fatal incidents where young people get into difficulty in dangerous water and then drown.

But there's no way for firefighters to solve this problem alone, which is why back in September, we hosted a water safety summit with dozens of our partner agencies where we could all share our knowledge, experiences and skills and build new partnerships to help confront and solve this complicated and dangerous problem.

And once again, we delivered the Safe Drive Stay Alive event with our Blue Light partners delivering vital road safety advice to 8500 young people.

We are working hard to embed a culture of excellence, equality and inclusivity.

This is the work that, if successful, unlocks a better future for us as employees and colleagues and for the people of Greater Manchester, who are better served by a fire service that reflects our communities and also recognises its imperfections and wants to constantly learn and improve.

In the last year we've improved our leadership development programme.

We've worked with firefighters to create our new Frontline leaders course and we've created a new promotions pathway for operational colleagues.

We've continued to embed our mission, vision and values alongside the National Fire Chief Council's core Code of Ethics.

People were formally recognised for their achievements at our annual recognition event and colleagues received their Long Service Good Conduct medals for a combined total of more than 2000 years of service.

Another area we've been working heavily on is our own environmental impact as an organisation.

We operate over 50 buildings and we've been installing solar panels across our estate.

They now generate electricity worth over £200,000 every year.

This has helped us reduce our carbon footprint by 7% in the past year.

This short video can only give us a glimpse into the totality of work undertaken by people across our service.

Alongside these major projects, we have also welcomed a new deputy mayor, raised £173,000 for charities and local causes, recruited 65 new Apprentice firefighters, and our volunteers gave over 3000 hours of their time to support us.

We were proud to receive a gold award from the charity Stonewall, alongside a ranking of 50th place in the 2023 top 100 employers list.

And we marched at the first Manchester Pride parade in three years.

Our women's football team won in the International Women's Day tournament, organised by Manchester FA.

We won an award for best use of new technology, thanks to our new mobile data terminals that provide crews with detailed information when responding to incidents.

We won in the extrication challenge at the Festival of Rescue and were the highest scoring new team in the World Rescue Challenge.

We are proud of all our achievements this year and by working together, protecting communities and saving lives, we are achieving our vision of being a modern, flexible and resilient fire and rescue service.

We're helping to make Greater Manchester a better place for all.