DS308-20 Corporate Website

Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service is the largest non-metropolitan fire and rescue service in the UK. We provide fire and rescue services for the counties of Devon and Somerset and the 1.7 million people who live here.

Our work focuses on three main areas: prevention, protection and response. We have a statutory duty to make provision to respond to fires and road traffic collisions (RTCs) and promote fire safety.

Preventing fire and other incidents is an important part of our work. We aim to support and educate communities to take steps to protect themselves.

We employ almost 2,000 staff, of which 1,509 are operational (wholetime and on-call firefighters), 36 control staff and 309 are support staff.

We work every day with our communities and partners to prevent emergencies, to make people safer in their homes, their places of work and where they visit. However, emergencies do happen and when they do we will respond as quickly as possible in order to help people and save lives.

We have just launched the Service's first communications and engagement strategy. A key focus for our strategy is building and improving our communications with our audience through digital channels. We want to create a new digital home for the Service which is user-focused and transactional rather than informational.

Our current website and intranet were built in 2012 and have had very little development since and uses an outdated content management system that is no longer fit for purpose. Our intranet is currently restricted to our internal network and this is a major barrier for many of our on-call staff accessing key information online. The initial focus for this project will be to replace our external website, but we will also be looking to explore developing and securely extending a new intranet beyond our internal network to enhance our staff's access to information.

View our current site at: www.dsfire.gov.uk