Understanding risk in our communities – a request for information
I’m writing to seek your views and support to help us to understand the current and future risks our communities face.
Like many organisations, Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service has a range of statutory responsibilities we need to undertake in order to manage the risk to our communities.
At the same time, we have broadened our offer to partners wherever we can as we recognise that there are some complex issues, such as reducing the impact of mental health, that require leaders to work together.
As such, we are undertaking our regular strategic review of the risks that we might face in the future and what the future landscape might look like in terms of infrastructure as well as societal trends.
This will be reflected in our Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP), which will run from April 2027 until 2032. You can see our current plan on our website.
As part of developing our draft CRMP, we are gathering views from people and partners across Devon and Somerset. These views, alongside our incident data and risk analysis, will give us an understanding of what you and residents feel are local risks that we need to consider as well as perceptions of the fire and rescue service and its role within our counties.
We are capturing this through an online survey, as well as through focus groups with specific audiences. It would be helpful if you could arrange for this to be completed and shared as a higher number of contributions will give more insight to check we’re aligning our future plans with the communities we serve.
You can access the survey from the home page of our website – dsfire.gov.uk – or following this link to the online survey.
The survey is also available as a paper copy, which can be requested by emailing CRMP@dsfire.gov.uk or calling 01392 261287.
We will publish the findings reports from this engagement on our website as it may support your own risk planning approach.
Once our draft CRMP is produced, we will consult with you and our communities on the content to check whether the understanding we’ve captured through our engagement work and data mapping has been accurately represented in the plan.
Thank you for your support. Your feedback and support will ensure that we can continue to provide an effective, efficient and inclusive fire and rescue service, preventing incidents from happening and with the right resources in place to respond to an emergency when required.
Kind regards,
Gavin Ellis PGDip, MBA
Chief Fire Officer