The Community Safety Support Team has increased in personnel yet again. We are now employing four new part-time workers in order to improve our service to the public. The four new posts are an addition to the present team of Community Safety Advisors (CSAs) but will predominately be involved in a rural capacity. Of the 20 fire stations within the LFRS there are 11 that provide cover for rural areas.

As with our present CSAs they will be seeking to forge partnerships with agencies that have contacts with the more vulnerable members of our society e.g. the elderly and the young, as well as linking up with businesses and agricultural and manufacturing concerns. Their work will largely involve raising awareness of the dangers from fire in the home, delivering free home fire safety checks, fitting domestic smoke alarms and providing arson reduction advice to farms and small industrial complexes.

The Community Safety Support Team and full time firefighters have already been delivering a similar service for two years now, but due to the restrictions of time available to retained firefighters the delivery of the above has been severely limited, hence the introduction of the Rural Community Safety Advisors.