With its core programmes now soundly established in support of Merseyside Fire & Rescue Services (MF&RS) and funding secured for this core work, the time is right to consider the FSN’s strategy for future growth. The diverse range of our volunteer activities provide a sound basis for a planned expansion.

 

Additional funding in the light of continuing stringent local authority budgets will have to come from outside sources rather than MF&RS. This new funding will come from a combination of corporate sponsorship and an increase in our own revenue earning programmes. The latter principally relates to the innovative FSN Cage Football programme launched by the FSN on Merseyside in August 2007. This is already producing encouraging financial returns and with a wider availability for rental to outside agencies and local authorities outside Merseyside the income can be significantly increased.

 

In addition the FSN intends to build upon work already undertaken in the provision, at a charge, of a more in depth advice service and the provision of expertise to other UK F&RS’s as to how they might develop their own voluteering programmes. We will also, for the first time, host a conference in 2008 on ‘the roles volunteering can play in support of a Fire & Rescue Service’.

 

The new work which requires funding includes the employment of additional part time staff, their primary role being to recruit and retain new FSN Volunteers within Liverpool District, where the FSN is currently under represented. As with our successful recruitment drives in the other boroughs it is only by involving the local community as FSN Volunteers that we can have an effect on the safety and wellbeing of that community.

 

In conjunction with MF&RS Community Fire Safety Department we have also identified that the Community Fire stations at Speke/ Garston, Old Swan and Kensington will be our key focus to support this expansion. Our aim being to have at least 45 new volunteers undertaking key FSN programmes from within their communities. Perhaps you could be one of them?

 

FSN intend to expand the scope and range of our ‘Winter Warm’ safety campaign which we run each autumn.

 

The expansion of our volunteer network and the significant increase in the FSN’s involvement in Liverpool District will mean the FSN is well placed to continue to meet the range of new challenges that will arise in assisting MF&RS to make Merseyside an even safer place for its citizens and visitors. Our staff and dedicated Volunteers are our greatest asset and will, I know, rise to meet these new challenges.