What We Do and How We Do It

We respond to fires and other emergencies, such as road traffic collisions and rescues from water across Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees Councils – an area with a combined population of nearly 580,000, occupying around 267,000 dwellings.

We also have nearly 17,000 business premises. This includes 23 Top Tier Control of Major Accident Hazard sites (8% of the national number) – such as major chemical plants.   

We are a 24-hour 365-day service and to keep our residents safe we have 293 wholetime firefighters and 96 On-Call firefighters. We have 21 fire engines and specialist resources. We also have a number of employees working in our Corporate Services teams.

Alongside emergency response we provide a range of other services to help keep our communities safe. Our Prevention Strategy includes keeping our communities safe in their homes, using a targeted approach to deliver our Safer Homes Visits to those most in need. Through schools education and other programmes, we aim to reduce arson and deliberate fire setting, alongside the delivery of Road and Water Safety to a wide variety of groups. Our Protection Strategy includes our targeted Risk Based Inspection Programme whereby we inspect and work with local business to ensure they remain safe and compliant with relevant legislation.

Our Performance

The majority of people will never have to call on our services, but if you do we know you will want us to respond quickly.

Our response standards demonstrate our commitment to providing a swift and effective emergency response:

• We attend building fires in an average of 7 minutes for the first appliance and 10 minutes for the second appliance – both of which were achieved in 2023/24.*
  
• We attend Road Traffic Collisions in an average of 8 minutes, also achieved in 2023/24.*

*Recent statistics from the Home Office highlights the average response times for fire and rescue services in England in the year ending September 2024. The average response time for dwelling fires was 8 minutes and 5 seconds and for primary fires was 9 minutes and 4 seconds.

These figures demonstrate that Cleveland Fire Brigade continues to exceed national averages, ensuring our communities receive prompt and efficient emergency response.

Changes in Funding 2015/16 to 2025/26

Like all Fire Services our funding comes from three key sources, Government Grant, Council Tax and a share of Business Rates.

Since 2015/16 there has been a national shift in funding from Government grant to Council Tax.  As a result, the amount of our budget funded from Council Tax has increased from 36% in 2015/16 to 46% in 2025/26. 

Alongside this change we have received one of the highest cuts in Government grants out of all Fire Services.  As a result of these changes our total resources over the period 2015/16 increased by 31% – compared to 45% for the Fire Service with the highest increase.  If our increase had been 45%, we would have had enough funding for an additional 66 full firefighters.

Budget and Council Tax 2025/26

Our budget will need to increase to manage the continuing impact of inflation, national pay awards and the increase in employers National Insurance, which is only partly covered by additional grant funding.   As a result, our costs are forecast to increase by £2.440m.  To address this increase we have looked carefully at our budgets and will make saving of £1.067m – without impacting on front line services. 

The budget will also benefit from Tax base growth, reflecting housebuilding across the area, and the use of our Budget Support Fund Reserve – which can only be used once and is not sustainable.

After reflecting these measures, we have had to increase Council Tax by a small amount.  For 63.8% of our households the annual increase will be £3.89 or less – which is around an additional 7p per week.  This will enable us to balance the budget, as highlighted below.

Summary of measure to address gross 2025/26 budget deficit of £2.440m

Your Council Tax

This table shows the amount of Council Tax based on the banding of properties – 63.8% of households live in a Band A or B property.