Norfolk CC with Norfolk Fire & Rescue Service

This award is open to a single council or where appropriate a partnership of councils, or a council-owned company. Private sector partners can enter on a council’s behalf, with the permission of the council itself. Many councils are seeking to establish a new relationship with local people and local communities. Community involvement and engagement is increasingly important as a way of shaping council thinking, contributing to service design and improvement and to responding to continuing resource pressures. It may also involve direct community involvement in service delivery. This award is intended to showcase the whole range of community involvement.

Our community involvement project of 170 diverse voices drawn from 35 seldom-heard communities is an extraordinary collaboration between Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service and local residents. The objective was to understand barriers to recruitment in fire and rescue roles faced by seldom-heard communities. We are the only fire and rescue service in the country to have completed such an ambitious community involvement project. The findings are so significant that we have invited central government to work with us to develop a response, and we are seeing increases in the diversity of our workforce.