Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service

The Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service (NFRS) is a fire and rescue service covering the county of Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. NFRS covers an area of 948 sqmi area with a population of around 750,000.

History
Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service was founded in 1974 when the former Northamptonshire Fire Brigade and Northampton Borough Fire Brigade (both formed in 1948 by the Fire Services Act 1947) merged.

In April 2021, Moulton Logistics Centre closed down, leaving Moulton Fire Station and the service's workshops behind. The new headquarters for the service is now shared with Northamptonshire Police, at a new site in Wellingborough.

Organisation
Since 2019, the fire service has been overseen by the Northamptonshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner. It was previous overseen by Northamptonshire County Council.

NFRS has 22 fire stations, with 28 fire engines, a headquarters in Wellingborough, and an administration hub in Kettering which is shared with Northamptonshire Police. Its firefighters are split 62% wholetime and 38% retained (on-call).

Performance
In November 2018, an inspection of NFRS by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found that the service was routinely operating below the safe number of fire engines needing to cover the county. It also found that firefighter training records were incomplete and the service could not assure itself that they all had the necessary safety-critical skills. Three follow-up visits by HMICFRS in 2019 and 2020, allowed them to announce in March 2021 that they were satisfied with NFRS progress.

Every fire and rescue service in England and Wales is periodically subjected to a statutory inspection by HMICFRS. The inspections investigate how well the service performs in each of three areas. On a scale of outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate, Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service was rated as follows: