Communities and Public Protection brings together a range of skills, backgrounds and experience that we believe can help build safe, strong, resilient communities.
Rather than just reacting to situations, we and our partners prefer to support and educate to help prevent them occurring in the first place.
Communities and Public Protection (PDF, 7.8MB)West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service is at the heart of the directorate, working alongside community professionals, resilience and emergency staff and Trading Standards colleagues.
A few of the areas where we have already made improvements are outlined below. Examples of this work are shown in the document above.
- Start of life - teaching children about fire prevention and road safety, and diverting young people from anti-social behaviour.
- Later life - helping vulnerable people stay living safely at home, and getting them the care support and benefits they are entitled to.
- The economy - working with organisations to increase their understanding of fire safety regulations and helping them comply with their legal responsibilities.
- Keeping the county moving - working closely with our regional and national road safety partners in a bid to drive down the number of collisions on our roads, and the severity of the consequences when they do occur.
- Helping rural communities - as well as helping with international search and rescue missions the team is fully trained to carry out urban search and rescue, rope rescue, water rescue and large animal rescue.
- Trading Standards - working to protect communities and support local businesses by identifying undesirable and illegal trading activity.
- Responding to hazards and incidents - by planning, preparing and testing resources for a wide range of possible incidents we aim to limit the impact on communities when they do occur.
- Supporting communities - encouraging people to come together to discover common interests and share their knowledge, experience and skills.