North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service

Like all areas of the country, independent fire brigades developed in towns and cities across England which catered for the immediate area and were sponsored by the local authority. Examples within North Yorkshire were the Scarborough Fire Brigade, the Whitby Town Fire Brigade, and Pocklington Town Fire Brigade which were merged in 1948 into the North Riding Fire Brigade.[3][4] York had a separate professional fire brigade instituted in 1940 (under a Fire act of 1938), which was subsumed into the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service in 1996 when the City of York Council and the North Yorkshire Fire Authority combined their efforts into one fire Authority.[5][6]

Fire stations and services have fluctuated with changing council and local authority areas and with cutbacks to the fire service itself. The North Riding Fire Brigade lost some of its most northern areas around Guisborough and Saltburn to the newly formed Teesside Fire service in 1968. Teesside later became Cleveland Fire Brigade.[7] The county boundary changes of 1974 had a profound effect on North Yorkshire, as the area it covered increased from 2,116 square miles (5,480 km²) to 3,207 square miles (8,310 km²) and saw an increase in stations from 30 to 34.[8][9] In the 1970s, the brigade closed Whixley fire station near Boroughbridge, and in 2013, Snainton fire station near Scarborough was closed too. Cover would be supplied from nearby Whitby and Scarborough fire stations.[10]

In 2016, in line with other fire and police force mergers, a proposal was put forward that North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue merge with Humberside Fire and Rescue Service.[11]

In 2018, the North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, Julia Mulligan, also took on the role of Fire Commissioner for North Yorkshire.[12]

The FRS has a total of 38 fire stations,[13] The majority of these are crewed by staff on the retained duty system (RDS), with the minority being wholetime. Unlike other fire and rescue services in the United Kingdom, this FRS has two volunteer fire stations which are crewed fully by volunteers. Currently there are:

• 5 Wholetime Shift fire stations
• 7 wholetime Day-crewed stations
• 24 RDS stations
• 2 Volunteer-crewed stations
• 1 Headquarters and training centre[14]

The FRS received a total number of 19,000 emergency calls in 2007, as well as this the service also dealt with 9,000 incidents that year.[15] Additionally, the service experienced a drop in call-outs by 32% between 2003 and 2013.[16] The total number of incidents attended in the 2014-15 year was 6,874, of which 3,777 were false alarms.[17]

By 2016, this had dropped to 15,000 and received notoriety when a crew in Harrogate was delayed in getting to a car fire after it emerged they had been sent to the wrong location by a control room in Cornwall. NYFRS shares its control room operations with the Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service during peak periods. A later investigation determined that the mix-up was down to the caller not supplying timely information rather than the Cornish operator not having 'local' knowledge.[18]

• 9 July 1984 - the York Minster fire - 150 firefighters from across North Yorkshire fought the blaze which caused over £1 million worth of damage and was believed to have been caused by lightning[19]
• 24 May 1995 - the Dunkeswick air crash[20]

• 
  Acomb fire station
• 
  Harrogate fire station
• 
  Selby fire station
• 
  Grassington fire station

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