Different fire brigades have different geographical areas of responsibilities. When we work with other services, we work across our borders, thus cross border working.
As London Fire Brigade is the biggest fire service in England, we often help our neighbouring fire services, working together to resolve an incident, sharing sharing expertise and equipment. It’s about working together to save lives and make the best use of resources to assist the public.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Richard Mills explains:
"All fire brigades and blue light services share the common goal to save lives. So of course we work together when there’s a crisis. We have agreements in place with our surrounding Brigades to train and support each other in any emergency through our mutual aid arrangement. We work together on a daily basis to ensure we’re able to provide the best possible response to the public, whether within London or on the boarder, should they unfortunately become involved in an incident."
How might we help?
The Fire Services Act 2004 section 12 and 16 commit all Fire Services to sharing resources in order to resolve an incident. In turn, this is supported locally by a number of agreements with each of our neighboring Fire services. These are called cross border working agreements and are in place with Kent, Essex, Surrey, Royal Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. This means we will call their fire control room and ask for help if is an incident such as:
Why is it a good idea?
“All fire services share a common goal: saving lives. So of course we work together when there’s a crisis. We have agreements in place to support each other.”
Cross-Border Working
