The city of Leicester is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United Kingdom and Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service are proud to be a part of a community that is rich in ethnicity and cultural diversity.

However, the Service recognises that every day, across the globe, ethnicity (or race) can influence how a person is treated and can often lead to abuse in the form of discrimination, violence, bullying and harassment. Due to this, the Service is working to ensure that the workplace is an enjoyable environment for all employees and those that come into contact with our Service.

Supporting People with Specific Needs

Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service offers support not only to meet the needs of its employees, but also individuals within our communities with specific language and cultural needs. This is provided through a dedicated team of Community Safety Educators with specific language and cultural skills. These include:

  • British Sign Language
  • Punjabi
  • Urda
  • Gujarati
  • Hindi
  • Cantonese
  • Haika

The Service will also consider individual requests for information in braille, large print and other formats. Please submit your requests through our Information Management team by emailing info@lfrs.org.

Ethnicity and the Workforce

Race Profile of Employees
  White British or Irish Any Other White Mixed Asian or Asian British Black or Black British Chinese Any Other Ethnic Background Not Stated
Operational 495 6 9 2 2 0 0 37
Control 20 2 0 2 0 0 0 2
Support 104 1 6 7 1 0 0 4
Totals 619 9 15 11 3 0 0 43

The BAME workforce profile has reduced over the last four years (2015 – 2019) from 6.3% to 5.4% across the workforce and from 5.3% to 3.4% for operational staff. The drop in BAME representation in the workforce has been affected by the number of BAME leavers and the continued impact of On-Call recruitment. The declaration rate for ethnicity among staff is 93.9% which is extremely positive for the Service. However the Service will aim to increase this to 100% declaration.

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