Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service named emergency service of the year 2024 at FIRE Magazine’s excellence in fire awards

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service has picked up a prestigious emergency service of the year award.

The service took the title at this year’s FIRE Magazine Excellence In Fire Awards.

The ceremony, which took place in London on Friday, December 6, was attended by fire services from across the country — with judges having poured over hundreds of entries.

It is the first time the Nottinghamshire service has won this prestigious award, having been shortlisted last year but missed out.

The service was also shortlisted in three other categories — the corporate communications team was up for team of the year, it’s training centre was up for training provider of the year, and Fire Protection Inspector, Sophie Winterbottom, was up for Most Influential LGBTQIA+ Individual In Fire.

Commenting on the award win, Chief Fire Officer, Craig Parkin, said: “This is easily one of the proudest moments of my career — I couldn’t be more pleased.

“This is the culmination of several years’ worth of hard work from every single individual in the service. Whilst we have had a fantastic year, being rated GOOD by our HMICFRS inspectors this summer, I can’t stress enough, this has been many years in the making, and I want to thank every member of my team who has been involved.

“First, we will celebrate our success, and I will be joining everyone across the service in this. However, our focus will very quickly turn back to looking at what is next, and how we can do even more and work even harder to make Nottinghamshire a safer place to work, live and visit.”

Friday also saw the service pick up another national award — with the corporate communications team named Small Communications Team Of The Year at the comms2point0 UnAwards.

Jack Grasby, senior communications manager, added: “As a team we are really proud to have picked up this award, against some really tough competition and after a very busy year, but we couldn’t have done it without our colleagues across the service – and this too is an award for us all.

“Our communications work seeks to inspire people to consider careers with us, make people safer, and support a range of other service aims. We also strive to keep people informed during large-scale incidents. This award gives us confidence that we are doing the right things, but we will of course continue to strive to be the best we can be and improve even further.”