Cheshire Fire Authority is the publicly accountable body responsible for providing a fire and rescue service to the communities of Cheshire. The main sources of income for the Authority are local council tax (accounting for 66% of its budget) and a mix of business rates and grants which are distributed by central government (making up the remaining 33%).
For the 2025/26 financial year, the Authority agreed a budget of £59.23m to provide a fire and rescue service across Cheshire. The Authority has a duty to set a balanced budget, matching our income with our outgoings. Outgoings include paying wages, purchasing firefighting vehicles and equipment, improving or maintaining premises and paying for things like energy and fuel.
Through careful financial management over several years, we have maintained equipment, invested in new technology, improved training and modernised our buildings. This has been achieved without any capital funding from central government. This has enabled Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service to become one of the most effective and efficient fire and rescue services in the country.
Our
2024-2028 Community Risk Management Plan sets out a cost-neutral programme to improve emergency response across Cheshire and deliver more prevention and protection activities to keep communities safe from fire and other emergencies. We are delivering on our Plan and have:
- Introduced five additional full time fire engines across Cheshire. This is improving our emergency response and resilience across the county.
- Increased the number of safe and well visits we provide to the most vulnerable residents in the community. We expect to deliver over 30,000 visits during 2025/26.
- Increased the number of fire safety audits we carry out in non-domestic premises. We are on target to deliver over 2,500 in 2025/26, an increase of 25% on the previous year.
This is helping to make Cheshire safer. We have:
- The lowest number of primary fires per 1,000 population of any fire and rescue service in England.
- The lowest number of accidental dwelling fires of any fire and rescue service in the North West.
Unfortunately, we still face financial pressures such as pay inflation (agreed at national level), non-pay inflation such as utilities and services, and capital requirements. We must also consider the recent change by the Government in how it calculates the central funding to provide to individual fire authorities, which is based on several factors.
Taken together, including any offsetting from savings, we estimate a funding shortfall of c. £200,000 in 2026/27. To ensure we can meet these challenges and set a balanced budget which will allow us to continue to maintain the level of service we provide, we are considering whether to increase our share of council tax (precept) by £5.00 per year on a Band D equivalent property. The impact this proposed increase would be as follows:
Band A - an increase of £3.34 per year, taking the precept from £63.39 to £66.73.
Band B - an increase of £3.89 per year, taking the precept from £73.96 to £77.85.
Band C - an increase of £4.45 per year, taking the precept from £84.52 to £88.97.
Band D - an increase of £5.00 per year, taking the precept from £95.09 to £100.09.
Band E - an increase of £6.11 per year, taking the precept from £116.22 to £122.33.
Band F - an increase of £7.22 per year, taking the precept from £137.35 to £144.57.
Band G - an increase of £8.34 per year, taking the precept from £158.48 to £166.82.
Band H - an increase of £10.00 per year, taking the precept from £190.18 to £200.18
