Chairman's Blog November 6 2026: 100 Days in

It was a huge privilege to have been appointed as Chair of the Fire Authority in July. As a former on-call Hampshire firefighter, the service is something that I truly care about. I am determined to make a positive difference as Chair, ensuring Hampshire and the Isle of Wight continues to have an efficient and effective service that helps make life safer for everyone across both of our incredible counties. Cllr Karen Lucioni, The Isle of Wight’s excellent representative on the Authority, was also appointed as Vice-Chair.

Across July and August, the service responded to 1,393 outdoor fires, including 75 wildfires – Up 52% from last year. With the increasing challenges that extreme weather and climate change pose to our service and communities, including the growing risk of wildfires, it’s essential that national funding and resilience planning keep pace ensuring fire and rescue services have the capacity and capability needed to protect communities, firefighters and the environment. You can see my response to the recently published national EFRA Committee report on wildfires.

During the summer we had two major incidents, one in Headon Warren on the Isle of Wight, the third largest incident in HIWFRS history, and one in the New Forest – The services’ largest incident on record requiring around 5,530 hours of resource time on scene and national resilience support. During one particularly busy week, the service was seven times busier than usual.

On behalf of the Fire Authority, I would like to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of our operational and support personnel responding to these fires. You all worked long hours, often in extremely difficult conditions, to keep our communities in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight safe. The professionalism, resilience and commitment shown by Firefighters and the wider service teams during this period was outstanding and as Chair of this Authority, I’d like to thank each and every one of you for helping to keep our local communities safe.

In September, the fire service undertook a partnership exercise where colleagues were joined by emergency services partners for a significant multi-agency training exercise at West Quay in Southampton, marking the successful delivery of an exercise that has been almost a year in the planning. Our Chief Fire Officer, Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, attended to see first-hand the scale of the coordination and partnership involved. The exercise brought together firefighters, police, ambulance colleagues, JESIP partners, West Quay teams, Control Room colleagues and volunteers to test the joint response to a large-scale incident in one of Southampton’s busiest and most complex public venues – My thanks go to all those involved in this successful exercise.

At the end of the month, I was delighted to attend the re-opening of Redbridge Fire Station in Southampton. The reopening marks a positive step for the local community and for our crews and I would like to reiterate my thanks to the crews for their enthusiasm, patience and resilience throughout the works and during their temporary relocation. My thanks also go to all our staff that were involved with the project – The station looks brilliant!

At our October Full Authority meeting, I’m delighted that we agreed further investment into our frontline services. This investment included creating twelve additional permanent firefighter posts, increasing operational capacity and flexibility. Additional frontline officer posts, strengthening command resilience during major incidents. Additional investment in specialist capabilities, including Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) to ensure the service is prepared for the most challenging and complex incidents. As an Authority, we are continuing to invest where it matters most, strengthening our frontline and ensuring the service has the people and resources it needs to respond when our communities need it most.

The Chief Fire Officer and I have jointly written to the new Fire Minister, Baroness Blake of Leeds, welcoming her into the role. We have invited the Minister to HIWFRS HQ to see our work first-hand and to meet our firefighters and staff. In the letter, we also highlighted the need to address the lack of dedicated capital funding, and the impact wildfires have had on our area this summer. We look forward to welcoming the Minister to Eastleigh in the near future.

Hopefully this update has been a helpful one, stay tuned for the next one!

Cllr Prad Bains

Chair, Hampshire & IOW Fire and Rescue Authority