North Wales Fire and Rescue Authority is encouraging the public to once again get involved in helping to shape its future direction.

It is keen to hear people's views on its key strategic priorities for next year and beyond. The Fire and Rescue Authority continually reviews and improves the services it provides, and as part of an annual planning process it invites anyone with an interest to share their views and opinions on its proposed priorities.  

North Wales Fire and Rescue Authority has identified three strategic priorities for 2014-15 and onwards:

To continue to help keep people and communities safe by preventing deaths and injuries from accidental fires in living accommodation.  This remains the Authority's primary concern.

To embark on a new 3-year financial plan that would seek to maintain the current level of service without increasing costs by any more than an additional £1 per year per head of population in North Wales.   This would follow on from a three-year period with a frozen budget that saw the Service lower its annual running costs by £2.45million.  The cost of providing fire and rescue services across North Wales for a whole year currently stands at £46 per head of population.

To continue to work on finding better ways of providing fire and rescue cover in North Wales, especially where the current arrangements are proving hard to sustain.

Councillor Meirick Lloyd Davies, Chair of the Fire and Rescue Authority, said: "Today's fire and rescue service delivers a far more sophisticated range of services than just responding to emergencies. At the same time, there is a particular emphasis on public services working together effectively to build strong communities - so more people than just those who have had fires will be interested in what the fire and rescue service does.

"The questions we are asking as part of this consultation are therefore to do with the strategic direction of the service as a whole and how to ensure we provide the best service possible with the money we have available to us.

"The more people get involved, the better our prospects of achieving the right balance of services we provide. The more opinions we receive, the more we can be confident that the detailed action plans we develop, will deliver exactly what the people of North Wales want."

The public can find out more about getting involved by logging on to the website www.nwales-fireservice.org.uk - responses must be forwarded by the deadline on 9^th December 2013.