New Zealand Fire Service

The New Zealand Fire Service (Whakaratonga Iwi in Māori) is New Zealand's national fire fighting body. While its founding legislation, the Fire Service Act 1975, only provides for this role, the organisation has assumed (often on the basis of public expectation) responsibility for several other areas.

Strategic Direction

The New Zealand Fire Service has defined for itself a Mission, Vision and a Values statement which reflects their business. The New Zealand Fire Service's key aims, as required by statute, are fire safety and fire prevention.

The New Zealand Fire Service Commission developed a statement of strategic direction in June 1999 which comprised 4 elements:

• Focus on fire prevention, fire safety and fire outcomes (This placed a greatly increased emphasis on fire prevention and fire safety while also working to improve the outcomes from traditional emergency response activities).
• Resource reallocation and 'value for money' expenditure (This aimed to appropriately resource the increased fire prevention and fire safety work. It also required all resourcing decisions to pass a risk-based 'best value for money' test).
• Best practise organisation (This aimed to achieve a culture of continuous improvement and reform in the Fire Service through constant exposure to best practise in general organisation).
• Strong Fire Service governance and management (This is to enable the Fire Service to: Deliver on its statutory mandate, Respond to the needs of all stakeholders,......
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