Cheshire fire and police services lead the way on LGBT support

That’s the way it has been since 2013, with the organisation featuring in the list each year in that time.

The service is now recognised as the third-best employer in the country for its work in supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) staff and the wider community.

Meanwhile, Cheshire Constabulary sits in 18th place in this year’s table, with the police force featuring in the list for three years in a row – and that means the pair are the two highest-ranked emergency services in the nationwide list.

Alex Waller, assistant chief fire officer at CFRS, said: “We have always tried to be inclusive because our job is to serve the whole community.

“But it is probably in the last seven or eight years that we have really pushed hard on LGBT inclusion.

“Fire doesn’t discriminate and neither do we. We try to make sure that the whole community feels safe, that we are looking after them and serving everyone.”

Stonewall, a national charity which supports LGBT people, compiles the list every year by assessing employers in 10 categories – including an anonymous staff survey.

Cheshire’s fire and police services attend events such as Chester Pride, Manchester Pride and Pride in the Park at Tatton Park.

Both services have a network for LGBT staff and non-LGBT ‘allies’ who want to support them – giving employees from across the county’s various stations the chance to work together.

They also take part in other community events, including with the cadets, and staff at all levels of the two organisations receive training on equality issues.

Alex added: “Until you start to understand about these things you can be quite ignorant about them, so you are not able to support your staff.

“If you put your staff first, they can come to work proud of who they are and it improves their work life.

“We can then attract a more diverse workforce too, and as a public service it is important that we are more diverse so we can meet the needs of our whole community.”

February marks LGBT History Month across the UK.

Relations between police and the LGBT community have not always been comfortable – and it is estimated that three-quarters of hate crimes still go unreported.

Cheshire’s newly-appointed Chief Constable Darren Martland – who has worked in policing since 1990 – admits there has been a ‘culture shift’ in more recent years, and that there is more work still to do.

He said: “Officers are more accepting, it is an issue and subject area that we take extremely seriously and people feel quite open and comfortable talking about it.

“Our focus is on the victim, and any targeting of specific groups is simply not acceptable. Hate crime is a key priority for Cheshire Constabulary.

“People now feel more comfortable reporting hate crime. I think there were crimes in the past that went unreported.

“But we accept and understand that we still have more work to do. We need to reach out to the LGBT community to make them feel comfortable talking to the police, and one way we can do that is by getting our own house in order.”

Cheshire’s PCSOs also run drop-in sessions to talk to LGBT residents, as well as youth engagement events, and Darren is pleased with the ‘buy-in’ from staff at all levels of the force in supporting inclusion efforts.

Both services say they use the Stonewall list as a ‘mirror’ to see what areas they can improve on rather than an award to chase.

Melanie Hockenhull, Stonewall lead for CFRS, added: “We are always going to strive for improvement and there is more to do.

“With our last chief fire officer Paul Hancock and our current one Mark Cashin we couldn’t have asked for more in terms of the buy-in we get. The inclusion work is not seen as an added extra, it is very much business as usual for the service.

“But I wouldn’t say that our place in the table has been done by accident, it has taken a lot of hard work.”