London Fire Brigade is the busiest fire and rescue service in the country. What's more, we are one of the largest firefighting and rescue organisations in the world protecting people and property from fire within the 1587 square kilometres of Greater London.
The LFB is run by the London Fire Commissioner, a corporation sole and the fire and rescue authority for London.
As you might imagine, our organisational structure is complicated. We split it broadly into three areas:
We are the only UK fire service where all operational staff are full-time. Other brigades use a combination of full and part-time staff and retained firefighters who carry out firefighting duties in addition to their usual employment. To provide a round-the-clock service, we operate a two shift, four-watch system at stations – red, white, blue and green.
Control staff take emergency 999 calls, find out details of incidents, send fire engines and deploy our resources to emergencies. They also use a six-watch system but have a different rank structure.
It's not just firefighters who help make London a safer city. We have a range of non-uniformed and non-operational staff who work behind the scenes to support our front-line services, including IT, Finance, Procurement and Community Safety officers.
You can find detailed information about our organisational structure charts in our 'Information we publish' page.