The United Fire Brigades’ Association of New Zealand (UFBA) serves and represents the interests of 543 fire brigades and fire forces throughout the country, comprising more than 12,000 firefighters.
Our members consist of volunteer, paid, urban, rural, industry and defence brigades, with 80% being volunteers. The UFBA is the only national organisation that unites and represents fire brigades of all kinds.
Our Strategy
What we do
Advocacy Charter
Our work in brief
UFBA/FRFANZ Strategy
In July 2016, UFBA and the Forest and Rural Fire Association (FRFANZ) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to make sure urban and rural firefighters had a single powerful voice during the transition to Fire and Emergency New Zealand.
By working closely together, UFBA/FRFANZ have effectively represented the interests of our members during the transition to ensure the best possible outcomes.
As part of our ongoing arrangement with FRFANZ, the UFBA has also provided administration and financial support to the FRFANZ Executive to meet the needs of their rural fire force members.
The positive ongoing relationship between UFBA and FRFANZ gives us an exceptional opportunity to build on our collective strength.
2017 Strategic Planning
With the aim of taking a collaborative approach to the activities we will focus on over the next three years, the UFBA invited FRFANZ to attend our 2017 strategic planning session.
The planning session proved a constructive time to clarify the issues facing our organisations and our members, set our future direction and, most importantly, develop clear goals to meet our refocused Vision of Safe sustainable communities.
To deliver advocacy and support to our emergency services members that will enable them to provide highly-skilled contributions to the health and safety of the communities they serve, we have established six key goals:
- Be Advocacy Experts
- Have a Broad Membership
- Ensure Sustainable Funding
- Be Trusted Partners
- Provide Strong Leadership
- Provide Excellence in Learning.
For more details of the principles underpinning these broad goals, download the UFBA/FRFANZ Strategic Plan below or visit UFBA/FRFANZ Strategic Plan
What we do
We advocate for our members on key topical issues and work to represent their best interests.
To add value for our members, we continually strive to improve and expand our service offerings. These include:
- Providing advocacy and support services (this includes for individual Fire and Emergency New Zealand volunteers, access to advocacy and support services provided by UFBA/FRFANZ for any dispute, complaint or conflict, free of charge).
- Administering service honours
- Managing firefighter challenges, training and conferences
- Providing exclusive firefighter apparel through the Fire Shop
- Administering the Benevolent Fund for members in times of hardship
- Administering the Accident Assurance Scheme to assist firefighters who become injured while undertaking approved fire brigade activities
- Arranging member discount benefits through retailers, hotels, and other service providers.
Advocacy Charter
UFBA was established expressly to represent and promote the interests of member fire brigades and fire forces.
Advocacy is the key to fulfilling this objective.
To set out the enduring high level principles we will follow to deliver effective advocacy, we have established a UFBA Advocacy Charter.
The principles include:
- The context for our advocacy and the actions we will take
- Target audiences - who we will proactively advocate the interests of our members and promote the cause of volunteerism to
- Ethical principles - the standards we will follow to deliver effective advocacy
- Member consultation - we will consult members to ensure we accurately portray the position of a majority of brigades
- Effectiveness - we will periodically assess our advocacy programme and determine opportunities for improvement.
Our work in brief
To find out more about our advocacy and support services for members download below the:
- 2017 UFBA Annual Report
- 2017 UFBA Annual Report Advocacy Extract
- UFBA 2016/17 Highlights of Advocacy and Support Services
Downloads
The UFBA/FRFANZ 2017 Strategic Plan summarises the main activities we will focus on over the next three years.