A NEW face, who has taken over the helm at Bromsgrove Fire Station, is forging closer links with the community and focusing on fire prevention measures.

Ian Jallands is the new station manager at the Windsor Street base. He joins the town station from brigade headquarters, where he was a staff officer for the chief fire officer.

Now Ian's role is to oversee the running of the station. He is in charge of 46 members of staff's welfare and training, including four watches and the retained firefighter section.

"There have been a lot of changes recently at Bromsgrove with new people joining us to bring us up to strength, myself taking over the manager's post and changes within the brigade itself," he said.

"I am really pleased to be given the opportunity to come to Bromsgrove. The firefighters here do an excellent job and are keen and dedicated."

Ian said he wanted to inject new energy into working with the community and becoming more actively involved in the Community Safety Partnership.

The fire crews at Bromsgrove already do school education and other group visits, plus the new weekly drop-in sessions in Charford for residents to get fire safety advice.

But Ian said he wanted to do more focused work, especially with the young and the elderly.

"We'd prefer to help the community, on issues such as road safety, by educating them rather than by cutting them out of the car once an incident has happened," he said.

Another area Ian is keen to put work into is fire prevention. This is now becoming the core business of the fire station's work. "We are known for dealing with fires, but we do so much more. We are now a fire and rescue service, which includes dealing with road traffic incidents, chemicals, animal rescues, water rescues and most recently colleagues dealt with the London bombings.

"We want to prevent the fires happening by educating people," he said.

At Bromsgrove station there are two fire engines and a hydraulic platform. Watches work two nine hour day shifts, two 15 hour night shifts and then have four days off.

Originally from Nottingham Ian, who is married with two children aged six and two, has been a firefighter for 15 years. He trained at Bedfordshire and Luton, before transferring to the Hereford and Worcester brigade in 1999.