Tā Mātou Ahunga Rautaki Our Strategic Direction 2025–2030

Tā Mātou Ahunga Rautaki Our Strategic Direction 2025–2030 (Our Strategic Direction) [PDF, 6.3 MB] sets Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s direction for the next five years.

Our Strategic Direction outlines the impacts we will make across five focus areas to 2030, with organisational culture as the foundation for achieving our strategic outcomes and fulfilling our purpose for Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Our Strategic Direction helps us identify what we concentrate our effort on, ensuring we focus on those things that will make the greatest difference to Aotearoa New Zealand, our people and our organisation.  It will have an impact on our planning and the way we invest in and deliver our work.

Our Strategic Direction comes into effect from 1 July 2025 but we are beginning to work towards it now.

Introducing Our Strategic Direction

What is in Our Strategic Direction?

Our Strategic Direction refreshes our core purpose – serving communities together – and affirms our two strategic outcomes of fewer unwanted fires, and reduced harm to people, property, and the environment.  

There are five focus areas each with outcomes and impacts we want to achieve in the next five years.

Together, the impacts and outcomes in each of the focus areas will direct our efforts to 2030, ensuring we focus on what will make the most difference to Aotearoa New Zealand, our people and our organisation.  

The five focus areas and their high-level impacts are: 

1. Undertaking safe, effective and resilient operations 

Minimised harm from fires through properly trained staff with clear roles, effective specialist response capabilities and fit-for-purpose technology that's good value for money. 

2. Being an effective regulator

Better fire safety outcomes through effective community education, consistent regulation, expert policy input and targeted compliance interventions. 

3. Building strong relationships

Safer communities through fostering local risk ownership, clearly communicating our service boundaries, establishing well-defined partnership roles, and upholding public service values of impartiality, accountability, trust, respect and responsiveness. 

4. Supporting our people

A safe, positive and inclusive environment that attracts more workers and volunteers with skills that are aligned with our organisational needs, where safety incidents are promptly addressed, and people are empowered to thrive.  

5. Having strong business foundations

Financial responsibility is ensured through sound spending decisions, appropriate governance, comprehensive risk management, fit-for-purpose technology resources and clear long-term asset planning. 

Our values and culture

Underpinning all of these is our culture and ngā uara, our values.

Our culture will help us achieve our strategic outcomes and deliver on our purpose. 

We are working hard to provide a safe, positive and inclusive environment where our people feel they belong and are empowered to thrive.  

To develop our organisational culture, we will focus on the following outcomes and impacts: 

• alignment to core values 
• raising the bar on behaviour expectations 
• safe, positive and inclusive environment 
• capable, trusted leadership 
• commitment to performance.