West Yorkshire covers an area of approximately 800 square miles (2,100 km2) which includes remote moorland, rural villages, large towns, cities, busy motorways and 'A' roads, as well as Leeds Bradford Airport.

[4] It has 47 pumping appliances based at 40 stations, sub-divided into five districts: Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield.

[13] In April 2014, the service's emergency call response centre was moved from the Birkenshaw site to a location in Leeds, which also subsequently became the call centre for the South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue (SYFR), in the event of a control room failure at SYFR control in Sheffield.

[21][22] Shipley fire station moved to a new site in May 2017 on Valley Road, closer to Bradford.

The close call system is where the firefighters work a set number of hours annually, so the shift patterns are managed locally.

Ranks of station manager and above can work a Flexible Duty System, with the remainder of the staff being on a retained basis.

[27] The Retained Duty System (RDS) is where all firefighters respond from home or from their usual jobs on a retained "on-call" basis, and are therefore required to live within five minutes of the fire station, or work within five minutes of the fire station if they are able and willing to respond from work Firefighters are alerted by electronic pager.

[28] Of the eight firefighters based at Marsden, three left the service, whilst five transferred to the retained station at Slaithwaite.