Tenbury Wells fire station is a solely "retained" station crewed by firefighters working on a retained duty system.  These firefighters are members of the local community, who have full time employment outside the fire service, but remain available to attend all emergency calls in their area as and when they occur.

Retained firefighters always carry a pager with them, linked directly to the fire service control room based in Worcester.  All 999 fire calls for the county of Hereford and Worcester are routed to this control room, and whenever fire control operate the pagers all of the firefighters respond immediately to the fire station. Within 4 minutes of a 999 call the fire engines are on the road making their way to the incident.

The fire appliances are ready for deployment 24 hours of the day, every day.

Retained fire engines are not only found in the rural areas.  Every fire station in Herefordshire and Worcestershire has at least one retained fire crew based there. Hereford and Worcester Fire & Rescue Service is made up of 27 fire stations, 19 of these are fully retained, there are 5 stations that are crewed 24 hours a day by Wholetime firefighters, they also have at least one retained fire engine based there.  The remaining 3 fire stations are crewed by firefighters based on station during the day, they then go home at night and respond from home in the same way as the retained firefighters.  Again, all of the day crewed fire stations also have a retained fire engine based there.