Rules that on-call firefighters have to live near stations could be relaxed

Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service currently requires firefighters to be able to get to a station within five minutes, but this could soon be upped to six or seven minutes in some areas.

The change is being considered as one of a string of recommendations to come out of an on-call sustainability review, carried out in response to concerns about dwindling availability.

Chief fire officer Simon Hardiman said that while the service was still performing well in terms of both availability and response times, he did not want to wait until it was too late before addressing the emerging downward trend.

The review, which was the first of its kind in the country, was undertaken as a piece of academic research by Steven Sadler – one of the service’s own on-call firefighters and the UK’s leading expert in the field.

It resulted in a 200,000 word report and 12 recommendations, which Mr Hardiman said the service was now taking action on after seconding a member of staff in January to oversee their implementation.

Mr Hardiman said it was vital to secure the future of the on-call element of the service, which operates out of 22 of the county’s 23 fire stations. Only Telford Central is manned by whole-time staff.

At any given time there are around 310 firefighters on-call across the county, resulting in just over 90 per cent availability of fire engines.

Mr Hardiman said: “That’s one of the best availability rates in the UK – last time I checked the only service that was in front of us was the Isles of Scilly.

“We are really proud of the availability we have got, but we are aware it is starting to decline slowly.”

Mr Hardiman said the report highlighted some areas the service was already aware of, such as its strong retention rate, which Mr Hardiman put down to a positive workplace culture.

He said: “There are different elements – there’s recruitment and there’s retention.