DEVON and Somerset’s fire authority could make changes to its contracts in a bid to retain on-call firefighters.

Fire engines manned by on-call firefighters attend 90 per cent of the incidents reported to Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, making it “the biggest employer of on-call staff in England and Wales”.

But the service is struggling to recruit on-call firefighters, with an average of 133 leaving every year – more than one every three days.

To remedy the situation, the service will consider making changes to the contracts it offers staff to make it a “more attractive employer”.

The matter was discussed at a meeting of the fire service’s community safety and corporate planning committee in Clyst St George on Monday afternoon (December 3).

The service currently employs two kinds of firefighters – wholetime staff, who are employed full-time, and on-call staff who are paid a small retainer fee and then paid according to how many incidents they attend.

Wholetime staff work a ‘2-2-4’ system – two day shifts, followed by two night shifts, followed by four days off.

Pete Bond, the assistant chief fire officer and director of service improvement, said in his written report that the fire service had to “provide the best possible response to match the modern risks of today with the resources available.

“Our current arrangement for on-call and wholetime duty systems do not offer us the flexibility to be able to achieve this.”

Because of the lack of flexibility within the current system – which is enshrined in national guidelines, known as ‘the grey book’ – each station crewed entirely by wholetime staff pays out an average of just less than £50,000 in overtime each year.

On-call staff are contracted to a specific station for either 63 or 84 hours a week. They receive a low-level retainer (about 67p per hour) and operate on a “pay as you go” basis (i.e. they are paid for the time they spend fighting fires).

Between 2011 and 2015, 101 on-call firefighters listed a lack of flexibility in the contract, and the resulting impact on their work/life balance, as one of the major issues being their reason for leaving the service.

Mr Bond said: “The service often struggles to maintain availability during daylight hours when people may need to be away from the area for work or personal reasons.

“By not being able to issue more flexible contracts, on-call staff being required to be within five minutes of the station, and by tying them to particular stations, this often means we miss the opportunity to take advantage of recruiting people from the community who could offer vital cover during the hours that it is most needed.”

The service is seeking to recruit 100 on-call firefighters for the current financial year and 120 next year – meaning that it will still see a decline in overall on-call numbers if the average number of staff leaving remains at the current rate.

To fix the problem, the service will consider implementing different contracts in different locations – including allowing staff to allocate their own shift patterns with specific stations.

Mr Bond consulted with around 450 staff at several drop-in events, and received positive feedback about the proposed changes.

He said: “They all want greater flexibility in the contracts, and they want to be better rewarded for the work they do.

“This option offers us the flexibility to use a combination of contracts and shift systems to truly be able to match response to risk and realise, due to the diverse nature of the communities and landscape we  cover, that one size does not fit all in this case.”

A more detailed proposal, including a breakdown of changes by individual station and the kinds of fire appliances which will be available at each location, will come back to the committee in April 2019.