6 Resourcing

The Service operates a variety of duty systems from its 24 fire stations to ensure operational resourcing is aligned to risk across the county:
Wholetime Duty System (WDS) – WDS operates at 10 stations with full time cover provided by wholetime firefighters working 2 x 12 hour day shifts followed by 2 x 12 hour night shifts on a self-rostering basis. Two of these stations have 2 wholetime appliances available at any time and two have on call appliances stationed there to supplement cover.
On-Call Duty System – 12 stations are staffed by on-call crews only.
Day Shift Crewing Stations –The Service operates 2 stations on a daycrewed model where one wholetime and one on-call appliance are available between 08:00 and 19:00 and two on-call appliances are available in the evening and overnight.
Day shift crewing was implemented in April 2019. The change to crewing patterns was anticipated to save £1.2M annually from pay budgets. An evaluation was undertaken in February 2021 and demonstrated slightly lower savings of £1.18M per annum.

Alternative Crewing Vehicles

Standard crewing of all fire appliances is a crew of five with minimum crewing being a crew of four. Alterative crewing allows on-call appliances to be made available to a limited number of incident types with a crew of three, where limited personnel availability would otherwise mean that the appliance was unavailable for emergency response.

In 2022/23 The Service commissioned sector leaders ORS to undertake a review of fire cover across the County to ensure that assets were appropriately located, and to analyse the impact of changes to fire cover across the County.

The Service has reviewed existing on-call contracts with the aim of providing a more flexible offer to on-call firefighters to support recruitment and retention. The new contracts offer variation away from the standard 84 hour on-call requirement of the traditional approach.
An evaluation if the new contracts has been undertaken at two On-Call fire stations which identified some refinement required prior to a wider roll out. It is anticipated that the new contracts will support recruitment and retention, reducing the burden on recruitment and training teams in Service, and supporting the Equality and Diversity aspirations of the Service.

The service employs 75 wholetime firefighters who also provide on-call cover when they are off duty. This improves on-call availability and provides benefits in terms of culture and competence. It also provides some efficiencies relating to recruitment and training.