> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.peoplesfuture.scot/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 5. Fires Out First 🟢 - URL: https://www.peoplesfuture.scot/5-fires-out-first/ - Published: 2026-08-20T08:42:04.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-20T08:42:04.000Z - Description: The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service exists to put trained people and a working appliance at the incident. That is a matter of minutes, of a crew of four or five, and of whether a retained firefighter on an island or in a glen can leave work when the pager sounds. Fire and rescue is fully devolved. - Author: The Peoples Future Scotland - Tags: The 28 The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service exists to put trained people and a working appliance at the incident. That is a matter of minutes, of a crew of four or five, and of whether a retained firefighter on an island or in a glen can leave work when the pager sounds. Fire and rescue is fully devolved. Headcount is lower than before the 2013 merger. Average arrival times have lengthened. Dwelling fires have fallen. The constraint is not a missing statute. It is money, crewing, an ageing workforce and the demography of the places that depend on on-call cover. --- ## **Current reality** ### Legal and institutional position The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was created on 1 April 2013 under the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, which abolished the eight legacy brigades and placed a single national service under a statutory Board, accountable to Scottish Ministers. The Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, as amended, sets the duties: firefighting, fire safety, road traffic collision and other humanitarian work as specified. The Fire and Rescue Framework for Scotland, last issued in 2022, is the ministerial direction on priorities. Ministers set the budget. The Board decides stations, duty systems and the Target Operating Model. Firefighter pay is negotiated through the UK National Joint Council; that is a bargaining forum, not a reserved fire power. Prevention duties include home fire safety and non-domestic enforcement. Wildfire, flood and rescue sit inside the same service. No reserved constitutional barrier prevents changes to numbers, stations, or contracts. A UK-wide pay mechanism and the GB energy and climate context affect demand. Those are not substitutes for the Scottish Budget line. ### The latest official numbers SFRS Fire Safety and Organisational Statistics for the year ending 31 March 2025, published 29 August 2025, are the last full official set. The next organisational bulletin is scheduled for 31 August 2026. On 31 March 2025, the service had a headcount of 7,556, up 44 on the year. Of these: - 3,430 wholetime operational firefighters (3,422 the year before) - 2,705 retained (on-call) firefighters (2,708 the year before) - 171 control-room staff - 273 volunteers - The remainder support and other grades Staff scheduled to crew appliances: 5,467 (72.4 per cent of the total). Uniformed full-time equivalent — wholetime operational, retained, retained full-time and control — was 5,946\. That is 800 FTE, or 11.9 per cent, below the 6,746 FTE recorded in 2014-15\. Wholetime operational FTE was 3,427; retained duty system FTE was 2,294. Stations at the same date: 356 — 74 wholetime, 240 retained, 42 volunteer — supporting 470 crews and a fleet of 1,576 vehicles, including 774 appliances, of which 630 were operational. Incident statistics for 2024-25, published 31 October 2025: 74,610 incidents attended, down 7.4 per cent on the previous year. Fires: 22,925 (down 4.9 per cent). Dwelling fires: 4,104 — 3.6 per cent down on the year and 26.4 per cent below 2014-15, described by the service as a record low. Fire-related deaths: 36, down from 42\. Non-fire incidents: 16,209\. Unwanted fire alarm signals at commercial premises fell from 17,096 to 12,189 after the 2023 change of policy on non-sleeping-risk automatic alarms. More than 55 per cent of fires attended were recorded as deliberate. Home fire safety visits: 34,089, a 7 per cent fall year on year, under a more targeted model. Attacks on firefighters: 21 physical, 19 verbal, 19 against property or equipment. The Scottish Government’s stated comparison, as of March 2025, is 11.1 firefighters per 10,000 population in Scotland, against 5.6 in England and 10.3 in Wales. England’s own firefighter FTE to March 2025 was 30,601 (22,740 wholetime, 7,860 on-call) from a much larger population. Scotland’s higher ratio is a geographic fact, not proof that every pump is available. The Scottish Budget 2026-27 allocates £436.0 million to SFRS in the Justice and Home Affairs portfolio (2025-26 ABR £413.8 million; 2024-25 outturn £387.5 million). Of the 2026-27 total: fiscal resource £353.6 million, non-cash £34.0 million, capital £48.4 million. The Spending Review text cites £1.1 billion of resource for SFRS over the review period. Pensions for police and fire sit in a separate portfolio line (£708.6 million combined in 2026-27). Parliamentary evidence in late 2025 recorded a net loss of 1,239 firefighter posts since 2013 and a recruitment need of about 210 firefighters and 30 civilian staff against a reduced operating model. That evidence describes control-room staffing as 36 per cent below critical capacity. Those figures are committee evidence, not the 31 March 2025 statistical bulletin; they describe the same trend. Freedom of Information data used in 2025 showed median time from 999 call to first appliance at 8 minutes 20 seconds in 2024, against 6 minutes 51 seconds in 2014\. For incidents classified as possible risk to life the figures were 8 minutes 42 seconds and 7 minutes 13 seconds. SFRS has said that raw response times are not a complete measure of effectiveness and are affected by traffic, discovery delay and geography. The series has lengthened almost year on year. The service no longer publishes a simple national response-time target of the pre-reform type. Freedom of Information used in August 2026 put unfilled retained FTE at 1,039, or 31 per cent of established retained posts, with the north of the country the most thinly filled (1,229 of 1,933 FTE). Overtime has been reported near £6 million. Those are FoI-derived figures, not the official annual bulletin. They are consistent with the long-standing on-call problem the service itself acknowledges through its On-Call Improvement Programme. ### How it is experienced in daily life In a city, the experience is a wholetime pump that is usually on the run, a longer wait than a decade ago, and a dwelling fire that is now less common than it was. In a village or on an island, the experience is whether the local retained crew can muster four or five people. If they cannot, the appliance is off the run and the next pump comes from further away. A pager that is not answered is not an abstract vacancy rate. It is a house, a road collision or a peat fire waiting on a crew from the next glen. Prevention is experienced as a visit, an alarm fitted, or no visit because the model is now targeted. Deliberate fires are experienced as the same crews pulled off other work. Wildfire, as in the Cairngorms incident that ran into August 2026, is experienced as days of mutual aid, fatigue and the limits of a service built around buildings and roads. ### How it got here Reform in 2013 was sold as efficiency, common standards and the end of eight headquarters. Control rooms went from eight to three. Management and support were cut. Uniformed FTE fell. The financial memorandum’s savings estimate was later exceeded; cumulative efficiency savings are projected to exceed £900 million by 2027-28\. Most of the workforce reduction was attrition and a lower Target Operating Model, not a single compulsory-redundancy wave. Demand changed at the same time. Dwelling fires fell because of alarms, safer furniture, smoking decline and targeted visits. Automatic fire-alarm policy cut a large volume of commercial false attendances. Non-fire work and wildfire did not fall in proportion. In September 2023 the service temporarily removed ten wholetime appliances and 166 posts to balance the budget. The Service Delivery Review later revisited some of those changes. The retained system was designed for communities in which people lived and worked near the station and employers released them. That labour market has thinned. Commuting, second jobs, an older age profile and rural population loss all reduce the pool that can accept 30, 60 or 90 hours of on-call duty. Flexible contracts and better retainer terms help. They do not enlarge a village. ### What has already been tried, and what that showed Prevention works. A 26.4 per cent fall in dwelling fires in a decade, and fewer fire deaths in 2024-25, is the clearest result in the official record. The 2023 alarm-attendance change worked on volume: unwanted signals fell by almost a third. Flexible retained hour-blocks and the On-Call Improvement Programme are the current official answer to availability. They have not closed a 31 per cent retained FTE gap in the FoI snapshot. The Service Delivery Review is the largest recent reconfiguration. After a 12-week consultation in 2025 (about 3,600 responses), the Board decided on 22 June 2026: - New two-pump stations at Cowcaddens (wholetime) and Tranent (wholetime and on-call), at more than £20 million, with closure of the single-pump stations at Yorkhill and Musselburgh. - Permanent closure of five long-term dormant stations with no staff: Crianlarich, Fetlar, Nethy Bridge, Ratagan, Isle of Muck. - Further consultation, including possible redundancy, at Colintraive, Corriecravie and Kerrera. - An earlier proposal to close Marionville in Edinburgh was dropped. - Day-shift arrangements at Hawick, Helensburgh, Cumbernauld and Milngavie to allow RAAC works. - Redeployment of more than 60 posts from lower-demand areas into prevention, training and operations. - Around 20 new on-call roles and further targeted recruitment. - The service states that, once implemented, Scotland will have one additional wholetime appliance, in East Lothian. Implementation is over five years. RAAC is an estate fact. Board and property papers have listed multiple affected stations and replacement or remediation projects (including Dalkeith, Portree, Galashiels and others). Fourteen stations have been identified in public discussion of the review. Capital of £48.4 million in 2026-27 cannot rebuild the estate in one year. The review showed that the Board will close stations that cannot be crewed, move pumps toward demand, and spend capital on two new buildings. It did not restore 2013 headcount. It did not claim that retained availability in the north and the islands is solved. --- ## What needs to happen ### The improvement in measurable terms The test is operational, not rhetorical. - Wholetime appliances that are supposed to be on the run should be on the run for the large majority of shifts. - Publish retained availability as a core measure: the share of RDS pumps that can turn out a safe crew, by service delivery area, not just a national headcount. - Median and 90th-percentile arrival times to dwelling and life-risk incidents should stop lengthening, then fall in urban and accessible-rural areas where geography allows. Remote times will remain longer; they should be honest and planned for. - Dwelling-fire and fire-death numbers should stay on the downward path, with the share of fires in homes without a working alarm falling. - Control rooms should be staffed to the service’s own critical-capacity definition. - RAAC and dignity-standard works should have a funded programme, not a rotating day-shift workaround. An illustrative benchmark of about 11 firefighters per 10,000 remains a geographic rationale, not a magic number. The 11.1 figure already cited for March 2025 can coexist with pumps off the run. The ratio is useful only if you translate it into crewed appliances. ### Sequence First, stop the hollowing of availability: fill retained gaps where a labour pool still exists; keep wholetime pumps on the run; staff control. Second, finish the two new stations and the RAAC programme so duty systems are not hostage to buildings. Third, protect prevention so the dwelling-fire gain is not given back. Fourth, treat wildfire as a planned seasonal load, with surge and land-management partners, not as an annual surprise. Fifth, only then argue about expanding wholetime establishment in named locations. ### Workforce, capital and standards The workforce is ageing. A large share is over 40; a substantial share is over 50\. Wholetime leavers are mostly retirements; retained leavers are mostly resignations. Standing still therefore requires continuous recruitment. Expanding numbers requires more than that. Safe crewing — the agreed minimum on an appliance — is a standard, not a target to be breached and paid for in overtime. Capital must cover stations that fail modern contamination-control and dignity standards as well as RAAC. Specialist kit (high reach, wildfire, water rescue) has procurement lead times measured in years. ### What would count as success in twelve months By the next organisational and incident bulletins: - official publication of retained availability, not only headcount - a fall, or at least no further rise, in median life-risk arrival time - control staffing closer to critical capacity - SDR implementation begun at Cowcaddens and Tranent without a net loss of wholetime night cover in the affected urban areas - home-fire-safety activity held at least at the 2024-25 targeted volume in high-risk groups - a published RAAC and station-condition programme with years and costs Twelve months will not rebuild 1,200 posts. It can show whether availability is being treated as the core measure. --- ## **What can be done under current powers** ### Who holds the lever Scottish Ministers: the Fire and Rescue Framework, the Budget, and appointment of the Board. The SFRS Board and Chief Officer: stations, duty systems, recruitment, prevention and the operating model. Councils and housing bodies: referrals into home safety, planning and some estate. Employers in rural areas: release of retained staff. The NJC: pay. None of the operational levers requires Westminster legislation. ### The statute, budget or direction Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012; Fire (Scotland) Act 2005; the 2022 Framework; the annual Budget Act. Capital and resource for 2026-27 are already voted: £353.6 million resource, £48.4 million capital, £436 million in the SFRS line. The On-Call Improvement Programme and SDR decisions are existing Board instruments. ### What is already possible and unused Availability can be made a published performance measure tomorrow. Recruitment terms for retained staff can be varied further without a new Act. Prevention can be scaled with existing crews. Day-crewing and other duty-system changes are already in use. Mutual aid for wildfire is already used; it can be planned rather than improvised. Closing stations that have had no staff for years is already decided; the unused capacity is in being honest about the next ring of barely viable stations before they become dormant. Employer agreements with the public sector in rural areas — NHS, councils, ferry and estate employers — are under-used relative to the scale of the retained problem. ### What would still be true if management improved tomorrow Geography would still lengthen some responses. A small island would still have a small labour pool. Pay would still be set in a UK bargaining structure. Capital projects would still take years. Wildfire weather would still arrive. Better management can fill more of the 1,039 retained FTE gap, cut overtime, and stop pumps being off the run for avoidable reasons. It cannot invent working-age residents in Fetlar or Muck. --- ## **Where the limits are** ### Law and reserved powers Fire and rescue is devolved. Immigration and the wider rural labour market are only partly so. Energy wholesale prices, which affect heating risk, are reserved. Pay bargaining is UK-wide by choice of the NJC, not because Holyrood is forbidden to fund a Scottish supplement. No reserved veto applies to firefighter numbers. ### Money £436 million is a nominal increase. It competes with police, prisons, health and local government. Capital of £48.4 million is small against a multi-station RAAC and replacement programme plus two new two-pump stations already costed above £20 million. Real-terms comparisons since 2013 depend on the deflator used; the FBU’s SPICe-based claim of a large real-terms resource gap is contestable but serious. Every extra wholetime watch is a recurring cost. The Budget can choose that cost. It has not chosen to restore 2013 uniformed numbers. ### Workforce and capital The retained problem is demographic before it is contractual. Stations with no applicants cannot be willed into life. Wholetime recruitment interest is healthier; the constraint there is funded posts and training throughput. Buildings with RAAC cannot be crewed on the old duty system while the roof is unsafe. ### Time, geography, UK-wide systems A single-track road and a crossing will always add minutes. Wildfire seasons are lengthening in the climate record the service already cites. Appliance and specialist-vehicle lead times are driven by UK and European supply chains. Control-room technology is a multi-year project. ### Political difficulty, kept separate from legal impossibility Closing a named station is unpopular. Funding more firefighters means funding less of something else. Publishing availability by area would show which communities are uncovered on a given night. Those are political costs. They are not legal impossibilities. --- ## What is not yet known The 2025-26 organisational and incident bulletins are not yet published (due 31 August and 30 October 2026). Official retained availability, as a national time series, is not in the annual statistical release in the form the operational test requires. The final Board decisions on Colintraive, Corriecravie and Kerrera are not complete. The full cash cost of RAAC across all affected stations is not in one audited public total. How much of the £5.7 million-style recoveries logic from other public services applies to SFRS overtime and vacancy is not a fire statistic. The precise effect of the 2026 Cairngorms deployment on fatigue, overtime and mutual-aid cost will sit in later board papers. --- ## Honest summary **Achievable now.** Fire and rescue is already a Scottish service. Prevention can be protected. Availability can be measured and published. Duty systems can be changed. Dormant stations can be closed. Two new stations can be built. Retained contracts can be made more usable. Control can be staffed. None of that needs a new constitutional settlement. **Only partly achievable.** Reliable retained cover in the thinnest communities is limited by who lives there. Average national response times will always mix urban minutes with island hours. The estate cannot be modernised on one year’s capital. Wildfire risk is rising faster than a building-focused service was designed for. **Would require reserved change.** Not the core of this item. A fully separate pay machinery would be a choice, not a prerequisite. Border and migration rules affect rural labour supply only at the margin of this problem. **Colour mark: green.** The powers exist. The failures that matter — fewer uniformed posts than in 2013, longer waits, pumps off the run, control below critical capacity — stem from budget, operating-model, and demographic choices made in Scotland. Green does not mean easy. It means the lever is already on the Scottish desk. **What this item does not settle.** It does not fix the 2026-27 Budget. It does not name a single correct national headcount. It does not pretend that every closed dormant station was a loss of real cover. It does not treat a higher per-capita ratio than England as proof of resilience. The measurable question remains the one the service is built for. When the call comes, is a safe crew available, and does it arrive in time to matter? --- ## Connection Rural and island items in The 28 share the retained labour-pool problem: the same thin working-age population that cannot crew a pump cannot staff a school or a ferry. Housing affects whether younger workers live near the station. Health and care affect both fire risk in the home and the hospital-type incidents firefighters already attend. Climate and land management sit behind wildfire demand. Public finances set the £353.6 million resource choice against every other devolved service. The Independence Debate is not the constraint. Succession of a fire service would be an institutional-continuity task, not the reason pumps are off the run in 2026. --- **People’s Future Scotland**