Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service is likely to lift a five-year recruitment freeze on full-time firefighters because of an increasing number of retirements.
The service is planning to trigger the move next year or as early as the end of 2017, ending a squeeze imposed to deal with shrinking budgets.
Roles are likely to be filled internally by making existing retained, or on-call, firefighters full-time, and transfers from other areas, rather than by a public campaign.
A new service staffing report warns more firefighters who are eligible are opting to retire early aged 50 with 25 years’ service, contributing to a total of around 71 potential leavers by the end of March 2019.
The service has an operational workforce total of around 470.
“Based upon projections of turnover for a worst case scenario, this would suggest that the service is likely to need to recruit to Fire-fighter roles during 2018,” the report says.
However, it adds: “This recruitment is likely to be a combination of competitive selection,
migration or inter-service transfers,” meaning an open public recruitment campaign is unlikely.
Chief officers and members of Nottinghamshire Fire Authority, which monitors the service’s spending and performance, will meet to discuss the figures tomorrow (July 14).
Having already made substantial cuts, the service still needs to find savings of £2.25 million between this year and 2019 to balance its budget, with most of the savings expected to be made by further driving down costs and staffing numbers.
Deputy chief fire officer Wayne Bowcock said the service had been able to operate safety despite not recruiting by changing the way it staffs shifts and responds to incidents.
“Historically, we have very low levels of staff turnover and have made changes to service delivery over the last few years,” he told Notts TV in a statement.
“For example the way specialist rescue functions are provided and numbers of fire appliances – which means we do have extra capacity in the service. We have been able to reduce the number of staff required by not replacing those who retire.”
John Muggleton, Fire Brigades Union secretary for Nottinghamshire, said more full-time firefighters were needed as soon as possible to avoid a serious shortfall in cover.
“From a union point of view there will be pressure run the recruitment campaign early next year,” he said.
“The projections they have put forward are based on 50 per cent of those that can retire retiring – but what happens if 70 per cent of those that can retire do so?
“They are trying to run a close budget – to be fair to the chief it is a very tight line to be on.”
Nottinghamshire’s average response time to fires in the 12 months to March 2016 was just under ten minutes, up slightly on the year before, although nationally response times have been increasingly gradually for 20 years in almost every region.
Mr Bowcock added: “Our workforce plan supports strategic leaders in forecasting our staff numbers across all roles so that we can plan effectively. Some of our staff choose to take early retirement. In the past, this has been approximately 50 per cent who are eligible and we are forecasting that this trend will continue.
“However, this is only a forecast. The remainder of our retiring staff, who are in an older pension scheme, generally leave when they have fulfilled 30 years’ service. This number has increased in recent years due to the number of firefighters employed 30 years ago who are now eligible to retire having reached full pensionable entitlement.”
In December 2014 MPs backed Government plans to make controversial changes to Firefighters’ pensions and retirement ages, despite protests and more than 50 strikes run by the FBU.
Despite not recruiting full-time firefighters since 2012, the Notts service runs an almost constant drive to recruit retained firefighters, who are trained to the same standard but fit paid firefighting on an on-call basis around other jobs.
