Fire shifts review planned

Shropshire’s fire brigade plans a review to help part-time staff manage their work-life balance while maintaining cover, but some stations have “pre-empted” this by changing their shift systems, the governing body has heard.

The county’s Chief Fire Officer said a “sustainability review” would look at all 22 of Shropshire’s on-call fire stations, but a one-size-fits-all solution would not be proposed.

Finance head Joanne Coadey told a Shropshire and Wrekin Fire and Rescue Authority committee that the brigade had seen a £109,000 underspend in the on-call system due to “attendance and turnout” changes.

“After some investigation it has been brought to our attention that some on-call stations are operating their own shift patterns,” she said.

“This is enabling them to manage work-life balance while maintaining cover at the same time.”

Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service has 19 wholly on-call stations. Three more, at Shrewsbury, Wellington and Tweedale, in Madeley, are partly on-call. There is only one, Telford Central, that is completely full-time.

Authority member Nigel Hartin asked: “In relation to the locally-managed shift system, how many stations is that happening at, and, as a result, are we looking at rolling that out to other stations that aren’t doing it?”

Adam Matthews, the Area Command Shropshire Group Manager, said it was happening at “approximately half a dozen stations”, and they were “all doing it slightly differently”.

He added that a sustainability review was due to start in the near future that would look at the feasibility of doing the same thing at other stations.

Officer Hammerton said: “What they have effectively done is pre-empted the sustainability project.

“We don’t want to force a system on any single station. It’s better that they design them.”

The authority’s strategy and resources committee was discussing a report by Ms Coadey, detailing the brigade’s financial performance from April to December 2019.