Fire appliance daylight scene

‘Week of chaos’ follows cuts

In the week following the removal of one of the 24-hour crewed fire engines at Poole in Dorset, retained firefighters at the station were called out to 15 incidents – five times the number predicted by the service. Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service removed Poole’s second wholetime...

Pay discussions 2025: letter to fire service employers

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Dear Brother/Sister, Pay discussions 2025: letter to fire service employers After years of attacks on our pay, the past three years (2022, 2023, 2024) have seen some improvement in the settlements...
Fire station with fire appliance outside at night

MP joins calls for rethink on cuts that ‘simply don’t add up’

Dorset and Wiltshire FBU has launched local campaigns across the region, calling on councillors and the fire authority to reverse plans to slash fire cover. Fire and rescue service bosses announced the plans only a month before removing fire engines from stations in September. Firefighters were...
fire-engine-georgian-street

Static response times highlight need for national standards

Fire and rescue response times in England for the year ending March 2024 reinforce the need for national standards, the FBU has warned. The average total response time to primary fires in England was nine minutes and three seconds, only 10 seconds better than last year’s figure, which was the...
Fire engine 2

Poole firefighters condemn fire engine removal after “week of chaos”

By Alice Dann
The Fire Brigades Union has revealed that on-call firefighters at Poole were called out to 15 incidents in the week following the removal of one of Poole’s 24 hour crewed fire engines: five times the number of incidents predicted by the service. On Monday 21st October, Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and...
Firefighters with FBU appliance at rally

Time to deliver: Join us on 8 October

On Tuesday 8 October, firefighters from every corner of the UK will descend on Westminster to demand that the new government delivers a fire and rescue service that is fit for the future. FBU general secretary Matt Wrack explains why. The result of the general election was a crushing blow for the...
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