Why Scotland's fire service is trapped in cycle of deadly decline

The number of firefighters has fallen dramatically, the number of fire engines has declined thanks to cuts, and funding is so bad some stations don’t even have running water.

John McKenzie, Scottish secretary of the Fire Brigades Union and a firefighter for nearly 20 years, sat down with The Herald on Sunday to discuss just how severe the crisis has become. In fact, the word “crisis” doesn’t do justice to what’s happening, he says. “The Scottish Government doesn’t come out of this well,” McKenzie adds.

Scottish Fire Birgade Union Scottish Secretary John McKenzie. Picture: Gordon Terris 

Since Scotland’s eight regional fire services were amalgamated into one 11 years ago, firefighter numbers have fallen by 1,200 – down from 8,000 to 6,800. Last September, the service lost 10 full-time fire engines, dropping from 115 to 105.

McKenzie says the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service “was quite clear it just couldn’t afford the number of firefighters required to staff them”. Some specialist appliances used in operations like “complex road traffic collisions are no longer crewed”.

These appliances now “have to wait for a crew to be freed up in order to staff it. That results in delays attending incidents”.

Height appliances have been cut –these are used to rescue people from tower blocks and to put out fires in tall buildings.

Crewing levels “have dipped below what’s safe”. That means a five-person fire engine being staffed, for example, with four. McKenzie says that in real terms the fire service budget has been cut by £70 million since amalgamation.

Due to staffing levels, fire engines will “just sit in fire stations unstaffed”. Out of the 105 full-time fire appliances available on most given days in Scotland, “we can very easily see four to six sitting off the run because they don’t have suitable crews. Off the run means there are no firefighters to crew them. So the resource is simply unused”.

When it comes to what are called “retained firefighters” – part-time staff on call for emergencies – there are 345 appliances but “it’s commonplace that between 130 to 200 are unavailable at any given time, so that’s over half because there’s nobody to crew them. That’s really stark”.

Many retained firefighters are based in remote, rural areas. If there’s nobody to crew an appliance “it can take 30-40 minutes before there’s a response” from the next nearest appliance to reach an emergency that’s “life critical”. An unmanned appliance “won’t save lives”.

Emergencies require “speed of intervention”, McKenzie adds. “If you remove one appliance, it takes two or three minutes for another to respond – that’s enough time for someone to lose their life.”

a general view of a collapsed building following a fire in a tenement on the corner of Kenmure Street and Albert Drive in Pollokshields on November 11, 2019 in Glasgow

Deaths

McKenzie points to events such as Grenfell Tower to highlight just how important it is to maintain the number of staff and appliances. He also pointed to the large fire at a battery recycling plant in Kilwinning earlier this year, and the extensive wildfires in Scotland last summer, as recent incidents which “were really resource heavy and required significant numbers of firefighters, sometimes running to hundreds, to resolve them”.

He adds: “Removing firefighters just means it takes longer to get to incidents, or you’ll risk not successfully resolving incidents.”

The real-term budget cut to the service is “ultimately what’s led to 1,200 firefighters being lost and appliances being unavailable or undercrewed. The fire service is a life-saving service. If you create delays, or reduce numbers of firefighters, then people will lose their lives who otherwise wouldn’t have died”.

It is important to remember, he notes, that firefighters don’t just put out fires, they rescue people from road traffic accidents. A delayed fire crew can mean someone dying at the scene of a crash rather than getting to hospital.

Fire deaths have been decreasing, primarily due to prevention work by firefighters, advising the public and businesses on how to reduce fire risks, and better regulations around flammable materials and smoke detectors.

However, the decline in fire deaths has now “largely flatlined”, says McKenzie, adding: “That very closely correlates to cuts in budgets. We haven’t made the progress over the last 10 years that we should have.”

However, due to climate change there is now “far higher incidence” of wildfires and flooding which firefighters also tackle.

Road traffic deaths were on a downward trend as well, but that too “has become pretty stuck over the past 10 years”. McKenzie adds: “It’s the speed of response that makes all the difference to saving lives, and also where you have resources placed.

“Many of the really serious car accidents happen in remote locations, so often it’s retained firefighters responding.”

The retained service is where there’s “the biggest staffing pressures and problems with crewing – it makes a big difference in outcomes”.

All this affects the safety of firefighters as well. “Over the last 15 years, we’ve seen two firefighters not survive in Edinburgh in large-scale fires.”

 

Devolved

THE structure of the fire service is complex, straddling both the UK Government and the three devolved governments. The UK Government and the devolved governments – through the various fire authorities, like the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, which employ firefighters across Britain – all agree pay. The devolved governments provide the funding for pay, equipment and infrastructure.

Currently, there is a review ongoing into the future of the Scottish fire service. The Fire Brigades Union wants to expand the role of firefighters to support the Scottish Ambulance Service, by attending life-critical incidents like cardiac arrests and strokes.

However, previous discussions – at a UK level – about expanding the role of firefighters across all of Britain, including Scotland, went far beyond this, McKenzie explains.

“There was a neverending list, some of it completely inappropriate to firefighter roles,” he says.

During pay negotiations, it was even suggested that firefighters “clear snow. It was almost getting to the point of us being asked to pick up litter”.

Firefighters “want to make life-saving interventions, that’s absolutely pivotal to why we do the job. But we don’t want to be sucked into non-emergency work”. Firefighters welcomed a trial across a limited number of Scottish stations back in 2016/17 where they “responded to cardiac arrest and maintained people’s lives until an ambulance could come and remove them to hospital”.

If this trial was adopted nationwide as part of firefighter duties, it would hugely support an overstretched ambulance service, McKenzie says. However, the Scottish Government has dragged its feet about moving forward with this policy due to funding, he adds.

“A lot of studies show there would be real value to the NHS,” McKenzie explains. Investing £1 in expanding the role of the fire service to deal with cardiac arrest and strokes could provide £16 in taxpayer benefit. “You don’t end up with people suffering a level of injury they can’t recover from, or losing their life.”

While firefighters are “completely open to expanding their role” to provide a greater service for the public, jobs cannot be cut to pay for increased duties, says McKenzie. “It requires additional money from the Scottish Government.” Firefighters have been waiting for three years for the Scottish Government to make a decision on role expansion, he adds.

It is thought that investment in role expansion would be minimal, somewhere in the low 10s of millions. “The block on funding is from the government. We’ve told the government we want this,” McKenzie explains. The delay in decision-making will “ultimately lead to people losing their lives who otherwise wouldn’t”.

Currently, response times for attending emergencies aren’t recorded. “One of our biggest frustrations is the loss of national standards. It’s a real negative – as how do you measure success or failure?”

The removal of national standards was made at a UK level years ago. However, McKenzie points out that “the Scottish Government has the option to say they wish to see national standards, so there’s no free pass for them”.

While fierce in his criticism of the Scottish Government, McKenzie is much harsher towards successive UK governments. “South of the Border we’ve seen 12,000 jobs lost. That’s a huge, savage cut.” Some services in other parts of the UK “have seen the number of firefighters halved. It’s shocking”.

McKenzie says the fire service is suffering from the same pressures as schools, policing and hospitals due to public sector cuts. “When I joined the fire service 19 years ago, it was unheard of for a full-time fire engine to sit in a station with nobody crewing it. The whole point is that the public is paying for that engine. Now, it’s not uncommon.”

 

Safety

CREWing numbers are also dropping below “safe levels. In rural areas, it’s a daily occurrence where there will be a fire engine unavailable because there aren’t enough people to crew it safely”.

He adds: “Absolutely and inevitably lives are at risk – simply for the fact that if you increase response times and decrease the amount of resource, you’re going to lose lives that you wouldn’t have lost. That’s undeniable. The fire engines that were removed are no longer there. Those appliances will all have been mobilised to emergency incidents over the years and crews on them will have made life-saving interventions.”

McKenzie has told Scottish ministers to their faces that the risk to life is “absolutely undeniable. If you cut budgets, if you cut the number of boots on the ground, you’ll lose lives”.

He adds: “Political decision-making is costing lives. You can’t cut investment in schools and expect it won’t impact outcomes. You can’t cut investment in the Scottish Ambulance Service and expect it won’t result in different outcomes.

“The reality for the fire and rescue service is: you can’t cut the number of people, the speed of the resources, and the type of resource, and not accept that there’s a trade-off in human life. The simple fact is: if you cut resources in an emergency service it will lead to people losing their lives who otherwise wouldn’t. Undoubtedly, 100%, there’s no argument against that.”

Serious damage to property is also a consequence of the crisis in the fire service. “If the fire at the Glasgow School of Art was repeated today, are we in a better or worse position to resolve it? Worse, as we’ve less resources – we’ve seen ongoing declines in firefighter numbers and fire engine numbers.

“It will take longer to respond to incidents, and therefore incidents will become more severe. Sometimes they won’t get resolved. Sometimes it ends up in the loss of a property, or ultimately somebody losing their life.”

Equally, firefighters are now doing less preventative work around fire protection in the home, and with businesses, schools and hospitals. “That has an impact.”

Fire service infrastructure is in a dire state. “Just over 200 of the 356 stations in Scotland are classed as below acceptable standards,” he says. Some stations are “held up internally by props” as they are constructed with crumbling concrete. “Most of the investment in fire stations took place 40-50 years ago. It’s been decades since most fire stations were built and they’re not appropriate any more.”

 

Trauma

ACADEMIC and medical studies have shown that as well as increased mental health problems following exposure to death and trauma, firefighters also “suffer from elevated levels of cancer, heart attack and stroke” due to contaminants in smoke. So decontamination is vital.

Many fire stations, however, don’t have adequate toilets or showers, a few have no running water. There are dozens of stations with no toilet or shower facilities for women firefighters.

“Most fire stations just don’t have the right facilities to allow us to decontaminate,” McKenzie says. In Shetland, at least three stations have no toilet or shower. This creates a risk for firefighters’ families as they can return home still carrying contaminants on their clothes and skin. Peat that burns in wildfires “is especially harmful”.

Although devolved governments and the UK Government share responsibility for pay, the Scottish government is solely responsible for infrastructure and equipment. “So, the SNP has nowhere to hide. They could put investment in, they could deliver role expansion – these are things they could choose to do.”

The FBU has calculated that the cost of fixing infrastructure would run to around £800m. However, the annual capital budget for the service is only £40m. “So to fix things it would take a decade and a doubling of the capital budget,” McKenzie adds.

“Firefighters are being let down and failed. Think of what they sacrifice. Having the most basic facilities to just keep them safe should be the bare minimum – but we’re a long way from that.”

Firefighters are also targeted by mobs sometimes while attending emergencies. Last year, on Bonfire Night, fire crews were attacked. While the overall number of attacks is low, “the severity is really concerning – it’s aggressive, organised and involves significant numbers of people”.

McKenzie notes with irony that the areas in which these attacks most often occur have also been failed by politicians and feature “significant social deprivation, lack of investment, high unemployment and poor quality housing. They’ve been abandoned – that’s the root of the problem. It’ll only stop when politicians invest in these communities”.He accepts that budgetary decisions taken by the UK Government have knock-on effects for the Scottish Government in terms of Barnett consequentials. He adds: “There’s a real problem with our devolved government not having the fiscal levers it needs to make independent decisions. But does that mean I shy away from criticism of the Scottish Government? Absolutely not, as they’re not using all the fiscal levers they have already available to improve the service. So I’ve limited sympathy.”

The FBU took a neutral position on the constitution during the 2014 referendum. FBU members in Scotland, says McKenzie, “are not affiliated to any political party, we’ve no political loyalty”.

Holyrood

THE Scottish Government “has no vision” for the service, he says. “They don’t speak about investment or vision. So while there are big consequences for the Scottish Government in terms of decision-making at Westminster, it can’t be lost that the fire service is a devolved responsibility.

“The Scottish Government has the ability to make decisions to do things fundamentally different and better in Scotland. But it hasn’t.”

Providing funding to expand the role of the fire service to attend strokes and cardiac arrests “would have genuinely positive impacts on the NHS”. He adds: “But siloed-thinking prevents that. It’s incredibly damaging and frustrating. There’s an appetite from everyone – except for government it seems – to reinvigorate public services.

“It feels like the Holyrood government has run out of ideas. The Scottish Government is like a rabbit in the headlights, frozen by indecision. Ministers can’t make a decision and so we’re seeing the service slowly decline.

“There’s no doubt firefighters are angry at what’s happened to their service over the past decade.”

There’s also a sense of “betrayal”, and firefighters feel “underappreciated and undervalued” by both governments in London and Edinburgh. When it comes to Westminster specifically firefighters “feel despised” due to “attacks on pensions” that originated with the UK Government.

Deregulation by the UK Government played a part in the Grenfell tragedy, McKenzie claims. “There’s a lack of care about the outcomes of decisions taken in Westminster, and 72 lives were lost and all their families impacted and an entire community.”

Firefighter pay suffered “significant decline” from 2008 onwards. Firefighters ended up £4,000 worse off than if their pay had risen in line with inflation. Pay was £33,000 annually for fully-trained firefighters. However, after recently threatening strike action, pay has now risen to £37,000. Retained firefighters feel especially aggrieved. These part-time firefighters operate in their local communities, and must be on call 120 hours per week. That means they must be within eight minutes of their local station. They can’t be alone at home with their own children – in case they’re called out – they can’t enjoy a drink, go to the cinema, or do many things most of us take for granted while on call.

For that, they earned a retainer of just 10% of a full-time firefighter’s pay – though that will rise to 15% from next year – and an hourly rate when attending an incident.

Floods

ALTHOUGH firefighters aren’t contractual obligated to deal with floods – including rescuing people from floods –the service is the main “inland water rescue service in the UK and Scotland”. That role could be jeopardised, McKenzie warns, if the fire service is further mistreated.

Due to climate change, there also needs to be reorganisation of where resources are placed around the country. Some areas currently not well covered by fire and rescue will be at serious risk of flooding in the near future.

This looming threat isn’t being dealt with adequately by government. “We’ve waited for years for the Scottish Government to deliver role expansion of the service. It hasn’t happened. It may never happen.”

There are concerns around training as well. Currently, just four stations in the whole of Scotland have fire crews trained to carry out “rescues from height” – like a worker collapsed on top of the Forth Bridge or saving someone from the crags at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. “We’d like to see all firefighters trained in that level of response,” says McKenzie.

“The Scottish Government is setting the fire service up to fail,” he adds. “They’re not willing to take a position on the type of work we should be doing in the modern age and for the next decade.” That means mistakes could be made.

If the government is unclear about what it wants the fire service to do, “then how can a review be effective?”, McKenzie asks, adding: “We’re putting the cart before the horse.” A full public consultation on the review will begin shortly, and the review may be complete by spring 2025.

The workforce is also ageing. The pension age for firefighters is 60, but the intense nature of the work means “it’s highly improbably even half our members would reach that age and remain operational. Sixty is not achievable for many, through no fault of their own”.

Scottish Fire Birgade Union Scottish Secretary John McKenzie. Picture: Gordon Terris

Bullying

DUE to watered-down pensions and the comparatively low level of pay, an increasing number of new recruits leave the service after three to six years. Given it takes three years to train, that represents considerable loss to the public purse. All this has combined to create “very clear increases in the overall firefighter working age”.

A major part of the problem is that between 2013/16 there was a recruitment freeze. “The legacy of that damage still exists today. Those lost jobs were never replaced.”

Until recently, the fire service experienced its “worst period of industrial relations in Scotland”. Matters have improved but significant problems remain around “bullying, harassment and authoritarianism” by mid-management, McKenzie claims. He blames this on the poor level of training given to firefighters taking on management roles.

The fire service remains massively unbalanced in terms of gender – split 92-eight between men and women. “That’s really poor compared to other emergency services.” There have been reports of misogyny in the workplace, as well as racism and homophobia, in other fire services across the UK. “I would be naive not to admit that this happens in Scotland too. This behaviour should not be tolerated,” McKenzie adds.

He wishes that the Scottish and UK governments would look to nations like Australia, America and Japan where the fire service responds to medical emergencies.

“It’s such a societal benefit,” McKenzie says. “We should be learning from other countries, but our focus is too narrow and short-term. However, there’s no point in looking to other countries if you can’t work out what you’re doing in the next 12 months.

“We want equipped to deal with the risks of tomorrow as well as the risks of today so we protect communities and individuals.”

McKenzie’s greatest concern is that “we’re failing the public and not saving lives that are saveable. We’re not able to provide the response we did 10 or even 20 years ago – and firefighters take real pride in what they do. The inability to make interventions weighs heavily on us.

“We feel stuck in a deadly cycle of decline and I see no way of us getting out of that as only the government can provide the solution and they’re not doing anything.

“I won’t use the word ‘crisis’ for what’s happening as I’ve called it a crisis before. And matters have just got worse. So really it’s worse than a crisis. It’s gone beyond that – it’s an emergency. We’re now used to being in crisis – that’s how bad it is.”

The official response

A SCOTTISH Government spokesperson said: “Firefighters play a crucial role in keeping communities safe, as has been seen by the significant reduction in fires in homes over the past 20 years. A priority for SFRS remains preventing fires and there has been a 26% reduction in house fires since 2012/13.

“In an extremely challenging fiscal environment due to UK Government cuts, including 9% to capital budget, our investment of £393m in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) this year – an increase of £29.3m on last year – enables SFRS to continue to deliver the high standard of services required to keep our communities safe.

“Like all public services seeking to be efficient and effective, SFRS want their services to ensure value for taxpayers money. The allocation of resources is an operational matter for SFRS and our increased funding will allow the service to invest more in property, fleet and equipment.

“The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was formed in 2013 to reduce duplication while protecting services and it has been successful in delivering that.”

Stuart Stevens, deputy chief officer of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, said the SFRS “has a proud history of keeping our communities safe and we continue to deliver a first-class emergency service for the people of Scotland”.

He added: “Through the hard work and dedication of our staff, we have witnessed a sustained reduction of fires across Scotland, with house fires and fire casualties at an all-time low.

“We note the claims made by the Fire Brigades Union and specifically concerns highlighting behaviours which fall beneath our high standards.

“We value our working relationship with the FBU, and all representative bodies, as we continue to review and implement a series of improvement programmes across several areas including training, decontamination, and recruitment.

“We have been clear that there are changes we must make to address some of the challenges we face and to ensure we are a modern, sustainable service that is ready for the challenges of Scotland’s future. A comprehensive service review is ongoing at present.

“This includes addressing issues across our ageing estate to bring our buildings up to the required standard for our current and future workforce. At the same time, we have an ongoing culture review and remain committed to creating a workplace culture where all staff are treated with dignity and respect.”

He added: “We have a zero-tolerance approach to all forms of bullying, harassment and discrimination and the safety and wellbeing of our staff is paramount.

“ We are committed to providing a working environment where individuals feel accepted for who they are, valued for their contribution, and free from any discrimination, bias, harassment or victimisation.

“To ensure that all employees can voice their concerns freely and without fear, we have a partnership with an independent, external, and confidential reporting service for any instances of harassment, bullying or any other forms of wrongdoing.”