By Mark Smulian | 11 August 2014
Fire minister Penny Mordaunt has launched an independent review of firefighters’ terms and conditions as the Fire Brigades Union hold a series of strikes in a lengthy dispute over pensions.
The review will be led by Adrian Thomas, chair of the Recruitment Society.
He is to consult fire and rescue authorities, firefighters and representative bodies and report back next year.
Firefighters began stike action on Saturday for periods over eight days as part of a dispute covering whether they should be expected to work to age 60.
A row broke out earlier this week when Mordaunt called off a meeting she had been due to hold with the FBU.
She said Thomas’s review would consider whether the current terms and conditions were ‘conducive to building the fire and rescue service of the future’ and look at management practices and crewing arrangements, collaboration and integration with other emergency services, the use of on-call firefighters and recruitment and remuneration processes.
He will also examine whether having UK-wide pay and conditions remains appropriate.
Mordaunt said: ‘Firefighters put their lives on the line every day and deserve a workplace fully focused on fire prevention and protection.
‘So we have a responsibility to firefighters to make sure their conditions of service, some of which are decades old, fully support the challenges modern firefighters face every day.’
The Department for Communities and Local Government said fire deaths had dropped by 40% since 2004, while last year crews attended 170,000 fires, the second lowest number ever recorded.
