Retained Duties

[lucky]

Some Retained are on duty every weekend,they get 28 days leave,this is a huge commitment,any Retained who work different shifts?I think these people are heros to sacrifice every weekend.

[Fireguy1230]

Hi Lucky

 Not quite sure what you mean by 'shifts'

 Basically the way it works is that we sign a contract stating we will be available for fire calls for 120hrs a week (100% cover) and this includes days, evenings and weekends.

 This 120hrs can be managed around your work/family commitments, although i admit you do have to sacrifice things sometimes.

 I don't know about other brigades but usually we won't cover every weekend for the full 48hrs. You can always nip away out of town for a while with your partner or kids. As long as there is sufficient crew for the appliance, we can generally work it amongst ourselves.

 Les

[Midland Retty]

Hiya Lucky
As Fireguy wrote normally manning levels allow staff to be able to have some time off.

Some stations however unfortunately don't have enough manning and so the crews do work every weekend. But they do get paid for it and they know what they are signing up to so it is their choice. Yes it is a commitment and sometimes I wonder why I did sign up - but overall its a great job.

Personally the word "Heros" should be reserved for people like the good old Lifeboat Crews and other voluntary agencies / service who give up their time and commit for absolutely no financial reward whatsoever.

[Ryan]

They aren't really heros; There is only a retained station somewhere where there is no need for full time staff, which means its basically sitting around. Here in Shetland, we have no full time firefighters at all, which annoys me very much, as I will have to move to do what I want

[lucky]

Thanks for the replies,a freind of mine went to join as retained but at his local fire station you have to commit to every weekend.

[fireftrm]

.except for the four weeks (five after three years) a year holiday and when there are enough Ffs to provide cover,........ What is meant, I am sure, is that, at that station, they do not need new staff who cannot provide some weekend cover. A problem I had was young RDS staff, able to provide 24/7 cover (full availability) wanting to have the two days a week that they are entitled to take free of duty (for thsoe providing 24/7 cover two periods of 24 hours per 7 are accepted as being within the full availaibility) always as Saturday and Sunday, from 18:00 on Friday to 18:00 Sunday. This would have meant the cover during the week would have been substantially improved, indeed above the required number on occasions,  but the die-hard exisitng 6 who already are the only others on weekend cover, could not rely on the increased staffing allowing them more weekends free of duty. It is only fair that the station staff have an opportunity to get time off with their families. Therefore I insisted on 3 weekends out of 4 cover from new entrants and their days off to be more flexibly arranged with other staff.

[Andy Cole]

The system we use is a 'duty crew' system where we have 6 (out of the 12 on station) on call one weekend and the other 6 the following weekend, any member of either crew can swap with any other member of equvilant rank or role (eg a JO can only swap with another JO or above and a driver can only swap with another driver), this means that throughout the year evrybody should get alternate weekends off!, it works well as long as it's not abused!!

Further to that we operate a standby where if, for example, it wasn't my weekend on call but I was able to respond to my alerter I could attend the station and take a 'standby tally' (6 numbered pieces of wood hanging by the door) then should for any reason a member of the duty crew not turn in the person holding tally number 1 rides, if two duty crew don't turn in number 1 & 2 tallies ride and so on! despite it's complex sound it's actually turned out to be the easiest fairest way of doing it, in addition to letting everybody haver the option of an alternate weekend off it also helps to keep FF's competence levels up by giving some the chance to ride where otherwise they might not because they live a little further away and are never the first 6 in!!