What you really need is an officer with only operational experience, who has never done any fire safety in the service but wants to do a bit of FRA on the side. They are the boys. You cant know anything about fire unless you have eaten smoke. Forget all this edukashun in fire safety. You can shake a degree all day at a fire but it wont go out. Better still get an operational officer from London. In fact, I may join the retained just to learn more about fire engineering. Wonder if my friends in Surrey would have me....... On the other hand with all the cuts, Soho fire station will probably go retained before long. And now that no one cares about attendance times, it wont matter that it will take me about 75 minutes to get to the station from deepest Surrey.