RDS Staffing Shorfalls

[Br9mp81]

the main problem is out of the FS hands, its the way the world has changed, the days of an RDS station being the butcher,baker and candle maker are gone, a lot of small towns and villiages are just dorms so day cover is always hard.

some have taken to having semi retired on a stand by rosta list seems to work at keeping RDS on run but at a cost

[Luminoki]

5 hours ago, Bgjm21 said:

 Seems to be aimed at particularly rural locations like isles of Skye where you can have miles and miles without any cover. 

I’d like to see the look on Davey from Bishopbriggs’ face when he gets his posting

[C_Iain]

@OscarTango it makes perfect sense, but I can’t see many services having the money to invest in upgrading stations at the moment.

[Messyshaw]

Crew Crisis Isle of Skye

An interesting article from August that says a WT crew at Broadford Airport might be an option for Skye. But even then, its still nearly 50 miles to the top of the island, so this isnt ideal.

The article mentions providing local training for RDS crews to prevent them travelling 90 miles may retain staff: No sh*t Sherlock - that mileage/time is ridiculous 

Edited October 9, 2022 by Keith
Link formatted correctly

[Kinmel]

The problem with one WT pump covering 3 RDS stations is resilience.

A local WT pump was sent 17 miles to cover for 3 adjoining RDS stations, which is stretching it's attendance times.

However, that pump is then also the second pump for 5 station areas and it all looks very touch and go.

A quite large number of WT personnel are now freelance and not based at any particular station and are moved around in ones and twos as necessary,  it works if you don't consider training and team building to be necessary.

[TandA]

7 hours ago, OscarTango said:

Honestly, I think the merging of some RDS stations into one WT one in a strategic area would make alot of sense. You lose a bit of resilience when you have big jobs and just need fresh crews for reliefs, but gains in overall fire cover and response times. 

Putting my big cynical hate on for a sec: I think if we end up settling on this five percent pay "rise", then some of these stations with really low availability are going to be seen as low hanging fruit for savings.

To be cost neutral, you would need to merge around 10 RDS pumps into 1 WT pump based on the last figures I saw.  That’s more than a small loss in resilience and a big fall in response times for many due to the extended travel distances that would be involved.  My experience tells me there is no one size fits all solution to the crisis in the RDS.  It will certainly need some investment and some creative new contract options and I am not sure this Govt or the employers have yet grasped the extent of the problem or that their current policies are making things worse, not better.

[Bgjm21]

I may be wrong but I had thought cost for RDS station was in the region of 250k per annum Vs 1 million pounds for 1 pump W/T? 

I’d suggestion north of the border based upon what they do just now with regards to sending appliances out to standby at these stations that we may see a reduction in the number of two pump stations (about 60% of our stations are two pump W/T) with them being relocated to open new stations W/T stations in RDS areas.

[Becile]

Way more than 250K

[OscarTango]

I've got a figure of 650k in my head. I'm going to dig out our stats tomorrow 

[TrainHardFightEasy]

I can’t see wholetime replacing RDS stations in England as the government in various reports & white papers has suggested they would like to boost rds numbers. 

[TandA]

9 hours ago, OscarTango said:

I've got a figure of 650k in my head. I'm going to dig out our stats tomorrow 

For an RDS pump?  My station currently 7 crew, low to average call volumes, average earnings of circa £8k plus employer on costs and fixed costs.  Yes, it should be nearer 14 crew but even if fully staffed, the total staff costs would not double as call volumes are fixed. Even if it did double, still nowhere near £650k.  And you won’t be replacing fully staffed on call stations as you are replacing them because they are short of crew and have limited availability.
 

WT pump - min 5 or 6 staff over 4 watches - gives over £650k just in wages before on costs and fixed costs.  Last figures I saw were nearer a million.

[OscarTango]

We seem to have deleted all our old IRMPs (which I'm not sure is legal).

Anyhow, I've found an FOI request from 2014 about our newest retained station that we actually opened from scratch that year (no surprises that it has suffered for staff ever since and has some of the lowest availability in the county). 

The reply also states however “including staff costs, on average a standalone on-call fire station costs around £140k per year to operate."

[TandA]

That’s close to the figure I had in mind.  I can see a well staffed RDS station costing that, especially a bit busier one than mine.  As always, averages are the devil’s spawn and hide all sorts of variances.  I suspect that there are some 2 pump, 600 calls a year RDS stations with 20or so crew that cost a lot more than that and some single pump 50 a year stations struggling by with 6 crew that cost a whole lot less.