‘Fragile’ number of part-time Nottinghamshire firefighters prompts big recruitment push

According to figures published by the Government in December, the number of firefighters across the country has plummeted over the last 10 years.

The Government says this 14 per cent drop was primarily driven by a 26 per cent decrease in on-call firefighters, compared to a decrease of 9.4 per cent in wholetime firefighters.

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service (NFRS) says on-call firefighters are an ‘integral’ part of the service, with 16 out of the 24 fire stations having them.

The majority of Nottinghamshire’s 30 fire appliances are also crewed by on-call firefighters.

They typically have other jobs, and must be available to respond to an emergency when a personal alert device activates while they are on-call.

At the start of 2025-26, the service said it had 243 on-call firefighters, but availability of 80.7 per cent in the second quarter was below a target of 85 per cent.

This is down on the 82.9 per cent availability achieved in the same period in 2024/25.

While this is above the national average of 66 per cent, some areas of the county have particularly low availability.

A total of 14 of the 16 on-call stations provided availability above the national average, with Warsop on-call crew members being available 24 hours a day.

However, Harworth and Southwell fell below the national average.

In Southwell, there are nine on-call firefighters, and availability was reported at just below 49 per cent to date in 2025-26.

And Harworth, despite having a ‘relatively healthy’ 17 on-call firefighters, has been ‘hampered’ by the long-term sickness of one of its supervisory managers who has the suitable qualifications.

The problem of on-call recruitment will be discussed at a meeting on January 9.

The service says it has a number of plans, including a new recruitment drive at the end of January 2026, more flexible working, and other incentives.

Meeting papers say: “The 2024-25 recruitment campaign saw 93 applicants across the county, of which 21 are due to begin initial acquisition training in January and July 2026.

“Three new on-call firefighters who will be based at Southwell are amongst this number.”

The service says all on-call firefighters had only been able to work to either an 84 or 120-hour contract, but a number of more flexible contract levels have been added, including 30 hours, 54 hours, or 110 hours.

National studies have further found approximately 81 per cent of on-call recruits were attracted to the role through word-of-mouth and association with existing firefighters.

The service says it is therefore currently exploring the practicalities of introducing a ‘refer-a-friend scheme’.

Papers continued: “The success of on-call recruitment, the measures taken to effectively plan skills succession, and the efforts taken to retain firefighters, has meant that NFRS ended 2024-25 with six more on-call firefighters than it had at the start of that year.

“This year, the service expects to end 2025-26 with two more on-call firefighters than it had at the end of 2024-25.

“This bucks the national trend of reducing on-call establishment numbers.”