The UK fire services dispute 2002‐2003
| Published date | 01 August 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450410544506 |
| Date | 01 August 2004 |
| Pages | 404-421 |
| Author | Frank Burchill |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
The UK fire services dispute
2002-2003
Frank Burchill
Employment Dispute Resolution Centre, University of Strathclyde,
Glasgow, UK
Keywords Fire services, Disputes, Industrial relations, United Kingdom
Abstract Brings together a sequence of negotiating events in the 2002-2003 fire services dispute
from the point of view of a participant. The author was appointed to the position of Independent
Chair of the National Council for Local Authorities’ Fire Brigades in February 2001. Attempts to
apply some theoretical analysis to the perceptions and observations expressed in the article.
This article is written by a participant in the events of the dispute that forms the
subject matter of this article. The author was appointed to the position of Independent
Chair of the National Joint Council for Local Authorities’ Fire Brigades (NJC) in
February 2001. As Chairman the author observed a large part of what were referred to
as negotiations during the dispute and intervened, actively, in the process. It cannot be
claimed that what follows constitutes an objective account of events in the academic
sense. The author, and what he writes, constitute artefacts that will no doubt be
subjected to detailed analysis in the context of other accounts and researches.
Given that the author has an academic background – he was Professor of Industrial
Relations at Keele University – an attempt will be made to apply some theoretical
analysis to the perceptions and observations expressed in the article.
Background
Structure of fire service
Before, and throughout, the dispute the employers’ side of the NJC represented all of the
58 fire authorities in the UK. The Local Government Association (LGA) of England and
Wales appointed representatives with 23 seats; the Convention of Scottish Local
Authorities (COSLA) with five seats and the Fire Authority for Northern Ireland
(FANI) with two seats. The fire authorities represented are of different forms. Some are
“combined authorities” covering more than one upper tier local authority – there were
27 of these. The constituent authorities pay levies to the combined authority. There
were also 13 joint boards which include the fire and civil defence authorities of
England’s largest cities who precept council tax payers in their constituent authorities.
In England, Scotland and Wales the remaining 17 authorities were funded from council
budgets. FANI received its funding directly from the Government. Fire services in
England, Scotland and Wales, at the time of the dispute, received approximately 75 per
cent of their funding from the Government via the standard spending assessment
mechanism applied to local authorities generally. The expenditure is not hypothecated.
Total expenditure for the UK, at the time of the dispute, was about £2.2 billion[1].
At the same time the employees’ side of the NJC was made up entirely of Fire
Brigades Union (FBU) members, holding 27 seats. According to the Bain Report (2002)
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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ER
26,4
404
Received March 2004
Revised March 2004
Accepted March 2004
Employee Relations
Vol. 26 No. 4, 2004
pp. 404-421
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450410544506
there should be “...on the union [sic] side the Fire Brigades Union, the Retained
Firefighters Union, the Fire Officers Association, the Association of Professional Fire
Officers [sic] and Unison [sic]”. The Association of Professional Fire Officers was meant
to be the Association of Principal Fire Officers. The other fire service unions referred to
are small relative to the FBU, and have members in the same bargaining unit as the
FBU, which recruits across all of the other three fire union constituencies. There are
many times more retained firefighters in the FBU than in the Retained Firefighters’
Union (RFU) for example.
According to the RFU Web site the labour force consisted of 59,704 Uniformed
personnel and 6,988 non-uniformed. Of these, 38,600 were full time; 18,196 were
retained firefighters; 1,644 were control staff; 1,266 were volunteers. According to the
TUC Web site, the FBU had affiliated to it 52, 602 members of which 2,091 were female
The Certification Office for Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations (2003) shows
42,372 members contributing to the Political Fund with 9,019 exemptions.
Although the NJC employees’ side was dominated by the FBU, there were some
divisions within the fire service employees – both factional and regional. The
employment and FBU figures above do, however, show that the vast majority of the
labour force was represented by the FBU. It was also true that different settlements
would have varying impacts on the different types of employers:
The variety in local accountability structures is coupled with very wide variation in territory,
composition and size of Brigades. For example, the Isle of Wight has 61 full-time firefighters
and 155 part-time retained firefighters, whereas London has 5,684 full-time firefighters. All
the responses to the Inquiry nevertheless indicate that wherever they be, firefighters and
control room personnel perform essentially the same tasks throughout the United Kingdom
(The Stationery Office, 2000, p.7).
Not only does the employers’ side represent a variety of brigades’ structures, it consis ts
of a mix of different political party representation.
Recent history
The NJC referred to above was established in 1948 following the Fire Services Act
1947. A national fire service had been established during the Second World War and
the Act returned the brigades to local authorities. However, it laid down national
standards for pay and conditions of service and prescribed the activities of brigad es.
The Secretaries of State for the Home Departments ensured local provision met
national standards and decided whether or not to implement recommendations of the
NJC by way of Statutory Instrument. Provision was also supported by specific central
government grant. By 1959 it was decided that the NJC was working effectively and
the Fire Services Act of that year reduced the Home Department’s supervision to
disciplinary and pensions matters.
The Grey Book which established the constitution of the NJC and consequently the
terms and conditions of firefighters came into effect in 1963. It had no statutory
underpinning. It was a collective agreement under Section 178 of the Trade Union and
Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act, 1992 and remained as such following the
implementation of Cm 4699 (The Stationery Office, 2000) – referred to as the “Burchill
Report”. In 1978, following a nine-week national strike of firefighters, procedures were
introduced for dealing with disputes. Failure to settle at brigade level led to referral to a
Disputes Committee of the NJC. In 1997 Professor William Brown of Cambridge
The UK fire
services dispute
2002-2003
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