Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is the national fire and rescue service of Scotland, with its operational headquarters located in Cambuslang. It was formed by the merger of eight regional fire services in the country on 1 April 2013, thus becoming the largest fire brigade in the United Kingdom, surpassing the London Fire Brigade. The force was established as a result of the passing of Scottish Government legislation. The Police and Fire Reform Act 2012 was passed by the Scottish Parliament, and, in 2013, the new Scottish Fire and Rescue Service replaced Scotland's eight regional fire and rescue services.
The current chief officer of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is Stuart Stevens who has overall responsibility for the day to day running of the fire and rescue service and all its associated operations.
Consolidation and structure
After a consultation, the Scottish Government confirmed on 8 September 2011 that a single fire and rescue service would be created in Scotland to replace the eight existing local authority fire and rescue services.Following further consultation on the detailed operation of the service, the Police and Fire Reform Bill was published on 17 January 2012. After scrutiny and debate by the Scottish Parliament, the legislation was approved on 27 June 2012. The Bill duly received royal assent as the Police and Fire Reform Act 2012. This Act also created Police Scotland in place of the previous eight regional police forces. The mergers were effective from 1 April 2013. Eight months after the consolidation, an internal report said the reorganisation had not negatively affected operational response.
The eight services that were merged are:
The number of control rooms handling 999 calls was also reduced from eight to three. The consolidation of regional call centres has reportedly resulted in a number of dispatching errors. For example, a crew from Beauly was sent to a blaze 10 miles away in Dingwall as the dispatcher was allegedly unaware Dingwall had its own fire station. The service is headquartered in Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, on the south-eastern outskirts of Glasgow, incorporating a national training centre, opened in January 2013. There are a further three service delivery centres in the east, west and north of the country.
On 16 August 2012, the Scottish Government confirmed the first chief fire officer of the new service would be Alasdair Hay, then acting chief fire officer of Tayside Fire and Rescue Service, following an open recruitment exercise. Pat Watters, former president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, was also announced as chair of the service, an appointment to run for three years from September 2012. Members of the SFRS Board appointed in October 2012 were Watters, Bob Benson, James Campbell, Kirsty Darwent, Marieke Dwarshuis, Michael Foxley, Robin Iffla, Bill McQueen, Sid Patten, Neil Pirie, Martin Togneri and Grant Thoms.
Chief officers
- 20132019: Alasdair Hay
- 20192022: Martin Blunden
- 20222024: Ross Haggart
- 2024present: Stuart Stevens
Operations
As well as fighting fires, the service attends a wide range of specialist incidents, such as road traffic collisions, water rescue, rope rescue, urban search and rescue, chemical biological radiological and nuclear and terrorist attacks. In 2014/15, the service attended 10,740 non-fire incidents, 102 of the fire stations in the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service have specialist capabilities for non-fire/major incidents.
In 2024/2025, SFRS had a £314.59million operational budget and £43.05million capital budget.
New Dimensions Programme
In partnership with the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Fire Services Inspectorate and in response to the September 11 attacks, the development of the New Dimensions programme began in 2001. Similar to that of the English and Welsh New Dimensions programme, the overall aim of the project was to prepare sufficient responses to protect the public and respond to potential terrorist incidents as well as the likes of Urban Search and Rescue and Mass Decontamination incidents in Scotland. The programme also focused on other aspects of fire and rescue that have not yet been fully fleshed out to the extent they could be to enhance the capability of Scotland's fire services. Prior to the 2013 merger, this set out a model response across all services when dealing with major disruptive incidents where mutual assistance would be needed. To support this, the Scottish Government funded a range of specialist vehicles and equipment to deal with these new hazards, and as of 2020 there were 39 resilience appliances in SFRS' fleet.Hazardous Materials
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and its antecedents all had and continue to follow the requirement to respond to hazardous materials incidents, referring to incidents involving biological and chemical agents which has the capacity to cause harm to people, animals and the environment, providing scientific advisory, environmental protection, mass decontamination and detection, identification and monitoring services in co-operation with partner agencies with the aim of neutralising and managing HAZMAT incidents.Detection, Identification, Monitoring (DIM)
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has a fleet of 4 Detection, Identification, Monitoring vehicles strategically provided by the Scottish Government to four out of the eight legacy fire services under Scottish Resilience stationed at Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. These vehicles are generally crewed by flexi-duty officers to support its operations at incidents. The DIM vehicles are used as a form of mobile laboratory at serious chemical, biological radiological and nuclear instances, supporting a wide range of incidents including flooding, HAZMAT, Urban Search And Rescue and Mass Decontamination. The vehicles are capable of identifying substances at incidents where the material of concern has not yet been identified.Environmental Protection
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has numerous equipment and vehicles used to protect the environment and animals from potentially harmful incidents across Scotland. There are 11 HAZMAT/Environmental Protection vehicles in SFRS' fleet, eight of which are deployed via a demountable pod system.Mass Decontamination (MD)
Mass Decontamination is the removal of harmful contaminants from large amounts of people in the case of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear incidents and industrial accidents. There are multiple specialist resources strategically placed across Scotland, all funded by the Scottish Government in order to sufficiently respond to such incidents. Every fire appliance and crew in Scotland has the capabilities to provide simple decontamination procedures for incidents in which there is a small number of people affected or in the early stages of a mass decontamination incidents, utilising basic firefighting equipment such as hosereels and ladders.Urban Search and Rescue (USAR)
Urban Search and Rescue operations aim to respond to the likes of major transportation incidents and collapsed buildings. There are several strategically placed USAR assets across Scotland with most of which being based on demountable pod systems, these assets are interchangeable with heavy rescue resources, there is also a USAR dog based at Portlethen, Aberdeenshire used to track the scents of survivors at the scene of building collapses or other similar incidents. From 2010 to 2013 there were 15 partial building collapses across Scotland.High Volume Pumps (HVP)
Under the New Dimensions programme 4 high-volume pumping units were provided by the Scottish government and strategically placed across Scotland at Elgin, Dundee, Falkirk and Clydesmill. HVPs are demountable modules transported by prime mover, carrying a kilometre of hose and a submersible pump used to pump water from lakes and rivers. The primary use of HVPs is to support flooding incidents but can be used in firefighting instances such as the 2018 Glasgow School of Art fire because of their capabilities to transport large quantities of water.Water rescue
In 2005 under government legislation it became the eight antecedent fire and rescue service's of Scotland's responsibility to prepare and respond to flooding and other water related incidents in which there is a risk of a person to die, become seriously ill or injured and protect them from harm. After the 2013 merger of SFRS and the abundance of rivers and lochs, it was decided a generalised and revised water rescue capability should be established. The result of this is a Mercedes Sprinter van containing water rescue equipment, welfare facilities, and trailering a rigid permanently inflated boat for immediate deployment. Twenty of SFRS' stations have one of these dedicated water rescue units.The Water Rescue Units regularly respond to flooding, difficulty in water, and water-related rescue incidents. Additionally 78 stations have specialist flood response capabilities.
The service is the primary emergency service for the rescue of persons from the River Clyde in Glasgow and works alongside other emergency services during flooding events to ensure the safety of communities and rescue people in difficulty, with specialist swift water rescue teams positioned on major waterways and areas of activity. Firefighters are routinely called out to water, flood and boat rescues. For example, during Storm Frank in December 2015, SFRS received 350 flood-related calls in the space of six days.