Alarm bells have sounded again over a shortage of retained firefighters available in a remote Highland community.
Last year’s rallying call for volunteers at Cannich on the edge of Glen Affric has been repeated after the revelation that availability of personnel in March was just 59%.
Fraser Nixon, the service’s group manager for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey area, has told local councillors that recruitment at Cannich remains a priority despite a recent slight increase in availability at the station.
“We are making headway but we continue to look for support and we continue to look for improvement,” he said.
“We continue to target recruitment in the stations where we have challenges for daytime availability.
“I’ve previously discussed targeting our rural stations around the Cannich, Foyers, Beauly, Drumnadrochit area. That’s out key priority to try and get more people into those areas.
“Encouragingly, one of the most recent recruitment campaigns has attracted a number of applicants for these stations and we’ll continue to target them. However, as these recruiting campaigns start to come online I would really to look to your support to share it through social media or any contacts you have locally.”
Candidates for the role of retained firefighter must be eligible to work in the UK, be 18 or older and preferably work within about eight minutes of their local fire station.
Highland Council leader Margaret Davidson raised concern about gaps at a number of stations including Foyers.
She said: “Some of the crew on south Loch Ness said that in the recent round of recruitments it was only to Cannich that you appointed. Why, because we’re down on numbers at virtually every rural fire station?”
Mr Nixon confirmed that Cannich was the only station advertised in the service’s “Highland Central” area in response to a recent one-off, Scotland-wide prioritisation of 60 stations.
“It’s purely down to a capacity issue with the workforce planning,” he said. “Because when we advertise vacancies we have to go onto a training course. Rest assured that, from now, every other station that we feel is a priority will be.”
The current priorities for recruitment are Cannich, Foyers, Lochinver, Bettyhill, Mallaig and Kinlochleven.
There were 42 accidental house fires in Inverness in 2015-16 – among 120 Highland-wide – which was the lowest for the city in five years.
