Concerns raised as fire service loses firefighters faster than it can recruit and train their replacements

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service (HIWFRS) continues to lose more on-call firefighters each year than it can employ and train new recruits.

This was a recent finding of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) which still has concerns relating to HIWFRS’s workforce planning, first identified in an early 2025 inspection.

At the time of the inspectorate’s revisit to the service between April 27 and April 30 this year, 160 out of an on-call establishment of 612 posts were vacant.

HIWFRS said that like many fire services nationally, the recruitment, training and availability of on-call firefighters to support rural communities is ‘challenging’. They said this is a ‘priority’ in the service’s workforce plan.

The inspection carried out between January 20 and March 28, 2025, highlighted two causes of concern.

The first was a need for the service to improve its mobilisation system and the second was a lack of adequate organisational level plans setting out and bringing together current and future workforce and skills requirements.

On the first cause of concern, HMICRFS previously said the service’s mobilisation system could cause ‘unnecessary delays’ in the dispatch of resources to emergency incidents.

In respect of the second, the inspectorate said the service cannot be assured that it will have enough staff with the right skills to support its community risk management plan (CRMP).

A CRMP outlines all foreseeable fire and rescue related risks and how the service will allocate resources across prevention, protection and response.

After revisiting the service between April 27 and April 30 this year, the inspectorate said HIWFRS has improved the way it manages faults in its mobilisation system and closed this cause of concern.

Regarding workforce planning, it said: “We acknowledge that the service has made good progress in addressing the workforce planning cause of concern. But there is still more work to do to integrate this work throughout the organisation.

“As a result, this cause of concern remains open.”

HMICFRS said the service does not yet have effective central oversight and direction in place for its recruitment activities.

The inspectorate said HIWFRS has experienced ‘delays’ in providing fundamentals training courses for new recruits but added that the service has ‘partially responded’ to this problem by putting on an additional breathing apparatus course on the Isle of Wight.

The HIWFRS spokesperson said: “At the time of the reinspection, we had work ongoing to look at improving how the service can attract and recruit more on-call firefighters and support their development and progression. We had also established an on-call steering group to provide strategic oversight of our activities.

“HMICFRS were pleased with these developments, but as they were relatively new they determined that further work was needed to ensure the integration of this work across the organisation and the expected benefits were realised.”