Essex: Fire roles: more must be women

10:00am Wednesday 31st December 2008

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FIRE bosses will have to put one female firefighter on each engine if they want to meet new diversity guidelines.

Officials at the Local Government Association (LGA) said at least 15 per cent of those in operational roles should be women.

They said increasing the number of women would “meet the needs of local people”.

CHANCE Currently only 13 out of Essex’s 967 firefighters are women.

Anthony Hedley, chairman of the Essex Fire Authority, said the county already had a diversity strategy which made fire service jobs open to anyone.

He said: “Everyone is treated as equals and the entrance criteria is the same for everyone.

“You have to look at the role of the firefighting services – fortunately fighting fires isn’t the major plank of our work.

“We are mostly called to road accidents and if you have firefighters trained as paramedics as well then that is a less physical role.

“We are gender blind and ethnicity blind so everyone has the same chance in the service.”