Strike action plans unveiled

The plan to keep fire and rescue services going in south Wales in case firefighters go on strike over pay has been revealed.

Operation Ategol (Welsh for auxiliary) is South Wales Fire Authority’s plan to make sure services keep running in the event of industrial action by firefighters.

Firefighter pay is decided at a UK national level and despite a pay rise being due on July 1 no agreement has yet been reached so the Fire Brigades Union have said they are preparing for a trade dispute.

The overall annual cost of Operation Ategol is £350k which is used to draw down resources to deal with any strike action.

They have used it before during strike over pensions back in 2013/2014 with 50 periods of industrial action over 18 months.

The plan caters for auxiliary firefighters, incident commanders, additional professional firefighters, instructor contracts to provide training and a part-time manager so everyone is ready for deployment.

The auxiliary firefighter teams is currently made up of 80 firefighters despite the number being 180 during the 2013/2014 disputes.

Councillor Dan Naughton of Cardiff asked if there was a strike would 80 staff be enough to carry out the duties required.

Director of technical services Richard Prendergast says the 80 firefighters are far more experienced than the 180 they had previously.

He said: “It is a massive challenge but we do have the auxiliary reserve which has been used and has been trained. We are in a much better position than we were last time.”

Mr Prendergast said they’d much rather there was a national pay agreement but they’d look to improve the numbers if there is a dispute.

He also said that tactics would change to be more defensive as they have less resources adding that life risk would be more important than property risk.

Mr Prendergast said: “The service provision in times of industrial action is not the service provision we have when there’s no industrial action.”