England employed 30,601 full-time-equivalent firefighters at 31 March 2025 — down 0.5% on the year and 14% over the decade. This page answers “how many firefighters are there in the UK?” and the questions that follow it: the wholetime-versus-on-call split, how many people join and leave each year, how the workforce is changing on gender and ethnicity, and what a firefighter is paid in 2025. The core figures come from MHCLG’s fire and rescue workforce and pensions statistics for England, the Local Government Association’s UK-wide firefighters’ workforce survey, the GOV.UK ethnicity facts and figures service, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Welsh Government annual releases, and the NJC pay settlement published by the Fire Brigades Union.

It is written for the people who need a single, citable headcount source — careers and apprenticeship sites, journalists covering staffing and diversity, HR and EDI writers, unions, fire-governance scrutiny leads, and labour-market researchers. Every figure is dated and sourced, and where a related subject has its own dedicated page in our statistics cluster we carry one headline here and link out rather than duplicate it.

Key firefighter facts and figures

  • 30,601 full-time-equivalent firefighters were employed in England at 31 March 2025 — down 0.5% on the year, from 30,769.
  • 14% is the fall in England’s firefighter numbers over the decade, from 35,699 in 2015 (down 4.1% over five years).
  • 22,740 FTE firefighters in England were wholetime and 7,860 were on-call (retained) at 31 March 2025.
  • 4,109 people joined England’s fire and rescue services in the year to March 2025 (9.1% of headcount) against 3,814 leavers (8.5%).
  • 9.7% of England’s firefighters were women (3,310) at 31 March 2025 — up from 4.7% a decade earlier.
  • 5.6% of England’s firefighters (1,793) were from an ethnic-minority background, up from 3.9% a decade earlier.
  • 7,556 staff worked for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service at 31 March 2025, alongside 2,271 FTE plus 1,306 RDS staff in Wales.
  • £38,881 is a competent UK firefighter’s salary from 1 July 2025, after a 3.2% NJC pay award.

All figures are the latest available as of July 2026, and this page is updated when new data is released — MHCLG publishes the England fire workforce and pensions statistics once a year in the autumn, the LGA firefighters’ workforce survey runs periodically (its last major surveys were in 2023 and 2025), and the Scottish and Welsh workforce releases and the NJC pay settlement refresh annually.

How many firefighters are there in the UK?

Fire and rescue services in England employed 30,601 full-time-equivalent firefighters at 31 March 2025, according to MHCLG’s fire and rescue workforce and pensions statistics — a fall of 0.5% on the 30,769 recorded a year earlier. The longer view is the one that matters for anyone tracking the health of the service: numbers are down 4.1% over five years and 14% over the decade, from 35,699 in 2015.

There is no single, clean UK-wide firefighter total, and it is worth being honest about why. The four nations publish workforce data on different bases, to different reporting dates, and count different categories of staff — so a headline that simply summed them would be misleading. The most reliable anchor is the England FTE figure above, read alongside the separate Scottish and Welsh releases (covered below) and the LGA’s UK-wide survey (covered further down). Northern Ireland’s single service publishes separately again.

The England figure is expressed in full-time equivalents, which is the standard the official statistics use. Because on-call firefighters work variable hours, an FTE count is always lower than a simple headcount of the people involved — a distinction that becomes important the moment you look at the wholetime-versus-on-call split next.

What is the difference between wholetime and on-call firefighters?

Of England’s 30,601 FTE firefighters at 31 March 2025, 22,740 were wholetime and 7,860 were on-call (retained), according to MHCLG. Wholetime firefighters are full-time, salaried staff who crew stations around the clock on shift patterns. On-call firefighters — still widely called “retained” — hold other jobs or commitments and respond from home or work when their pager goes off, which makes them the backbone of cover in rural and semi-rural areas.

The two roles carry the same operational competence but very different working patterns, and that shapes the recruitment picture. Because on-call firefighters are paid a retainer plus call-out fees rather than a full salary, and because the model depends on people living or working close enough to a station to respond in minutes, on-call posts are consistently harder to fill and to keep filled than wholetime ones.

Firefighter type (England) FTE at 31 March 2025 How it works
Wholetime 22,740 Full-time salaried staff crewing stations on shift patterns
On-call (retained) 7,860 Respond from home or work on a retainer plus call-out fees
Total 30,601 Down 0.5% on the year and 14% over the decade

That difficulty is quantified in the LGA’s UK survey later on this page, but the headline is intuitive: the part of the workforce that is hardest to recruit is also the part that covers the largest geographic footprint.

How many firefighters join and leave each year?

England’s fire and rescue services recorded 4,109 joiners in the year to March 2025 — 9.1% of headcount — against 3,814 leavers, or 8.5%, according to MHCLG. That is a net gain of fewer than 300 people across the whole of England, which is why the overall FTE count barely moved on the year even though thousands of individuals came and went. The service also took on 875 new apprentices during the year, part of the pipeline that feeds wholetime recruitment.

A joiner and leaver rate both hovering around 9% points to a workforce that turns over steadily rather than one in freefall, but the churn still carries a cost. Every leaver takes trained competence out of the service, and every joiner needs months of training before they are operationally useful — so a service can be running hard on recruitment and still see its headline number drift downwards, which is broadly what has happened over the decade.

Recruitment is also where the workforce’s demographic profile changes fastest, because new intakes look different from the people they replace. That is the thread running through the diversity figures next.

How many firefighters are women?

Women made up 9.7% of England’s firefighters — 3,310 people — at 31 March 2025, according to MHCLG, more than double the 4.7% (1,783) recorded a decade earlier. The share is rising because recruitment is running well ahead of the standing figure: 15% of firefighters recruited in England in 2024-25 were women, some 395 individuals, so each new intake nudges the overall percentage up.

The contrast with fire control is stark and worth flagging, because the two roles are often conflated. 76% of fire control staff in England are women, against 9.7% of firefighters — control rooms, which handle 999 calls and mobilise appliances, are a majority-female workforce while the operational firefighting role remains heavily male. Reporting the two together would obscure both figures, so they are best kept separate.

These are fire-service-specific percentages, quoted here only to describe the firefighter workforce. Wider questions about women in leadership, the gender pay gap or occupational segregation across the economy are a different subject — our sister site covers those in its equality and diversity training resources.

How ethnically diverse is the firefighter workforce?

Ethnic-minority staff made up 5.6% of England’s firefighters — 1,793 people — at 31 March 2025, according to MHCLG, up from 3.9% a decade earlier. Across all fire and rescue staff in England (not just operational firefighters), 6.0% were from an ethnic-minority background in the year to March 2024, according to the GOV.UK ethnicity facts and figures service.

Both figures are climbing, but from a low base and more slowly than the gender figure, and they sit below the ethnic-minority share of the working-age population in England as a whole. As with the gender data, these are fire-specific descriptive percentages: this page reports the composition of the firefighter workforce and does not attempt any cross-sector comparison, ethnicity-pay-gap analysis or wider workforce-diversity commentary, which belong to equality and diversity training rather than here.

What does the LGA UK-wide survey add?

The Local Government Association’s 2025 firefighters’ workforce survey — answered by 47 of the UK’s 48 fire and rescue services — estimated 29,770 wholetime personnel (28,464 firefighting and 1,306 control) plus 16,499 retained personnel. Because the survey counts people across the whole UK rather than England-only FTEs, it is the closest thing to a single national picture, and the large retained figure underlines how much of UK cover leans on on-call crews.

The survey’s most quoted finding is about that very group. 77% of UK fire services reported difficulty recruiting on-call (retained) firefighters, and 70% reported difficulty retaining them. Set against the wholetime figures, this is the clearest evidence that the recruitment strain is concentrated in the on-call model — the part of the workforce that keeps rural stations viable.

The LGA and MHCLG numbers are not interchangeable: one is a UK-wide survey headcount, the other an England-only FTE count to a fixed date. They answer slightly different questions, which is why this page carries both rather than trying to reconcile them into one figure.

What about Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

The England release is the richest, but the devolved services publish their own workforce figures. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service had 7,556 staff at 31 March 2025 — up 0.6% on the year — including 3,430 wholetime operational firefighters, according to its fire safety and organisational statistics. Scotland’s single national service, in place since 2013, reports on a whole-organisation basis, which is why its staff total spans operational and support roles together.

Welsh fire and rescue authorities employed 2,271 FTE staff plus 1,306 retained (RDS) staff at 31 March 2025, of which 1,520 were wholetime firefighters, according to Welsh Government and StatsWales data. Wales retains three regional services and, like England, relies heavily on retained crews outside its urban centres.

Nation Workforce figure Data period Basis
England 30,601 FTE firefighters 31 March 2025 FTE, firefighters only
Scotland 7,556 staff (3,430 wholetime firefighters) 31 March 2025 Whole-organisation headcount
Wales 2,271 FTE + 1,306 RDS staff 31 March 2025 FTE plus retained (RDS)

Because the four nations use different definitions, staff categories and reporting bases, these totals should be read side by side rather than added into one UK number. Northern Ireland’s single service publishes its own workforce statistics separately again.

How much does a UK firefighter get paid in 2025?

A competent UK firefighter’s salary rose to £38,881 from 1 July 2025, after a 3.2% pay award agreed through the National Joint Council, according to the settlement published by the Fire Brigades Union. The trainee firefighter rate is £29,169, with pay rising through the development stages to the “competent” rate once a firefighter is fully qualified. On-call firefighters are paid differently again — a retaining fee plus fees for drills, training and call-outs rather than a single salary.

The NJC award applies UK-wide to the great majority of firefighters and is negotiated annually, which is why the effective date (1 July 2025) sits mid-year rather than aligning to the financial year the workforce statistics use. Pay above the competent rate depends on rank and role — crew, watch and station managers, and specialist posts, sit on higher scales — but £38,881 is the standard reference point for a fully qualified wholetime firefighter in 2025.

Frequently asked questions

How many firefighters are there in the UK in 2025?

England employed 30,601 full-time-equivalent firefighters at 31 March 2025, down 0.5% on the year and 14% over the decade. There is no single clean UK-wide total because the four nations report on different bases; Scotland had 7,556 staff (3,430 wholetime firefighters) and Wales 2,271 FTE plus 1,306 retained staff at the same date, with Northern Ireland reporting separately.

How many firefighters are women, and what percentage are female?

Women made up 9.7% of England’s firefighters — 3,310 people — at 31 March 2025, up from 4.7% a decade earlier. The share is rising because 15% of those recruited in 2024-25 were women. By contrast, 76% of fire control staff are women.

What is the difference between wholetime and on-call (retained) firefighters?

Wholetime firefighters are full-time salaried staff who crew stations on shift patterns; on-call (retained) firefighters respond from home or work on a retainer plus call-out fees. In England at 31 March 2025 there were 22,740 wholetime and 7,860 on-call FTE firefighters. On-call posts are consistently harder to recruit and retain.

How much does a UK firefighter get paid in 2025?

A competent firefighter’s salary rose to £38,881 from 1 July 2025 after a 3.2% NJC pay award, with a trainee rate of £29,169. Pay rises above the competent rate with rank and specialist role, and on-call firefighters are paid a retainer plus fees rather than a single salary.

Where do UK firefighter statistics come from?

The core data is MHCLG’s fire and rescue workforce and pensions statistics for England, the GOV.UK ethnicity facts and figures service, the LGA’s UK-wide firefighters’ workforce survey, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Welsh Government annual releases, and the NJC pay settlement published by the Fire Brigades Union. The England workforce release is annual (autumn), the LGA survey periodic.

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Sources & references

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Mark McShane
Mark McShane
Health & Safety Training Specialist, Online CPD Academy

Mark writes about workplace health & safety, fire safety and accredited online training for Fire Warden Training, part of Online CPD Academy.