NORTH Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service plans to ask for its share of council tax to increase by 1.99 per cent - the maximum allowed.

At the same time, according to the Fire Brigades Union, it aims to cut the number of active firefighters by 48, and replace one full-sized fire engine with a much smaller “tactical response vehicle”.

In the face of such cutbacks, it seems very odd indeed that the service should have decided to promote two very senior fire officers - raising the pay of each by £35,000 to £112,000 a year. Chief fire officer Nigel Hutchinson has defended the decision, arguing that the two officers have been promoted as part of a programme to slim down senior management by cutting two and a half senior positions.

The argument seems to be that, because the officers now have more responsibilities, they should be paid more. Senior positions needed to be advertised with a large salary to attract the best applicants, Mr Hutchinson added.

That’s what large, publicly-funded bureaucracies always seem to say. But it’s funny that when senior managers’ workload is increased as a result of job cuts, they always seem to get a pay rise, yet when those on the frontline are landed with more work as a result of similar cutbacks, they don’t.

We suspect these large salary increases are unlikely to go down well amongst the public at large.

It is, after all, our money that is being used to pay these big increases. And we suspect most people would rather see that money being spent on frontline firefighters than on managers.