A SENIOR fire boss has defended a decision to pay two officers more than £112,000 a year and hit back at union claims.

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service’s chief fire officer, Nigel Hutchinson, spoke to The Press to defend several claims made by the Fire Brigade Union, including giving two officers a £35,000 pay rise, leaving parts of the county with insufficient cover and introducing a ‘miniature’ fire engine.

The union slammed Mr Hutchinson and members of the county’s fire authority for increasing two salaries to more than £112,000 each as “obscene and immoral” when the “service is in crisis.”

However, Mr Hutchinson said the county always has enough cover and the money is not a pay rise, but a promotion as part of a management structure which is being reduced to save costs, and the pair are not in the last year of service, as the union suggests.

York Press:

“It needs to be looked at in the full context of the new structure,” he said

“The new structure removes two and a half senior positions. It’s part of a programme to revise and reduce the senior managers at that level.” On the issue of cover, he said: “It may not be from their local station but we always have cover. If one isn’t available because it’s attending a fire we move it around.”The fire service sets its own pay structure, loosely based on a national framework, but Mr Hutchinson said it was not up to him to reduce pay grades. He added senior roles are advertised with a large salary to attract the best applicants.

“It seems a bit strange they want to make a fuss of it now we have been making adjustments,” Mr Hutchinson said: “It’s not in my remit to say what staff are paid. We have scrutinised it over the years and paid what’s needed. The structure we have is considered to be the minimum necessary to be able to deal with the current demands going forward.

”The union hit out at the fire authority as the promotions come when they plan to raise council tax by the maximum 1.99% and reduce 48 full-time firefighter posts by replacing a standard fire engine with a tactical response vehicle – a “miniature” fire engine.

Mr Hutchinson said: “Their claim is disingenuous. If you have seen one it is to all intents and purposes a standard fire engine, so how it can be dubbed a miniature befuddles me because you would be hard pressed to see it as miniature because it operates and performs as a fire engine.”