You may have seen in the press and media somewhere, the ‘#WeAre5FRS’ campaign, celebrating that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has reached it’s fifth birthday. And like most toddlers, it’s just learning to walk after crawling and stumbling, often incoherently, and not without a few accidents along the way.

At the outset we had 8 Fire Brigades, each doing things very differently, effectively having firefighters around the country on different rates of pay for doing the same job. So we all had to be brought on to the same terms and conditions, and quite rightly, the FBU said that they wanted this to be done to the highest level and that nobody should suffer any detriment as a result.

The negotiations on the ‘Harmonisation of Uniformed Terms and Conditions’ began way back but only really started around 2 years ago. When I say started, I mean that the FBU…