A UNION official says firefighters are angry about proposals to change the way they work as part of a bid to save £1.8m by the end of 2014.

Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service started a 12-week public consultation on Monday, over proposals for a major shake-up of the way it responds to emergencies.

Brent Thorley, secretary of the Wiltshire branch of the Fire Brigades Union, said: “There seems to be an anger; a general anger.

“There’s not many people I come across who are quite happy with any of it.

“And I don’t know whether that’s created by the fear the proposals are not going to work, that there’s going to be job losses, or that people are so unsure about what it means for them.

“We need the detail, we need the clarity, because we cannot give our members’ opinions until our members know exactly what this entails.”

Under the plans, Westlea and Stratton would move to a “day crew plus” system, where officers do 24-hour shifts on a flexible rota, with evenings on call at stations.

Stratton’s 28 firefighters operate on a shift pattern to cover evenings, so the move would cut the number of required posts by half.

Staff would be asked to move to vacant posts in Swindon or elsewhere, while some posts would not be filled after people retire.

Mr Thorley, a firefighter based at Westlea, said: “We don’t see the need for job losses. The systems we have at the moment work. We are understaffed, but they want to keep pushing down that road for some reason and we’re quite concerned.”

For retained firefighters, the service plans to replace the current scheme – whereby staff are paid a retainer fee, plus money for each incident or training day they attend – with a fixed annual salary.

The service says the retained staff would get more money, but contracts would be altered so they would have to commit to working agreed days, rather than being able to drop out at short notice.

Mr Thorley said the loss of flexibility would mean firefighters could not easily meet other commitments, such as another job, and the salary he claimed was being offered – about £14,000 to £18,000 for maximum hours – was not high enough as a sole job.

A Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service spokesman said: “All members of staff were invited to be part of the project teams and had the opportunity to feed ideas or suggestions into the process.

“Staff have now been given a 16-week consultation period, in which to discuss the proposals in more detail with the project leads.

“Some amendments have already been made to the proposal for a retained salary scheme, as the result of feedback from the initial briefings held in early February.”

She added that meetings with operational staff had started this week, with the aim of responding to concerns and questions. Some details, such salary levels, could not be provided at the moment as they conflicted with union negotiations.