Courage under fire

One gets the feeling that a high-pressure water hose, or at least a set of flame-retardant overalls, a helmet and an axe might have come in handy for Anita Wainwright when she joined Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service.

After all, upon joining the UK’s second-largest fire service as HR director, Wainwright was entering an environment which was, to say the least, hot to handle. A service that had seen decades of stability had suddenly undergone extreme change, much of it painful.

In the two years before Wainwright joined from the Environment Agency, shift patterns had been radically altered. A 30-year-old system that had once allowed many firefighters to take on second jobs had been scrapped in favour of the “Rostering for duty” scheme, which allocated shifts on an annual basis to improve efficiency.