Our History

The following brief history shows how our Service has grown over the last years.

1930 - 1974

Prior to 1940, the public fire service in the UK was, by today's standards, disjointed, inadequately trained, and under funded. Every small town had its own fire brigade with its own Firemaster, fire station - or stations in the cities and larger towns - and its own way of doing things.

However, the onset of the Second World War changed political thinking in the area of 'home defence' and the existing diverse fire services were nationalised to become the National Fire Service (NFS).

In order to provide support to the NFS throughout the land, the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) was formed in 1938.

The wartime experience led the government to realise the need for a properly equipped, properly trained and standardised fire service, and this gave rise to the Fire Services Act of 1947.

Control of the fire services was returned to the local authorities, and it was left to them to form joint arrangements for the administration of police and fire services.

Thus, Lanarkshire and the City of Glasgow opted to maintain their own fire services, (Lanarkshire Fire Brigade; Glasgow Fire Service) whilst areas such as Renfrewshire, Argyll and Bute collaborated to form Western Area Fire Brigade; Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire formed South Western Area Fire Brigade; and Dunbartonshire and Stirlingshire formed Central Fire Brigade.

1974 - 1996

The fire service remained in the hands of the local authorities for more than 25 years until local government reorganisation in 1975 gave birth to Strathclyde Regional Council.

The new Strathclyde Regional Council was responsible for all local authority functions, including police and fire services and so Strathclyde Fire Brigade was formed and took the shape of the political boundaries of Strathclyde Regional Council. From its headquarters in Hamilton, SFR administered six divisions.

The Regional Council succeeded in standardising the fire service it had inherited and after some 20 years, SFR was restructured internally, its six Divisions being formed into four Commands - North, East, West and Central Command.

1996 - Present

In 1996, changes made when the UK government decided to again reorganise local government, the twelve unitary authorities that replaced Strathclyde Regional Council agreed to retain Strathclyde Fire & Rescue (and Strathclyde Police) in their existing constitution. And so today, Strathclyde Fire & Rescue stands as it did in 1975.

Strathclyde Fire Brigade was renamed as Strathclyde Fire & Rescue to reflect the changing role of the service in June 2005.

Strathclyde Fire & Rescue is one of the most innovative fire services in the whole of Europe. It has established a Technical Support Team(TST), a Maritime Incident Response Group(MIRG), a dedicated Incident Research & Investigation Section(IRIS) and a new Technical Rescue Training Centre(TRTC) where crews are specially trained to deal with a wide range of emergency situations.

Many things have changed since Strathclyde Fire & Rescue was formed in 1975, but some things have not. Among these are the public's expectation of the service, and the dedication and commitment of our staff.