Typically, retained firefighters are employed in rural areas or in large villages, small towns or run a second or third appliance at full time stations as a backup crew.
Historically, on-call firefighters in parts of the British Isles were summoned by a variety of ways, with the most popular being bells tolling either on or beside the local fire station , or other central locations such as parks and town halls.
This was accompanied by house bells installed at on-call firefighters’ homes, connected directly to the phoneline and would ring alongside the station siren in the event of a call-out.
However, the Northern Ireland Fire Brigade despite already being supplied with pagers, continued to operate a network of station sirens until 1996, when Health and Safety Legislation made the system redundant.
Most importantly, use of blue lights by retained staff may cause confusion for local road users, particularly where multiple vehicles would be responding to a particular fire station from several directions at once.
In the UK, retained firefighters are responsible for undertaking community fire safety work alongside their full-time colleagues.
Whole-time firefighters attend training school for an initial period of 13–20 weeks, depending on the fire and rescue service they have joined.
In December 2003, recognising the need for a review of the retained duty system, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the department responsible for fire and resilience at that time, called for a report.
Published in February 2005, it noted: The system of flexible local fire cover needs to attract a new pool of applicants who would not have considered the opportunity previously.