UK rural part time firefighters are now fighting for their pensions

“We put out fires for decades, now we want our pension”

Retained firefighters, often the lifeline of smaller towns and villages, live close to their local stations and respond at a moment’s notice when the call comes in. 

For years they balanced this demanding, on‑call role with their everyday lives, yet despite giving decades of service, many only recently became eligible for a pension.

For decades, when the pager beeped, they dropped everything—family dinners, Christmas mornings, even tending livestock—to rush to emergencies. Retained firefighters, the backbone of rural fire cover in the UK, were always first on the scene, whether it was a house fire, a motorway crash, or even an iguana stranded on a roof.

Yet many of these part-time, on-call firefighters—who often balanced their service with full-time jobs—are still waiting for the pensions they fought for in court and were promised years ago.

A lifetime of service, but no pension in sight

At Market Harborough Fire Station in Leicestershire, 78-year-old Roger Dunton stands in front of the red appliances he once crewed. For 28 years, he served his community, often leaving family gatherings mid-meal. “It was more of a commitment than we realised at the time,” he told the BBC BBC/Yahoo News, 2025.

Dunton, a former union representative, says he is now helping widows of deceased colleagues navigate the pension maze. “Many people gave it a 24-hour commitment. My biggest problem is that a lot of the people I represented are no longer with us.”

The long legal battle

The fight for pensions stretches back decades.

• In the 1990s, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) campaigned unsuccessfully for retained firefighters’ pension rights.
• In 2000, the FBU lodged 11,500 employment tribunal claims under the Part-Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000. The House of Lords eventually ruled in their favour FBU, 2025.
• A 2015 settlement allowed pensions to be backdated to July 2000, but no earlier.
• The Matthews v. Kent and Medway Towns Fire Authority (2006) case at the European Court of Justice extended rights further, establishing that retained firefighters should not be treated less favourably than full-time colleagues GOV.UK, 2024.
• In 2022, a Memorandum of Understanding between the Home Office, Local Government Association, and FBU created a “Second Options Exercise” to widen eligibility.

Despite these victories, implementation has been slow. The West Yorkshire Pension Fund, which administers schemes for multiple brigades, admits it faces a backlog of complex cases requiring decades-old pay records BBC/Yahoo News, 2025.

A national issue

The FBU’s national officer Mark Rowe calls the pensions saga a “complex matter” compounded by cuts to in-house administration. “Every time something changes in court, we’re back to the drawing board,” he said FBU, 2025.

Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service acknowledges the frustration but stresses the issue is national, not local. A spokesperson said: “This ruling has had national impact across different pension schemes, and is not something over which Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service has any influence.”

The bigger picture

The dispute highlights a broader challenge: how to fairly compensate part-time and retained emergency workers who provide essential cover in rural areas. The government’s consultation on amendments to the Firefighters’ Pension Scheme closed in February 2025, with responses still under review (GOV.UK, 2024).

For now, many retired firefighters remain in limbo—waiting for the pensions they earned through decades of service, sacrifice, and missed family moments.

✅ Online Sources:

• BBC/Yahoo News, 2025 "We put out fires for decades, now we want our pension"
• Fire Brigades Union (2025): Retained Duty System Pensions Employment Tribunal Claims
• GOV.UK (2024): Amendments to the Firefighters’ Pension Scheme: retained firefighters