How much do firemen (fire officers) get paid?

just out of interested anyone know the starting salary?

Would i be mad to leave a FTSE 100 company for the fire brigade, i dont think so as my jobs boring and not very rewarding.

Any good jobs anyone can think of whereby its rewarding and gets you out and about. So far i have come up with,

Fireman
Police
Banking (investment/financial advisor)
Air Traffic Control
Pilot
Estate Agent
Taxi driver/part time car dealer


I have a degree in Engineering and experience but i seem to just push paper so i want to get out and about, maybe i should consider sales reping (engineering products/services)

i would like to know more about the 'retained firefighter' please
thanks

[quote=brad$$$$$$]i would like to know more about the 'retained firefighter' please
thanks
[/quote]

What things would you like to know?

As retained, you are issued with a pager, and depending of what type of cover (i.e full, 3/4 cover) you attend the fire station when alerted. Usually its a first come first served basis as to who turns out. Because we were short staffed, we have a duty crew on a week on week off basis, and available in case one guy dont turn up.

Its a very good way to earn extra money, and allowing you to earn a full time wage, as long as your employer is ok with a few late mornings and days off cos your fighting a barn fire somewhere.

Depending where you are based, you will see all the sights and get involed exaclty the same as wholetime crews.

Its also a great stepping stone to become wholetime, gives you a very good insight to what "life as a firefighter" is like.

I never did it for the money, if it was for free, i still would have done it. Its a very close community, you make best freinds, and provides the biggest amount of adrelalin you will expereince turning out to a house fire persons reported.

Best job in the world!

Go for it Sean, there's no guarentee that'll you'll be successful in your application, but the selection process may make your mind up for you anyway, in terms of whether you think the RAF is right for you or not. Life's for living - experience as much as you can and try to enjoy the ride!!

5-10 years in the forces and you're still young enough to retrain for something else if you want to later on.
Personally I think anyone wanting to go into the forces with the current state of conflicts is barking, but I do have a lot of respect for those that do the job and am very glad they do so I'm not compelled to through national service.
Thank go we live in a nation of lunatics.

My old man has recently retired from the fire brigade. He was known as a bit of a nutter for driving the machines not too differently from the way he drives his porkas on track.

Anyhow, I was thinking about joining up recently, and you are looking at 20k start, rising up as you get more qualifications. Dad said to me if I was guna go for it, go in and learn as many different skills as you can for free (and there is a lot to learn), get as high as you can, then bail out after 10-15years and go do something else. He retired at 50 with a great pension and is now off doing stuff he really enjoys, including running a few small businesses to keep him busy.

The brigade is really good for learning and pushing youself, as well as the 'brotherhood' element, but its really popular at the moment, it could take you up to two years to get in if you are successful. But you do work 2 days, 2 nights, then four days off, which is pretty nice...

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/...

That might be useful. £20k starting rising to £26.5k once you've completed your training.
The fire brigade don't pay out of hours payments like other shift workers get though.

That said, imo, £20k for the level of qualifications going in is decent money.

Training is quite demanding, but I've got a few mates that do the job, all thoroughly enjoy it and it's made them far more responsible guys. They all love their job too, which is something money can't buy.

One thing to be aware of is that there are some seriously unpleasant aspects (imo) to the job, such as getting corpses out of fatal accidents. Particularly in car crashes, you could be dealing with someone whose bowels have let go when they've died, so it's not all racing to scenes, putting fires out, axeing doors open and getting cats out of trees.

Up here in Scotland, competition for training places is quite fierce, so as mentioned above starting off as a retained firefighter could be a good way in.

There a LOADS and LOADS of different roles within them services that offer "normal" hours. And you dont have to start on frontline first. Its only the front line and control staff that are really on the shifts.

Accounts & finance / H & R / stores / Workshops / cleaning / cooks / stores / Investigation / planning to name just a few!

There are even more civilian roles in the police

To the OP regarding Pilot career....Hope you didn't go for it as you would probably be finishing your training at quite possibly the worst time!

I know some firefighters and they love it!

Well its something I've been looking into over the last year. Basically it costs a load of wedge (£60k plus for ab-initio fATPL) and there's not much guarantee of a job at the end; its extremely competitive! Plus the aviation industry is very susceptible to any change in the economy and as it happens right now things are bad and even worse for aviation! The cost of avGas jet fuel has doubled and thirty odd airlines have gone bust, this means a lot of pilots out of work so the chance of a low hour fATPL pilot of getting that first job is minimal.