Dumfries and Galloway's fire service chief leaving top job

The region’s fire service chief has announced that he is leaving the top job.

And as he heads to perform the same lead role in Glasgow, area commander Andrew Kenna said that he would like to see even more women join the fire service.

Mr Kenna was full of praise for two women who are leading the way in the fire service in Dumfries and Galloway – station commanders Lucy Donaldson and Claire McNay.

Station commander Donaldson and area commander Kenna both attended Dumfries and Galloway Council’s police, fire and rescue sub-committee on Monday.

At the meeting, Mid and Upper Nithsdale Councillor Tony Berretti asked: “The last time we spoke I asked you about this. Gender profile of the service: is it changing?

“What’s it like currently, and what’s the recruitment aspect?”

Commander Kenna replied: “It’s something that we are focused on.

“We do need a workforce that represents the communities that we serve. Just looking at our youth volunteer schemes, you’ve seen two of our volunteers being female.

“One of them has said that she has aspirations to join the fire service. So that’s one aspect we’re looking at through the youth volunteers.

“With my own management team, I’ve got two female station commanders – with Lucy sitting beside me just now.

“They’re not just role models for females, they’re role models for everybody to join the fire service.”

The fire chief added that the service does get a lot of applications from women but that there is still some work to be done to “break down barriers”.

He said: “What we’ve done is introduce a buddy system into the recruitment programme, so that when female applicants are going up for their practical selection test, we buddy them with a female firefighter.

“The feedback we’ve had for that is really, really positive. We’re seeing an increase in the uptake of female applicants coming through, which is really encouraging.

“As a service, we can do more. As an area, we can do more.”