On-Call (Retained) Firefighter Pay
Retained / On-Call Firefighter Pay (NJC Grey Book)
| Role / Pay Point | Annual (1 July 2025) | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Firefighter (Dev) — full cover retainer | £4,558/yr | £379.83 |
| Firefighter (Dev) — partial cover retainer | £1,519/yr | £126.58 |
| Firefighter (Comp) — full cover retainer | £5,832/yr | £486.00 |
| Firefighter (Comp) — partial cover retainer | £1,944/yr | £162.00 |
| Per-turnout / per-drill fee | £5.12 per occasion | — |
| Operational hourly rate (Comp) | £17.75/hr | — |
Retained Duty System (RDS) firefighters — also known as On-Call firefighters — provide cover from their normal place of work or home, responding to incidents and drills when paged. Pay is fundamentally different from Wholetime: there's no salary, but a combination of annual retainer + per-event fees + hourly rates.
The annual retainer depends on your cover band: 15% of wholetime basic pay for full cover (120+ hours per week available), reducing for lower cover bands (around 5% for ~40 hr/wk partial cover).
On top of the retainer, you receive a flat £5.12 per occasion for turnouts, drill nights and other authorised attendances, plus an hourly rate (matching the wholetime hourly rate for your rank) for operational time spent at incidents.
RDS firefighters are members of the FFPS 2015 (CARE) pension scheme by default; some with prior service may have legacy benefits under FPS 2006 Modified (Special), which was designed for retained firefighters who became eligible to join the modified scheme.