DSFRS Shift Pattern 2026: Devon & Somerset Fire Rota

The DSFRS shift pattern in one paragraph

DSFRS's 'become a wholetime firefighter' page says firefighters typically work 42 hours a week in shifts, and that the current shift pattern is two day shifts and two night shifts followed by four days off, with day shifts from 9am to 6pm and night shifts from 6pm to 9am. The same page says the shift pattern is under review and might change. DSFRS's control room careers page describes the same two days, two nights, four rest pattern with the same 9am and 6pm change-over times.

That is a 2-2-4 pattern, the most common wholetime rota in the UK, with a 9-hour day and a 15-hour night. The totals are the usual ones: 2 x 9 plus 2 x 15 is 48 hours in eight days, an average of 42 a week. It is the same day/night split that London Fire Brigade used before its 2010 change, and longer at night than most current county patterns; see the comparison table below and the firefighter shift patterns guide.

One caution. DSFRS's careers pages carry no published or updated date, and the 'under review' warning has been there long enough that we cannot tell whether a change is close. A December 2023 report on DSFRS's change programme listed wholetime shift patterns as one of the areas under review. We found no later document setting out a new pattern. If you are joining or transferring, ask DSFRS for the current written start times for your station.

Day and night shifts: times, lengths and handover

With a 9am and 6pm change-over, the night watch finishes at the moment the day watch starts. A 9-hour day and a 15-hour night means the night is six hours longer than the day, so the bulk of the cycle's hours fall overnight. The Grey Book builds meal breaks into each 24 hours and averages the working week, which is why the contract is 42 hours on average rather than a fixed number each week.

The 6pm boundary is worth noticing because DSFRS uses it elsewhere. On-call Pay for Availability treats 8am to 6pm as the higher-paid daytime window, and the 2022 committee reports describe 11 on-call fire engines that only need to be available at night, from 6pm to 8am. So 6pm is a hinge point across DSFRS's whole duty system: wholetime nights start then, on-call standard-rate hours start then, and the night-only engines come on then.

If you find a DSFRS rota with different change-over times, for example 8am and 6pm (10 and 14 hours) or 7am and 7pm (12 and 12), treat it as either a newer pattern from the review or a different service. We have not found a DSFRS source for either.

Four watches and the eight-day cycle, worked through

A 2-2-4 pattern needs four watches: every day needs one watch on days and one on nights, and each watch works four shifts in eight days. DSFRS's pages do not name its watches or say how many there are at each wholetime station, so the table below uses generic labels, Watch 1 to Watch 4, to show how the pattern fits together. It is an illustration of the published sequence, not a DSFRS rota.

In the table, D is a day shift starting at 9am, N is a night shift starting at 6pm and finishing at 9am the next morning, and a dash is a day off. There is one D and one N in every column, so every day and every night is covered. The second night ends at 9am on what is the first day off, so in practice you finish on a morning and return at 9am four days later.

How the eight-day cycle sits on a calendar

An eight-day cycle does not repeat on a weekly calendar. Each time a watch completes a cycle, its next first day shift falls one weekday later; the weekdays realign only after 56 days (seven cycles of eight days equals eight weeks). So there is no fixed 'weekends off' pattern on a 2-2-4: over eight weeks every watch works every weekday roughly equally.

Over a year a watch works about 45.6 cycles, roughly 182 shifts, half days and half nights. On DSFRS's times that is about 91 x 9 hours plus 91 x 15 hours, about 2,190 hours before leave, which is the same 52.143 weeks x 42 hours the national hourly-rate formula uses. The table below shows one watch over four weeks, starting a cycle on a Monday.

Make your own dated DSFRS calendar

We could not verify a dated 2026 calendar for any DSFRS watch, and watch allocation is personal anyway, so the reliable route is to generate your own from one known date. The site's free shift calendar generator takes the date of your first day duty and the number of day duties, night duties and days off, previews the roster and exports an ICS file for Apple, Google or Outlook calendars. It runs in your browser. For DSFRS's published pattern the settings are 2 days, 2 nights and 4 off, which is the tool's default.

The generator exports duties as all-day entries, so add the 9am and 6pm times after import. It covers up to 26 weeks per run; for a full year, run it again from a first day shift 176 days (22 cycles) after your first start date.

1. Get the date of the first day shift of your watch's current cycle from your watch manager or issued rota.
2. Open the free shift calendar and enter that date as the first day duty.
3. Set 2 day duties, 2 night duties and 4 off-duty days, and 26 weeks.
4. Check the preview against your next few shifts on the issued rota.
5. Export the ICS file and add 9am-6pm to day entries and 6pm-9am to night entries.
6. Run it again from 176 days after your first start date to cover the rest of the year.
7. Add leave, training courses and any detached duties by hand.

On-call at DSFRS: how availability works

Most DSFRS firefighters work the on-call duty system. Its stations page lists 69 on-call stations and 10 that have both wholetime and on-call crews, and the 2022 committee reports say on-call crews provide about 88% of DSFRS's response capability: of 112 fire engines, 13 were crewed by wholetime firefighters and 99 by on-call crews. On-call firefighters carry a pager and respond from home or work when needed.

The basic rule is distance. DSFRS says on-call firefighters must live or work no more than five minutes from their station; a driving licence is desirable but not essential if you can make the five minutes on foot or by bike. It says call-outs vary hugely by station, from over 800 a year at some to fewer than 50 at others, and that on average on-call firefighters are paged two to three times a week, for a couple of hours at a time, during the day, evenings and weekends. Stations also hold a weekly drill night; DSFRS suggests visiting your local station on drill night before applying.

The 2022 reports explain why availability is the whole game for DSFRS. They describe 11 'risk dependent availability' fire engines that only need crewing from 6pm to 8am, and list the factors that had hurt on-call availability: the five-minute rule, a fixed number of required hours, training design for new recruits, falling incident numbers, a reward system that paid for activity rather than availability, and the need for a minimum crew of four. Pay for Availability was the response.

On-call contracts: Pay for Availability or traditional

Which contract you get depends on your station. Under Pay for Availability, you choose how many hours a week to commit, from 30 to 120, and you are paid an hourly amount for each hour available, more between 8am and 6pm than overnight, plus your basic hourly rate for incidents, drills and courses. The 2022 committee reports describe it as a more flexible commitment that rewards actual hours of availability rather than paying a retaining fee. Under the traditional contract, you are paid an annual retaining fee in monthly instalments, set by a band based on hours of cover, plus pay for activity.

DSFRS's on-call pay page lists the traditional bands as 5% for up to 30 hours, 7.5% for 31 to 60, 10% for 61 to 90, 12.5% for 91 to 119 and 15% for full cover of 120 hours. Those match the national bands the site uses in its on-call availability guide. A December 2025 local news report described DSFRS's traditional contracts as 63 hours (part-time) or 84 hours (full-time) a week; we have not seen a DSFRS document setting out those figures, so we mention them only as reported.

The move to one system is unfinished. P4A started on 1 October 2020 on a voluntary, station-by-station basis, with every firefighter at a station having to agree; by 1 December 2021, 69 of 79 eligible stations had moved. In December 2025 six stations had still not moved, DSFRS said it needed to change the P4A terms on affordability grounds, and union negotiations on a collective agreement for all on-call staff were expected in January 2026. We could not find a published result, so check your station's current terms. The pay side, with figures, is in our DSFRS pay scales guide.

Wholetime, mixed and on-call stations: no day crewing found

DSFRS's stations page groups its 83 stations into four types: 2 wholetime, 10 wholetime and on-call, 69 on-call and 2 volunteer. It says crews at wholetime stations are based there 24 hours a day. At the 10 mixed stations, wholetime crews work the 2-2-4 rota and on-call crews provide extra engines on availability.

Many county services use day crewing or a 'low level of activity and risk' system at quieter stations; our day crewing and LLAR guide explains them. We found no DSFRS source describing either. The stations page names only wholetime, on-call, mixed and volunteer stations, and the committee reports describe on-call night-only engines rather than day-crewed ones. So we do not say DSFRS uses day crewing, but we cannot rule out local arrangements we have not seen.

DSFRS has also changed its station and engine numbers over time. The 2022 reports record that in 2017 it had 121 fire engines, 13 crewed by wholetime firefighters, and that after a 2019 consultation and an Authority decision on 10 January 2020 the fleet was reduced to 112. If you are reading older material that quotes different station or engine counts, check its date.

Control, officers and training: other DSFRS rotas

Fire control staff work the same shape as wholetime firefighters: DSFRS's control careers page describes two days on, two nights on and four days' rest, with 9am-6pm and 6pm-9am shifts. It says initial control training is Monday to Friday daytime plus duty watches. Control vacancies in October 2026 were based at Exeter Clyst St George. See our fire control roles and ranks guide.

Senior officers are on different arrangements. DSFRS's 2025-26 pay policy statement refers to flexible duty officers and says uniformed brigade managers provide standby hours outside the normal working day on a brigade manager rota, with a 20% salary enhancement for it. We did not find a published DSFRS rota for flexible duty officers, so we do not describe one; the national system is in our flexi duty allowance guide.

Trainees do not start on the watch rota. Wholetime recruits do a 12-week residential core skills course at Severn Park in Avonmouth, Bristol. On-call recruits have an induction day, a skills course, then two five-day breathing apparatus weeks, followed by a development phase with a pager and limited response. DSFRS says becoming fully competent typically takes up to two years.

Leave, swaps and a checklist before you rely on a rota

Wholetime leave on the national terms is explained in our firefighter annual leave guide; DSFRS's wholetime careers page does not state leave, so we have not seen a local DSFRS leave policy. For on-call firefighters, DSFRS's careers page gives 28 days, rising to 35 after five years. On a 2-2-4, a block of eight days off work covers exactly four shifts, but shorter blocks can cover anywhere from none to four depending on where they fall in the cycle, and the 56-day weekday drift moves bank holidays around from year to year.

Because the wholetime pattern is under review and DSFRS's pages are undated, the safest approach is a short checklist. The free annual leave calculator shows what leave you hold, and the paid pack below helps you plan it around the pattern.

• Written start and finish times for day and night shifts at your station (published: 9am-6pm and 6pm-9am).
• Whether the shift pattern review has produced a new rota, and its start date.
• The date of the first day shift of your watch's current cycle.
• On-call: your contract type, contracted hours and how day and night hours are split.
• On-call: your five-minute response route from home and from work.
• How leave, mutual exchanges and training courses are recorded.