LFB Shift Calendar 2026: London Fire Brigade Shift Pattern

The LFB shift pattern in one paragraph

The best published description of the London pattern comes from the Fire Brigades Union's introduction to firefighting in London, written after the Grenfell Tower fire. It says every fire station in London is permanently staffed by wholetime firefighters, that there are four shifts known as watches, Red, White, Blue and Green, and that they work two day shifts from 09:30 to 20:00, followed by two night shifts from 20:00 to 09:30, followed by four rota days. It adds that the same watch is on duty right across the Brigade at any one time. A Greater London Authority answer from January 2021 describes the normal LFB pattern in the same terms: two days of 10.5 hours, two nights of 13.5 hours and four days off.

That is a 2-2-4 pattern, the same family of rota used by many other services, but with an unequal split between day and night. Where a service on a 12/12 version works two 12-hour days and two 12-hour nights, London works 10.5 and 13.5. The total is identical: 2 x 10.5 plus 2 x 13.5 is 48 hours in an eight-day cycle, which is the 42-hour average week the national terms are built on. You can see the arithmetic in the firefighter shift patterns guide.

One caution before the detail. LFB's own careers pages that we could open did not state the rota, and the two most useful sources are an FBU document dated 2018 and a Mayor's Question Time answer dated 2021, with a 2024 LFB Freedom of Information response covering senior officers. Nothing we found suggests the pattern has changed, but if you are about to join, transfer or plan childcare around it, confirm start times and your watch with LFB before you rely on any third-party page, including this one.

Day and night shifts: start times, lengths and handover

A London day shift runs 09:30 to 20:00 and a night shift 20:00 to 09:30. The handover times are therefore 09:30 and 20:00, and the night watch finishes at the same moment the day watch starts. Day shifts are 10.5 hours and nights 13.5 hours, so a night is three hours longer than a day. The long night includes the quieter overnight period; the Grey Book allows for meal breaks within each 24 hours, which is part of why the contractual 42-hour week is an average built from these longer blocks rather than eight-hour days.

The history matters because older pages still describe an older pattern. In a November 2006 answer to the London Assembly, the Brigade said its shift system was a 15-hour night and a 9-hour day and had been the same for some 27 years, with a change of watch at 6.00 pm. In October 2010 Channel 4 News reported that the Brigade's proposal was to lengthen the day to 11 hours and shorten the night to 13 hours, and that the union opposed contract changes; LFB's 2019 Role-to-Rank paper later refers to the '2010 shift pattern dispute'. The pattern LFB and the GLA have described since then is 10.5 and 13.5. We have not verified the exact date or terms on which the 10.5/13.5 split was settled, so we do not state them.

If you find a 'London shift pattern' with 9am or 6pm change-over times, 9-hour days or 15-hour nights, treat it as pre-2010 or as a different service. The day, night and rota-day order is the same family, but the clock times are not what a current London watch works.

Four watches and the eight-day cycle, worked through

With four watches, every day needs one watch on the day shift and one on the night shift, and each watch works four shifts in eight days. The numbers force the structure: 8 days x 2 shifts is 16 shifts, and four watches x 4 shifts is also 16. So each watch's block of two days and two nights starts two days after the previous watch's block. The table below shows this with generic labels, Watch 1 to Watch 4. We have not verified which colour follows which, so we do not map Red, White, Blue and Green onto the numbers; your station or your offer pack will tell you the order.

In the table, D means the day shift starting at 09:30 on that date, N means the night shift starting at 20:00 on that date and finishing at 09:30 the next morning, and a dash is a rota day. Notice two things. First, there is exactly one D and one N in every column, which is the 'one watch on duty across the Brigade' rule in the FBU guide. Second, the night shift on the second night ends at 09:30 on what is calendar-wise already the first rota day, so you finish the cycle on a morning, and you are not back until 09:30 four days later: 96 hours, or the four days the GLA answer describes.

This table is a pattern illustration. It assumes the cycle runs continuously through the year without resetting for weekends, Christmas or bank holidays, which is how the published description reads. Local arrangements such as temporary moves between watches, detached duty and secondments will alter an individual's actual dates.

How an eight-day cycle sits on a four-week calendar

People search for an LFB calendar expecting a four-week grid that repeats, because many rotas do. This one does not. A week has seven days and the LFB cycle has eight, so each time a watch completes a cycle its next day shift falls one weekday later. If Watch 1 starts a cycle on a Monday, its next cycle starts on a Tuesday, then a Wednesday, and so on. The weekdays only realign after 56 days: seven cycles of eight days equals eight weeks of seven. In practice that means a watch works every weekday, weekend and public holiday roughly equally over eight weeks, and your 'Saturday on' pattern is never fixed.

The table below lays out four weeks, 28 days, for one watch that begins a cycle on a Monday. It runs three full cycles (24 days) and the start of a fourth. You can see the pattern slide left by one column each week. It also gives the arithmetic that matters for planning: over a year (365 days) a watch works about 45.6 cycles, roughly 182 shifts, split about 91 days and 91 nights, which is 91.25 x 10.5 plus 91.25 x 13.5, or 2,190 hours before leave. That equals 365 days x 6 hours, the same as the 52.143 weeks x 42 hours the pay circular uses.

If you want to know how many weekends you will get off, the answer is again an average, not a fixed pattern: a watch has about 45 cycles a year and so roughly 182 rota days before leave, and because the cycle walks through the week, any four consecutive days include a Saturday or Sunday unless they run Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday, so about five rota blocks in every seven include part of a weekend. Check this against your own watch's roster before you book anything non-refundable.

Is there a verified dated 2026 rota for each watch?

The honest answer is that we could not verify one, and we would rather say so than publish a calendar that puts the wrong watch on the wrong night. A dated calendar needs one fixed anchor: a date on which a named watch started a named shift. The FBU guide mentions that the Red Watch had started work at 20:00 on 13 June 2017 when the Grenfell Tower fire began, but that gives a night shift on a single date, not which night of the two it was, and extending a 2017 anchor across nine years assumes no resets or pattern changes. Neither the FBU document nor LFB's published pages we could open gives a 2026 start date for any watch.

There is also a practical problem: watch allocation is personal. Which watch you are on depends on your station and your posting, and moves between watches happen. So even a perfectly anchored brigade-wide table would still need you to know your watch colour and your station's allocation. The reliable sources are the rota your station manager or watch manager issues, the Brigade's own rostering system, or, if you are a candidate, your offer paperwork.

The method below sidesteps the problem. If you know a single date on which your own watch starts a day shift at the beginning of a cycle, you can generate every later date for 2026 and beyond from the pattern, because the cycle is exactly eight days. The next section shows how, using the free generator, and which start date to enter.

Make your own dated LFB calendar, step by step

The site's free shift calendar generator is built around exactly this kind of cycle. You enter the first day duty, the number of day duties, night duties and off-duty days in the cycle, and how many weeks to generate, and it previews the roster and exports the working duties as an ICS file that opens in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. It runs in your browser, so your roster is not sent anywhere. For London the cycle is 2 day duties, 2 night duties and 4 off-duty days, which happens to be the tool's default.

Two limits are worth knowing. The generator exports Day and Night duties as all-day entries, so you add the 09:30 and 20:00 times yourself after import, and a night appears on the date it starts. It also generates up to 26 weeks (182 days) per run, which is not a whole number of eight-day cycles, so to cover a full year do a second run that starts on a Day 1 of the cycle: 176 days (22 cycles) after your first start date, or 184 days (23 cycles) if you prefer, and delete any overlap. It deliberately leaves out leave, swaps, detached duty and training changes.

1. Confirm with your watch manager or issued rota the date of the first day shift in a cycle for your watch.
2. Open the free shift calendar and enter that date as First day duty.
3. Set day duties to 2, night duties to 2 and off-duty days to 4, and the number of weeks to 26.
4. Preview the roster and check it against the next few shifts on your issued rota before exporting.
5. Download the ICS file and import it; edit each entry to add 09:30 to 20:00 for days and 20:00 to 09:30 for nights.
6. For the second half of the year, run it again from a date 176 days after your first start date, which is again the first day shift of a cycle.
7. Add annual leave, public holiday arrangements, mutual exchanges and training by hand.

Officers, flexible duty and control: other London rotas

Not everyone in London is on the two-two-four watch pattern. In April 2024 LFB answered a Freedom of Information request about what rota Group Commanders and above work. The response says the pattern is a four-week cycle, with some duties of 24 hours from 08:00 to 08:00 and the remainder 08:00 to 17:00. During the stand-down period from 17:00 to 08:00 on a 24-hour duty, officers can respond from a point outside London that is 30 minutes at normal road speed from one of five nominated points, depending on whether they are on a North or South rota group. The example grid in the published response is cropped, so we do not reproduce a cycle from it.

This is the flexible duty system for senior officers, in which managerial duty and standby are combined and paid with a 20% supplement. LFB's pay policy shows that supplement for Station Commanders and Group Commanders; our flexi duty allowance guide explains it and our LFB pay scales guide lists the figures. The LFB pay policy also sets additional-duties rates for officers who convert a 9-hour duty or a rota leave day into a 24-hour duty.

Control room staff work a different system again. The FBU's 2018 guide describes six control watches, each working a 12-hour day from 08:00 to 20:00, then an 8-hour shift, then a 12-hour night from 20:00 to 08:00, followed by three days off. That is a description from 2018, and LFB's current 999 control vacancies should be checked for the present roster. Our London Fire Brigade ranks guide covers the control ladder.

How LFB compares with other services' 2-2-4 and day crewing

Most wholetime services use a version of two days, two nights, four off, so the headline is familiar. What changes is the clock. Our day crewing and LLAR duty systems guide records Northumberland on 10-hour days and 14-hour nights, West Yorkshire on 11 and 13, and Nottinghamshire on 12 and 12. London's 10.5 and 13.5 sits between Northumberland and West Yorkshire. All of them total 48 hours in the eight-day cycle, so the weekly average is identical and so is the hourly-rate divisor.

What London does not use, according to the FBU's guide, is the retained duty system: every station is wholetime. That removes the day-crewing and low-level-of-activity variants that some counties use to cover quieter stations, and it means the shift pattern you join is the one in this guide unless you move into a specialist, officer or control role. If you are weighing a move from a county service, the transfer between fire services guide covers what to check, and London Fire Brigade recruitment covers how people join.

A final comparison point is pay: the same 42-hour basis applies, but London's scale is a local one. From 1 July 2026 an LFB Competent Firefighter is on £47,991 against £40,358 on the national table, so the same pattern buys a different salary. See the London firefighter salary guide and the LFB pay scales guide.

Leave, bank holidays and swaps on the LFB pattern

Leave is where the eight-day cycle bites. On the national terms a full-time firefighter has 25 days of Scale A leave, 5 days of Scale B leave and 3 long-service days after five years, up to 33, with public holidays handled separately; the detail is in our firefighter annual leave guide. LFB's own pay policy refers to the Grey Book for sick pay, and LFB's contract is built on the same national scheme, but we have not opened an LFB leave policy, so check how your service counts rota days inside a leave block and when the leave year runs.

The practical point about the pattern is that one full cycle contains four duties and four rota days, so a block of eight consecutive days away covers four of your shifts, and a shorter block can cover as few as zero or as many as four depending on where it lands. The same leave request lands on very different numbers of shifts depending on the cycle position. Because the 56-day weekday drift moves your shifts around, a block that skirts a bank holiday weekend one year may cover it the next. The free annual leave calculator shows what leave you hold; the paid pack below works through the dates.

On public holidays, the national terms say that working one earns double time (not pensionable) plus a day in lieu, and being off duty on one still earns a day in lieu; LFB's pay policy shows a public holiday overtime rate of twice the hourly rate. LFB's 2019 Role-to-Rank decision records that mutual exchanges of duties can be agreed and authorised by watch managers and crew managers, which is the route for swaps. Check the current local procedure for notice and limits.

What the pattern means for hours and pay

The hourly rate in the national pay circular is annual salary divided by 52.143 weeks and then by 42 hours, and LFB's pay policy states that its hourly rates follow the same formula. 52.143 x 42 is about 2,190 hours, which is exactly what the LFB pattern delivers in a year before leave: 45.625 cycles x 48 hours. So the pattern, the contract and the pay formula all describe the same 2,190-hour year. A Competent Firefighter on £47,991 has an LFB hourly rate of £21.91, and overtime at time and a half is £32.87.

To make that concrete, one 10.5-hour day shift at that overtime rate is 10.5 x £32.87, about £345, and one 13.5-hour night shift is about £444. These are hourly-rate arithmetic only. How LFB actually pays overtime, including any minimum payment, notice rules and the treatment of public holidays, is set out in its own policies, so use the numbers as a guide to scale, not as a payslip forecast. For the full scale see LFB pay scales 2026.

Finally, the pattern shapes take-home through tax and pension, not just hours. The pay calculator takes any salary, including an LFB figure, and the overtime calculator lets you test extra duties.

Checklist: confirm your London rota before you rely on it

Because the sources are dated and LFB does not publish a brigade-wide dated calendar that we could find, a short checklist is the safest way to use this guide. Start by asking for the written start time of day and night shifts for your station and watch, and the date of the first day shift in your current cycle. Compare that with the 09:30 and 20:00 times here.

Next, check how swaps, leave, training days and detached duty are recorded, because they are the reasons a generated calendar drifts from a real one. Ask whether any of your duties will be on a different system, for example on a specialist unit, at a day-duty post, or in a senior-officer flexible duty role. If you are a candidate planning childcare, commuting or a second job, ask the recruitment team which pattern a new Development Firefighter works at their first station and during initial training, because training weeks may follow a different, Monday-to-Friday schedule that is separate from the watch rota.

Finally, keep a copy of the issued rota. If the Brigade changes the pattern, a signed or issued document is what to check your generated calendar against, and the LFB pay scales guide and London Fire Brigade ranks guide are the places to check what each posting pays and what it is called.

• Written start and finish times for day and night shifts at your station.
• The date of the first day shift of your watch's current cycle.
• Your watch colour and how moves between watches are handled.
• How leave blocks, public holidays and rota days are counted.
• How mutual exchanges of duty are requested and approved.
• Whether your role (control, officer, specialist, training) uses a different pattern.