Scottish Fire and Rescue Service seeks senior occupational health leadership for a workforce under strain
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is recruiting a Lead Health and Wellbeing Practitioner to strengthen occupational health support across a workforce of more than 7,500 staff. The post sits inside the service’s Occupational Health team and combines clinical judgment with operational leadership, a rare pairing that matters in emergency services where fitness for duty, injury prevention, and psychological resilience all intersect with frontline safety.
The role is permanent, full time, and built around 35 hours a week, with some travel across Scotland and flexibility for hybrid working. Base salary is listed at £52,540 to £55,198. For an organisation that depends on firefighters, control staff, and support personnel to function safely under pressure, the appointment signals a continuing reliance on structured occupational health oversight rather than ad hoc case management.
A single clinical decision in this setting can shape whether someone returns safely to duty, moves to a different role, or needs additional assessment before work can resume.
Case management, surveillance, and the mechanics of fitness for work
The post is designed around complex occupational health case management. That includes triaging management referrals, reviewing sickness absence, deciding whether an employee is medically fit for general or specialist duties, and escalating cases when onward referral is needed. In a fire and rescue environment, those decisions carry more weight than in many other workplaces because the work itself places high demands on cardiovascular reserve, respiratory function, hearing, musculoskeletal integrity, and situational judgment.
The responsibilities also include pre-placement health assessments and advice on fitness for role. In practical terms, this is where occupational health acts as a gatekeeper and safeguard at the same time: it protects staff from being placed into duties they are not yet fit to perform, while also helping the organisation retain experienced workers wherever safe adjustments are possible. That balance is central to workforce sustainability in emergency response services, where staffing pressures and operational readiness are always linked.
The description also calls for health surveillance and fitness-for-work programmes aligned with clinical guidelines and legislation, including spirometry and audiometry. Those two tests are not administrative extras. Respiratory surveillance can detect early impairment in workers exposed to smoke, particulates, or other inhalational hazards, while hearing assessment is important in an environment where noise exposure may gradually erode communication and situational awareness. In fire and rescue work, small decrements in lung function or hearing can become operational risks long before they are obvious in day-to-day life.
Workforce health data are being treated as an operational tool
One of the more revealing duties is the expectation to analyse health and wellbeing data to identify trends and inform service development. That suggests the service is looking beyond individual cases toward a population-health model inside a public sector employer. Occupational health teams that can read their own data well are better positioned to spot recurring absence patterns, clusters of surveillance findings, or recurring barriers to return-to-work planning.
The role also involves producing performance indicators, statistics, reports, and trend analyses in support of the wider health and wellbeing strategy. In a service with thousands of employees spread across multiple roles, that kind of monitoring can shape everything from referral pathways to health promotion priorities. It can also expose where policy is not matching practice, which is often where workplace health failures begin.
The successful candidate will help develop and implement strategies, policies, and supporting procedures to align the service with best practice and relevant legislative requirements. In occupational health, policy is not paperwork. It determines who gets reviewed, how often surveillance is repeated, when a case is escalated, and what evidence is required before a decision about work can be made.
Leadership inside a multidisciplinary health and wellbeing team
The remit goes beyond nursing clinics. This practitioner will support the Health and Wellbeing Manager and work alongside other lead practitioners, technicians, and administrative staff across the service. The post holder will be expected to lead the activity of that group and ensure compliance with occupational health legislation, approved codes of practice, and guidance.
That leadership element matters because occupational health services often fail not at the point of diagnosis, but at the point of coordination. Referrals can stall, recall systems can break down, and surveillance schedules can drift if governance is weak. Here, the job description places clinical leadership in the same sentence as operational delivery, which suggests the service wants someone who can manage both the bedside logic of a health assessment and the systems logic of a large employer.
The post also includes health awareness, occupational hygiene, and risk management projects. These are the parts of occupational health that try to prevent the next problem rather than merely processing the last one. In a fire and rescue workforce, that may mean reducing exposure risks, reinforcing early reporting, or improving the pathway from symptom recognition to clinical review.
Recruitment criteria point to a nurse with advanced workplace health experience
Candidates are expected to be registered nurses with post-registration experience and a diploma or degree in Occupational Health or Public Health. Experience at practitioner level is required, along with complex case management experience and evidence of developing and implementing health and wellbeing policies and procedures.
The practical profile is clear: this is not an entry-level post, and it is not a narrow clinic-only role. The service is seeking someone who can advise managers, make defensible decisions, manage a varied workload, and contribute to service development while keeping the workforce safe and fit for work. For a public sector emergency service, that combination is especially important because occupational health decisions affect both employee welfare and the continuity of critical public services.
The benefits package is also detailed, including annual leave that rises with service, access to the Local Government Pension Scheme, group life assurance, family-friendly policies, and access to health and wellbeing support. The post is subject to standard safeguarding and employment checks, including PVG requirements and regulated work with adults.
The recruitment notice closes with a reminder that applications must be submitted on a fully completed form rather than by CV, which is a procedural point rather than a clinical one. The more substantive story is the organisation’s reliance on senior occupational health leadership to keep a large emergency workforce safe, functional, and medically supported across Scotland.