All uniformed staff in Greater Manchester Fire service could be made to reapply for their jobs.

Bosses at the emergency service have put all 1,017 firemen and women on notice and say it will be used as a ‘last resort’ in a dispute over a new shift system.

An emergency meeting of the Fire Brigades Union about the move is due to held on Tuesday.

In June, the GM Fire Authority agreed to axe 253 firefighters posts and to bring in a controversial 12-hour shift system from April next year.

In total the brigade has had to make cuts of £14.8m over four years.

It will mean the service, which will have about 1,000 firefighters by 2019 - less than half the 2,200 workforce it had in 1996.

Consultation about the management proposals are due to start start this week and last 45 days.

If no progress is made firefighters will be asked to voluntarily sign a new contract. As a final measure all staff will be issued with 12 weeks notice of redundancy and asked to reapply for their jobs - agreeing to the new contract.

(Image: Grifoto Street)

In a statement the Fire Brigades Union said: “Firefighters in Greater Manchester are astonished at proposals to cut 250 posts by sacking and re-engaging frontline firefighters.

"Only last week the GMFRA Chair stated that the service was struggling to cope with increased demand due to flooding and other incidents.”

Kevin Brown, National Executive Council member for the Fire Brigades Union, said “Figures released by Greater Manchester show an increase of 140% in all rescues, and sadly a threefold increase in fire deaths, over the last 12 months yet fire service bosses are seeking to cut a further one in five frontline jobs

"Proposals to mothball fire engines at night do nothing to offer assurances for public safety. Since the notice of the sacking proposals was issued we have been contacted by angry members and now will consult with them regarding the best way forward.”

But David Acton, chairman of the Fire Authority, said: “Government cuts of £28million over the last six years have meant a reduction of over 400 firefighters from the front line in Greater Manchester as well as significant back office cuts.

"Currently the Authority faces a further Government budget cut of £14.4million over the next four years. The scale of these cuts has left us with no alternative and no change is not an option.

“For this reason we published and consulted with local people and the FBU on our plan. This document details how we will save the money we have to save and keep people safe in the best way we can. The FBU responded to this document and their views were taken into account in the final version.

“Our ultimate aim is simple - to ensure as many fire engines as possible are available when we have the most incidents and are able to get to people as quickly as we can. That is our bottom line and will remain our top priority.

“To achieve this we are already taking a third of the cuts from senior management and the back office, but we have developed a new shift duty system for firefighters which changes from a day shift of 10 and a half hours and a night shift of 13 and a half hours to two equal shifts of 12 hours.

"This system saves almost £10million whilst retaining 32 more firefighter jobs on the frontline than would be possible by trying to maintain our current system, providing up to 56 fire engines to our communities when they need them the most.

“In addition, the new system means we will be able to engage with our communities on valuable prevention activity and fire safety support, which has been so effective at keeping people safe in recent years.

"The Fire Minister recently acknowledged that fire statistics have begun to rise in the last two years and so this is clearly more important than ever as a focus for our work.

“We will be moving to these new shifts from April 1, 2017. We consulted on this and received no alternatives which would save the amount of money we need to cut.

"We have been negotiating with the FBU since January on this issue alone. For this reason, the Fire Authority agreed implementation.

"We are now trying to work with our firefighters and the FBU to agree how we move to the new system. We have not issued notices to anyone at this stage.

"We have no intention to make anyone redundant. We do need to save this money and provide the best fire and rescue service we’re able to for the communities of Greater Manchester.

"If we cannot agree on how we do this together we will have to implement it on April 1, 2017.”