On 16 May 1975, local government reforms led to the reorganisation of Scottish fire services, creating new brigades and merging existing ones into larger regional units.
As a result of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 there was a major change in the organisation of local services and administration which shifted control from the towns and burghs to new district and region entities. It also led to boundary changes and the creation of 9 regions and 53 districts. This affected the make up and control of the Fire suppression providers, which had previously been vested in 11 Fire Brigades.
Most of these 11 Brigades had been set up at the end of the Second World war when the National Fire Service had been ‘demobbed’ and the choice of whether to revert to the pre- war local Fire Brigade set ups or to remain in the ‘amalgamations’ arranged by the NFS was given. In most cases the choice was to remain, the City of Glasgow being a notable exception, in the amalgamations, e.g. The South- East FireFighting Force became the South- Eastern Fire Brigade controlled by a Joint Committee consisting of representatives from the constituent councils, i.e. City of Edinburgh, Midlothian, East Lothian, West Lothian, Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire and Peeblesshire.
Implementation of the changes was delayed from 1974 to 1975 to allow for local elections to elect representatives to the new bodies. Accordingly, the change from the old 11 Brigades to the 8 new Fire Brigades wasn’t implemented until today 50 years ago.
It meant old names like: South Eastern, South Western, Western, North Eastern, Perth and Kinross, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Angus, disappeared to be replaced by new titles like : Lothian and Borders, Strathclyde, Tayside, Dumfries and Galloway and Grampian, whilst some like: Fife and Northern merely dropped ‘Area’ from their title, Central did the same but replaced it with ‘Region’.
More importantly however, lots of Stations found themselves under new control as they were now part of another area, another Brigade. In February 1983, Northern Fire Brigade changed its title to Highlands and Islands Fire Brigade to more accurately reflect the region it served.
Later titles would change yet again but only to reflect the diverse work they were undertaking and so all the Fire Brigades changed their titles to Fire and Rescue Services.
