Fire deal could avert January strike

A face-saving deal to end the bitter firefighters' dispute will be on the table in the New Year following a 16 per cent three-year pay offer in Sir George Bain's review published tomorrow.

The new package, which is linked to a major overhaul of working practices, could still present difficulties for a fire service adamant that Bain alone is not the solution to the dispute. But with the offer of pay increases of up to 40 per cent for individual firefighters in exchange for adopting new skills, a deal is likely to succeed in early 2003, averting threatened strikes at the end of January.

Though the Fire Brigades Union leadership is keen to stress it sees the path to a deal in talks, due to resume this week, with the conciliation service Acas, there are clear signs the union is prepared to put forward its own "modernisation" ideas, some of which will inevitably chime with the Bain review. Publicly, though, the union insists the Bain report is a "distraction".

Government sources, however, say private talks with ministers and the FBU last week were "very positive". "We think we can get a deal in the New Year," one said. "It seems to be going OK and people seem happy enough. There is a willingness on both sides now to get it sorted."

To coincide with the Bain report, the FBU is putting forward its own set of reform proposals, reminding the local authority employers: "If they come back simply with the areas of modernisation they know will cause us trouble, then we won't get very far."