History
Legislation for the provision of firefighting in England and Wales dates back to 1865 when the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act was passed, taking the responsibility of firefighting away from insurance companies. However the legal requirement for local authority fire brigades came about with the passing of the Fire Brigades Act 1938 - at the time there were about 1,600 brigades throughout the UK. During the Second World War the many local authority fire brigades had been merged to form a single National Fire Service. After the war, in 1948, under the Fire Services Act 1947, fire services were restored to local authority as before, but (in England and Wales) to the county councils and county boroughs rather than the smaller areas that had previously existed.
The number of fire brigades was subsequently reduced again by mergers in 1974/1975 and in 1986.
In Scotland the brigades from 1948-1975 covered generally groups of counties and were Angus, Central, Fife, Glasgow, North Eastern, Perth and Kinross, South Eastern, South Western, and Western; the areas largely continuing the administrative arrangements of the war-time National Fire Service in Scotland.
Read more about this topic: Fire Services In The United Kingdom
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