South Australian Country Fire Service Promotions Unit

Raising awareness of the roles, training and activities of CFS Volunteers state-wide

 

Administration
Administration of local stations, and the service

The CFS is South Australia's largest emergency service, with approximately 70 paid staff, 12,000 front line firefighting volunteers and 4,000 support volunteers in over 450 locations. Managing and administering an organisation of this size is not an easy task, but is done with a very lean and efficient team.

Paid Regional Officers and Support staff in six offices around the state, and the State Headquarters in Adelaide co-ordinate the administration of the service.

Each CFS group and brigade has an Administration Officer. They are responsible for the correspondence, minutes of meetings, equipment orders and finance. (In many cases, brigades and groups have a separate Treasurer.)

The Administration Officer of the Brigade handles the day to day information with the Group Administration Officer there to provide support.

Each Regional Office has a "Business Services Officer" who assist in providing Group & brigade Administration Officers with any budget or expense details and assist in the account payment and purchase order system.

Funding for the CFS is provided by the State Government, through Revenue SA and Transport SA, who collect the Emergency Services Levy, from home & vehicle owners. The funds are provided to SAFECOM (the South Australian Fire & Emergency Services Commission), which distributes the funding to the Country Fire Service, Metropolitan Fire Service, and the State Emergency Service, through standard Government budgetry processes. This system replaced the previous system where brigades were funded by their local councils, and from fundraising efforts by individual brigades.