Divisional officer Alastair Fullarton will be in charge of the team of fire safety officers, with community fire safety co-ordinators Frank Wallace in charge of Dundee and Angus, and Stewart Nelson in charge of Perth and Kinross.

Working with the fire safety co-ordinators will be fire safety support officers for each of the regions, of which Scott Bricknal, in Dundee, and John Mowatt, in Angus, have already been appointed.

There will also be three liaison officers in Perth and Kinross and two liaison officers in Angus who will work in outlying communities promoting the fire safety message.

“We are moving from simply reacting to fires as they happen, to trying to stop them happening in the first place,” community fire safety co-ordinator Frank Wallace said today.

“The new appointments show the fire service is moving from being a reactive service to a proactive service.

“My role will be more about monitoring the success of the proactive initiatives – to see they are making a difference.

“The liaison officers’ role will be to engage with the community – to make the whole community play a part in fire safety in the outlying rural areas.

“They will be engaging with local police, with the education department, and with the social work department, and training home-helps to make risk assessments at elderly people’s homes.

“Liaison officers will help people in three key areas – how to make a risk assessment of their property, how to respond to a fire and how to call the fire service.

“No liaison officers will be appointed in Dundee because we have the resources to conduct this role with the firefighters in the city.

“Now, when we attend a fire, we will be asking ourselves, why did this fire take place and what can we do to prevent a similar fire from happening in the future.

“For example, if a car was stolen, set on fire and this caused a building to go on fire, as happened in Dundee recently, then we could look at promoting the dangers of joyriding in that area.

“A liaison officer in Pitlochry – Frazer Macdonald – has already been appointed and the others will be appointed by the end of the year.”

Mr Wallace said the move should cut the number of fires and deaths from fire, but only with the public’s.

“If we do our jobs well, then the number of fires in Tayside should drop,” he continued.

“There will always be fires. That’s a fact of life. But hopefully more will be prevented and, when they do happen, people will respond to them better.

“Firefighters attending a fire would be much happier if the householder was standing outside rather than trapped inside.

“The new fire safety initiatives will target every section of the community – from school pupils, like the successful Safetaysiders and young firefighters schemes, to the elderly living alone.

“The restructuring is all about reducing the number of fire deaths in Tayside by increasing people’s knowledge and awareness of the dangers of fire.

“But the success of our initiatives will only be effective if the community engages with them.

“We are trying our best to cut the number of fires and fire deaths, but we need the help of the public to do so.”

As part of the strategy, new vans with appropriate liveries, have been purchased for use by the newly-appointed officers to take the message out into the community.