MP highlights inadequate West Sussex resources

It was good to see Chichester's MP raise this issue in Parliament last week. Not only are most of the service's off road vehicles 26 or 27 years old, but the previous County Council cut the service's vital Water Carrier capability by 40%.

Whilst the MP's comments, shown below, focus on wildfires, the problems apply equally to all the incidents the service attends. With severe storms and flooding probable later this year, the service will be under even greater pressure.

Not enough firefighters is the most serious deficiency

This Summer's drought and the resulting increase in wildfires has highlighted how inadequately resourced West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service is now. Many have likened the recent situation to 1976, but there are significant differences. Not least is the serious reduction in the number of firefighters available. 

Source WSCC and WSFRS reports

In 1976 there were, on duty and on call, over 200 firefighters available in West Sussex, around the clock. Today there can be less than 60 at times! Several of the major wildfires in the UK needed more than 100 firefighters at one time, with many more needed to relieve them over several days.  

National Resilience or National Desperation?

Chief Fire Officers have been suggesting that fire crews travelling hundreds of miles to other parts of the country, as part of the so called 'National Resilience' scheme, is a success. The reality is rather different. It shows that UK fire & rescue services are not only poorly resourced, they have no resilience.

If the service was resilient, it would not be necessary to desperately rob one fire & rescue service of resources to bale out another distant service. The UK is the only country in Europe that does not have true fire service resilience. Each European nation has, in addition to well resourced fire services, a reserve of vehicles, equipment, and personnel, mostly volunteer, that can be called on for major emergencies.  

Normal mutual aid, where neighbouring services help each other out, is fine, but the increasing use of resources from distant fire & rescue services is a clear indication that services are under resourced. It also shows that residents are not being properly protected, which puts lives and property in greater danger.

The summer has highlighted the lack of resilience, and with storms and flooding very probable later in the year, this weakness will become serious. The County Council's failure to maintain an effective fire & rescue service is staggering: 

Source WSCC and WSFRS reports

Inadequate resources puts lives and property in serious danger

Need for Fire & Rescue Service is increasing

There are those who would have you believe that emergencies are decreasing, they aren't. The County Council has cut the incidents attended total by not sending firefighters to most calls originating from automatic fire detection systems. Whilst many of those calls turn out to be false alarms, the Council is also delaying the response to those where a fire is detected. That puts lives and property in danger.

Not only is this gambling with public safety, it has hidden the increase in emergencies that need a quick and effective response. This chart, which excludes false alarms, clearly shows that the trend for emergency incidents is increasing. The 3 year average ten years ago was under 4,000 calls per annum. The latest 3 year average is 4,744 per annum.

Source - National Fire Statistics Monitor 

Honesty & Transparency must be improved

I had hoped that with a new administration at County Hall we would begin to see more honesty and transparency. Sadly, it was not evident at the last Scrutiny Committee, with Councillors still being misled.

The Chief Officer claimed that the service had achieved a 6% improvement in on-call appliance availability in quarter 4. That claim is very misleading as quarter 4 availability figures are always better than quarter 3, so the claim is an illusion. 

Full year figures reveal the true position - they are getting worse 

There has been a continuing decline in on-call appliance availability over the last 15 years, from 86% to just 41.6% in 2025/26.

Source: WSCC Scrutiny reports

Increasing response times covered up

This decline means that more and more fire engines are not crewed, which is resulting in ever longer response times. This puts lives and property in greater danger. Instead of fixing the problem, the previous administration lowered response standards to hide the scale of their failure. 

The previous standard required a fire appliance to arrive, according to risk category, within 8 to 14 minutes. If it did not, then that was classed as a response failure and it was investigated. Now, if it takes longer than 16 minutes for the first fire engine to arrive at up to 10% of calls, those responses will not be classed as failures. 

So, instead of a 15 minute response being a failure that is investigated, for more than 800 emergencies each year they can now take 20, 30, 40, 60 minutes or more to arrive. None will be classed as failures and worryingly they won’t be investigated.

West Sussex residents need to be very concerned by longer response times, as the Chief Officer's report accurately says, “evidence shows fires are now burning hotter and quicker than they did”. 

If the service is genuinely responding to risk, then improving response times must be a priority. 

I appreciate that the Cabinet Member and the Members on the Scrutiny Committee are all newly elected to the County Council, but they cannot let this misinformation and secrecy continue. 

Improving response times and ensuring transparency must be urgent priorities for all County Councillors

Fire & Rescue Service "unaware" of vital safety information

Council's answer to safety question raises more concerns

The answer, given in response to a written question at last week's meeting of West Sussex County Council, is very concerning. The question was about firefighters, who are not fully trained, being sent to emergency calls. Something I posted about in February after being alerted to the problem by serving firefighters.

By referring to what should happen, the answer implies that it doesn't happen, but there is no absolute assurance that it never happens. The claim that every crew sent to West Sussex fires meet the core requirements for breathing apparatus (BA) is also misleading. 

To safely deploy breathing apparatus you need at least a crew of five - an officer in charge, driver/pump operator, two BA wearers, and a BA entry control officer. 

West Sussex County Council has cut standard crewing from 5 to 4. 

A crew of four has no one for BA entry control, so it can't be BA compliant.

For full deployment, to search for victims or for internal firefighting, at least nine firefighters are required. With inadequate standard crewing, that can result in deployment having to wait until three fire engines have arrived, often from three different towns.

Shocking admission that they are unaware of Health & Safety Executive (HSE) rulings

The claim, that no one in West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service knows about HSE action taken after failings in other fire & rescue services, is really disturbing. Understanding action taken by the HSE, often after fatalities in other fire & rescue services, is crucial to ensuring those failings are not repeated here. Prosecutions, enforcement action, and guidance from the HSE are essential wake up calls to all fire & rescue services. 

In the reply they use the word 'recent', which is worrying. Why put a time limit on the extent of their knowledge? Some of the lessons that underpin modern breathing apparatus procedures were learnt, after fatalities, over 70 years ago. The ones mentioned in the question are from less than 30 years ago.

The National Fire Chiefs Council has already tried to water down breathing apparatus safety procedures at high rise building fires. Not because they are unimportant, but because they were seen as inconvenient. So you have to wonder if this is less about being unaware, and more a case of convenient amnesia.

Knowledge and understanding of the circumstances surrounding every fire & rescue service failure, which contributed to the death of a member of the public or a firefighter, is vital in avoiding future tragedies. Lessons learnt the hard way must never be forgotten. 

If those responsible for today's procedures are unaware of previous tragic incidents, then they may water down or abandon measures introduced to prevent further tragedies. For their own protection, all firefighters also need to be aware. Understanding what triggered current procedures is essential to ensuring that they are not ignored.    

This claimed lack of knowledge, if true, indicates serious training omissions.  

The claim they don't put personnel at risk

They claim that they don't place personnel in a position where they are expected to act outside their competence. Not expecting it is not the same as ensuring it doesn't happen. They know very well that inadequate crewing often places personnel in a position where a moral imperative and peer pressure will result in some acting outside their competence or outside safe procedures. Firefighters want to save lives and property, so a lack of resources will inevitably tempt them to take shortcuts.  The HSE understands the moral pressure on firefighters to act, why does WSFRS not understand?

WSFRS task analysis shows that for most incident types you need at least a crew of 5. A crew of 4 is less safe and less effective.

Refusal to provide training information

Astonishingly, they also refused to provide councillors with a training breakdown, claiming there is no training backlog. Yet shortages of personnel who are competent to drive, act as officer in charge, or to wear breathing apparatus are often reported to councillors on the scrutiny committee as reasons for fire engines not being available! 

It is ludicrous to claim that there are no personnel waiting to qualify or re-qualify.

Conservative Cabinet Member's hypocrisy and deception

At Friday's County Council meeting, Cabinet Member Jeremy Hunt suggested that Chichester's MP, Jess Brown-Fuller, was "scaremongering" by referring to the council overspending, selling community assets and reducing essential local services. Yet all that is accurate. Incredibly, he then went on to confirm that there is an overspend! It appears he thinks that, because the overspend was not hidden, the MP should not mention it.

Conservative County Councillor Jeremy Hunt

Rather desperately he claimed that criticism of decisions, made by the council's Cabinet, is disrespectful to hard working council staff. Sadly, it has been a regular Conservative ploy to suggest that any criticism of them is criticism of staff, which of course it is not. 

He is disgruntled because Chichester's MP is very good at seeking out the truth by talking to those at the sharp end, instead of just listening to the spin from those determined to hide the truth. She recently highlighted the County Council's poor record of replacing older and less reliable fire engines and equipment. 

After it was publicised, the County Council suddenly found the money for 12 replacement fire engines.

False Conservative Claims

Jeremy Hunt has even had the arrogance to claim in his election leaflet that 'only the Conservatives can "successfully run the County Council". If he means run it into the ground, I might agree with him.

He also dishonestly claims that "only the Conservatives will protect Fire Stations." He and his Conservative colleagues have already closed four fire stations, cut a quarter of the county's fire engines, and with over 200 fewer firefighters are failing to crew those that remain.

Just look at what the Conservatives have done in the Chichester District Council area, with nearly 130,000 residents and 800 square kilometres to protect:

• One fire station closed
• Frontline fire engines cut from 9 to 6
• & only one of those fire engines is always crewed

Mr Hunt is probably not bothered, as that always crewed fire engine is the nearest to his Chichester home.

However, he should be more concerned, as it is not always there.

It is often away dealing with emergencies in other areas.

Cabinet Member's shameful denials

Shocking display by Councillor Duncan Crow at County Council meeting

Last week, he was rightly challenged by Labour and Liberal Democrat County Councillors on the lowering of response standards. Their questions were both perceptive and accurate, but his responses showed that he did not like the Council's deception being exposed.

Councillor Crow has become far too accustomed to his claims being blindly accepted by his Conservative colleagues. With those claims robustly challenged by Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors he was obviously flustered. He first claimed the lowering of standards was rationalisation, and then switched to claiming it was a simplification. Apparently he thinks people in West Sussex were too dim to understand the previous standards. 

Angrily, in response to a supplementary question from County Councillor Dr James Walsh, the Cabinet Member said, "shame you don't get it." 

The reality is that Dr Walsh does 'get it' and Councillor Crow doesn't like it 

The Real Simplification

The changes were prompted by a realisation that the response standard set by the County Council was showing up too many below standard response times. The cause of those failures was principally the council's removal of a quarter of frontline fire engines and their failure to ensure that there were always crews available for the remainder. A responsible solution would have been to take action to improve response times. 

The County Council's solution:

Change the response standard to a lower one that hides those failures

Where is the evidence?

The Cabinet Member claimed that people responded favourably to the consultation on response standards, yet the results of the consultation have not been published. Perhaps they did, as the consultation did not make clear that the changes would allow longer response times and would therefore be a lower standard. With so much spin from the Cabinet Member, people will be forgiven for doubting the accuracy of his claim.

The consultation response should be published

False claim that a fire engine will arrive within 16 minutes

When Councillor Caroline Baxter asked a question about response times, Councillor Crow falsely claimed that the new standard meant that wherever you are in the County, you could "expect a fire engine to come to you in an emergency within 16 minutes.” 

That is untrue, the new standard still allows fire engines to take more then 16 minutes to arrive at 10% of emergencies! The performance will still be deemed 'green' (satisfactory). Latest figures show that in the year to date the first fire engine took more than 16 minutes to arrive at:

9.54% of emergencies

In a full year that would be over 800 occasions when people in trouble had to wait over 16 minutes for any help to arrive

Firefighters always do their utmost to get to emergencies quickly, but their ability to do so is limited by the inadequate resources provided by the County Council.

Members of Parliament call for improvements

West Sussex MPs have also been highlighting the County Council's inadequate fire & rescue service provision. 

Unlike Conservative MPs, who have routinely accepted whatever the Conservative controlled County Council tells them, two Liberal Democrat MPs have taken the time to visit West Sussex fire stations and listen to firefighter concerns. 

John Milne, MP for Horsham, spent time at Horsham fire station and afterwards highlighted a number of issues, including the County Council's failure to recruit enough retained firefighters. 

Duncan Crow again disgraced himself by attacking Chichester's MP, Jess Brown-Fuller, after her visit to Chichester fire station. He attacked her in the press and then used a contrived question, from one of his Conservative colleagues, to try and discredit the MP's comments at the County Council meeting.

The MP correctly said that fire engines and equipment were out of date and in need of replacement. Duncan Crow falsely claimed that her statements were ‘not accurate’, ‘poorly informed’ and ‘baseless’. If he was more in touch with his responsibilities, then he would know that it is his claims that are ‘not accurate’, ‘poorly informed’ and ‘baseless’.

The County Council used to ensure that frontline fire engines were not more than 12 years old and special vehicles, dependent on type, were replaced between 15 and 20 years old. 

So what would the MP have seen at Chichester Fire Station (if they weren't away for repair!):

Fire engine 1 - 11 years old

Fire engine 2 - 16 years old

Special vehicle 1 - 16 years old

Special vehicle 2 - 25 years old

Special vehicle 3 - 30 years old 

Councillor Crow only has to read some of the County Council's own reports to know that Jess Brown-Fuller MP is correct.

Those reports state that "a well-managed replacement programme is essential as older vehicles require higher maintenance costs and present higher incidents of defects and failure rates." Yet, it is clear from a report this year that the replacement programme has not been managed well for the past seven years:

"The previous commitment to a rolling programme of three new appliance replacements per year stalled. There has therefore been a lag in replacements since 2018."

That has resulted in over 20 year old fire engines still being in frontline service. During the Cabinet Member's waffling reply he said, "we would never ever provide unsafe equipment for our firefighters." Yet in County Council reports supporting the lapsed 12 year replacement programme, it clearly said that it was necessary to reduce the risk of defects and failures. 

So, by neglecting the replacement programme, firefighters and the public have been exposed to an increased risk from fire engine and equipment defects and failures. 

If a fire engine pump fails, whilst supplying water to firefighters inside a building, their lives are in immediate danger. 

If a fire engine won't start when an emergency is received, valuable time is lost and lives and property are in greater danger.

Councillor Crow has been expecting firefighters to continue using less reliable and less safe equipment