Council Leader Louise
Goldsmith
No apology from Louise Goldsmith for misleading Councillors
At the recent County Council meeting, Louise Goldsmith was
rightly challenged on her false claim, at a select committee meeting, that “there
are 35 fire engines ready to go out today”.
Councillor Michael Jones pointed out that a fire engine is
only ready to go out when there are firefighters available to crew it. He said
that the Integrated Risk Management Plan showed that, at the time she made the
statement, it is likely there would have been less than 15 fire engines
ready to go out.
Integrated Risk Management Plan 2018-22 (page 43)
He added that the document also showed there can be as few as 10 fire engines ready to respond,
because of a lack of firefighters. In her bumbling response, during which she
talked about ‘firemen’, not firefighters, she failed to apologise for
misleading the committee. She then proceeded to blame the public for not coming
forward to be on call (retained) firefighters, or “temporary firefighters” as
she called them.
Now I have yet to find the section in the Fire & Rescue
Service Act that says a fire authority can opt out of their statutory
responsibilities, if the public are not attracted by the Council’s offer - You
provide us with an average of 4,500 hours on call and we will pay you 52 pence
an hour for your trouble! The County Council has a legal duty to provide an
efficient fire & rescue service, but they are clearly failing to do so.
Louise Goldsmith’s appalling excuse - “if the retained people are not
coming forward, they are not coming forward”, is simply an unacceptable neglect
of duty.
County Councillor
David Barling
More false claims from David Barling
It was even more astonishing when former Cabinet Member
David Barling attempted to help his Leader by claiming there had been “no
deletions of firefighter front line posts”. Not only did he vote to cut front line firefighter posts, including the deletion of all the on call firefighter posts
at Crawley, he was the Cabinet Member that implemented the cuts. Louise
Goldsmith then supported his misleading statement. It matters not if this was
the result of deliberate deceit or simply incompetence, it is unacceptable.
These are the true figures:
|
|
Wholetime
|
On-call
(Retained)
|
|
|
|
|
|
2004
|
401
|
398
|
|
|
| |
|
2018
|
319
|
213
|
Louise Goldsmith and David Barling owe Councillors and the
public an apology for continuing to mislead and make excuses. They also need to
take urgent action to ensure proper protection for West Sussex residents all
day, every day and they need to do it before lives and property are needlessly
lost.
More cuts on the way
With Government reducing further the money they give the County Council, it seems that more fire & rescue service cuts are on the way. How much
the service will have to cut and where the axe will fall has not been publicised.
All we know for sure is that cuts cannot be made without further damaging the already fragile protection offered to residents.
It really is time that Louise Goldsmith and her Cabinet
Member colleagues told Government that enough is enough. If they were truly
concerned about protecting West Sussex residents that is what they would do, but
as both the Council and Government are in Conservative hands, they prefer to
put party preferences before public safety.
Surrey take over
There have been suggestions that a solution would be to merge
West Sussex and Surrey’s fire & rescue services. Unfortunately, I think any
savings from economies of scale may well be short lived, as the underlying
problem is the inadequate and reducing funding from Government.
Surrey has a bigger population than West Sussex and relies
more heavily on wholetime fire cover. There are 40% more wholetime firefighters in Surrey than in
West Sussex and 56% less on call firefighters. Wholetime firefighter costs are
the biggest cost, so cuts impact them the most, which is why wholetime crewed
appliances are regularly taken off the run in Surrey.
I can see why a merger would benefit Surrey, but cannot see
any benefit for West Sussex. Surrey County Council seem even less concerned
with public safety than West Sussex, so allowing Surrey County Councillors to
have a say on fire cover in West Sussex is not a wise move. My fear is that
council tax payers in West Sussex would end up paying more to improve fire
cover in Surrey, whilst cover in West Sussex deteriorates.
It is bad enough that the second wholetime crewed pumps at
Crawley and Worthing are often moved to different parts of West Sussex to fill gaps in fire cover. A merger could see them spending nearly all their time
providing cover in Surrey. West Sussex firefighters could also find themselves
travelling long distances to help crew fire engines at Surrey stations on the fringes of London.
It would also significantly reduce the say that West Sussex
residents would have on the running of the fire & rescue service,
especially if representation on a combined authority reflected the respective
populations. That would not be a merger, but a Surrey take over.
Such a merger won’t avoid cuts and could make things
significantly worse.
