Dangerous neglect of our Fire & Rescue Service

Nationally 10,000 firefighter jobs have been lost in the past six years. Response times are now the slowest they have ever been and delays are reported to have cost lives across the UK. You can read more on the FBU's website.

In West Sussex front-line fire engines have been cut by 24% in just six years. In addition, there has been a failure to honour promises to improve the availability of fire engines crewed by Retained (Part-time) Firefighters. "New and creative options" to achieve this have been replaced by changes that have made the position even worse.

The fire at the Selsey Academy last month was a shocking illustration of how neglected the service has become. Four of the six nearest fire engines were not available, including the one at Selsey, because of a lack of firefighters. 

Up until 2010, fire engines were allocated as follows

The Bosham fire station has been closed and that fire engine was permanently removed. Whilst the other six remain, they are not always crewed.

When the call was received to this fire only these two fire engines had crews

In addition, the standard crew on the Chichester and Bognor fire engines has been cut from five on each to four. How short-sighted that is becomes clear when you realise that for safe and effective operation, five firefighters are required at a car fire and nine firefighters are required at a building fire. So instead of sending one fire engine with five firefighters to a car fire, they have to send two, with four firefighters on each. Instead of sending two fire engines to a building fire, they now have to send three. With the cut from 46 to 35 fire engines to cover the County, in just six years, that strains resources even more.

For the Selsey incident, the third fire engine had to come from Arundel, which is nearly twenty miles away. I dread to think what would have happened if, instead of the Academy being on fire, it had been a house fire in Selsey with people unable to escape. If there were only a total of eight firefighters on the first two fire engines, a breathing apparatus search could not start until the Arundel crew arrived. Either that, or the Chichester and Bognor firefighters would have ignored safety procedures and started a search. That would have exposed themselves to greater risk and to the possibility of disciplinary proceedings.

It actually transpires that there were enough firefighters in Selsey at the time to crew their fire engine, but they were not all shown as available. This is because the only new, but not very creative, option WSF&RS came up with was a revised contract for Retained Firefighters. Instead of reporting when they are not going to be available, firefighters now have to say when they will definitely be available. They also have to do this several weeks in advance. This is not very flexible and has certainly not improved fire engine availability. In fact some fire engines that used to achieve 100% availability, now struggle to achieve 30% availability.

This incident was on a Sunday morning, when historically most crews would have been available, yet on this morning two thirds of the nearest fire engines were not crewed. Worse still, nothing had been done to alleviate the situation. 

Official figures show that they now fail to meet their generous response times for one in four critical incidents. I can now well believe the shocking unofficial reports from within the service of times when less than a third of the significantly reduced number of fire engines can be crewed.

This is a crisis, but the Cabinet Member continues to wear his blinkers and pretend that all is well. It is time that he let Councillors establish a task and finish group to investigate and halt the continuing deterioration in the Fire & Rescue Service's performance.

Is "Safer in our hands" just rhetoric?

Over the past week, we have seen a number of fires that have stretched the inadequately resourced fire & rescue service in West Sussex. 

Four fire engines were required in Lancing, and they had to come from Shoreham, Worthing, Storrington and East Sussex.

Six fire engines were needed at a fire in Billingshurst, and they came from Horsham, Worthing, Storrington, Partridge Green, Crawley and Arundel.

Overlapping that call was a fire in Crawley Down, which also needed six fire engines. They came from East Grinstead and Burgess Hill, plus four from Surrey Fire & Rescue Service. 

A vehicle fire in Pulborough was apparently dealt with by a crew from East Wittering, who were at Storrington to cover a shortage of local crews. Firefighters being taken from the communities they joined to protect, to protect others many miles away is sadly now a daily occurrence. 

Today we have a major fire at Selsey requiring at least ten fire engines. We don't yet know where they have come from, but the local grapevine in Selsey is rife with complaints about how long it took for the fire service to arrive. This suggests that the Selsey fire engine did not have a crew, or was otherwise unavailable. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Chichester were the first crew to arrive, that Arundel were the third and that there are four crews there from Hampshire. 

As I say, the Selsey information is as yet unconfirmed, but given West Sussex County Council's neglect of the service I would not be surprised if the information turns out to be correct. Will we ever get full details? Possibly, but there has been an increasing reluctance to give details that may inform the public of the inadequate protection they are getting. 

So what do we get from West Sussex County Council. We get press releases about "Hundreds pledge support to council’s campaign to keep fire service". Sadly ironic when you consider that West Sussex County Council rejected a petition, signed by 'thousands' last year, asking them not to cut the fire & rescue service. 

There is no evidence yet that the service will be safer under the Police & Crime Commissioner's control, but West Sussex County Council's record is far from good. They have closed fire stations, cut a quarter of the County's fire engines, failed to improve crewing of those that remain, and are failing to meet response times for one in four serious incidents. 

Government figures, released this week, also show that the number of people who died in house fires in West Sussex increased last year, as did the total number of incidents attended. 

It does not matter how many people support West Sussex County Council's campaign, as the final decision will be taken by the Home Secretary. Unless Louise Goldsmith drops her meaningless rhetoric about "we know it delivers the very best for our communities", and replaces it with evidence that they can meet the government's objectives, I fear the Police & Crime Commissioner will get her way.