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 "New and creative options" to achieve this have been replaced by changes that have made the position even worse.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.

Selsey Fire Update

On Sunday I asked if we would ever get full details of the response to this fire. Well details of the initial response have now been released. 

WSFRS say that the first fire engine from Chichester (9 miles away) arrived 16 minutes after the call was received. The second fire engine from Selsey (around 200 metres away) arrived 17 minutes after the call, and the third from Bognor Regis (11 miles away) arrived 18 minutes after the initial call.

It is good that they have come clean on these times, as they did fail to meet their own generous response standard. For parts of Selsey the response should be one fire engine within 12 minutes and the second within 15 minutes. There is no explanation about the unusually long time it took the Selsey crew to arrive. Although they are Retained Duty System firefighters, they would still normally be on the road within 5 minutes.

Would a quicker response have saved the school? Perhaps not, but we will never know. What is well known though, is that there is a relationship between speed of response and lives and property saved. It must be very concerning for the residents of Selsey to realise that, if it had been a fire in someone's home and they were trapped at that time, help was 16 minutes away. 

The report tells us that 14 fire engines, 2 Aerial Ladder Platforms and other specialist vehicles were needed to deal with the incident, but not where they all came from. However, we do know that, as a result of cuts, the first aerial appliance had to come from Southsea (Hampshire), instead of Chichester. We also know that 3 of the 14 fire engines that would have been scheduled to attend ten years ago, have also been cut.

With extra distances to travel, more time is lost in assembling adequate resources. Did that result in more damage being caused? Again we don't know, but time is precious when trying to stop fires spreading.

Serious Fire Highlights Loss of Fire Engines

Last night’s serious fire in Bognor Regis is an important reminder of the need for adequate resources. The fire needed eleven standard fire engines from Bognor Regis (2), Chichester (2), Littlehampton (2), East Preston, Arundel, Havant (Hampshire), Worthing and Midhurst

The 1978 Woolworth store fire in Bognor Regis required 32 standard fire engines to contain and extinguish it, and it provides an interesting comparison when you compare resources available then and now.

Removed since 1978 have been the Hydraulic Platform from Chichester, and fire engines from Bognor Regis (3rd), Bosham (station closed), East Preston (2nd), Midhurst (2nd), Petworth (2nd), Storrington (2nd), Lancing (2nd), Findon (station closed), Keymer (station closed), Horley (both fire engines removed), and Crawley (3rd).

Hampshire fire engines involved at the Woolworth incident, or standing by for other calls at West Sussex stations, were Emsworth, Cosham x 2, Havant x 2, Waterlooville, Petersfield, Fareham, and Portchester. Drastic cuts are of course now planned for these stations.

The Fire & Rescue Service keep using a recent drop in incidents to falsely justify cuts, so when thinking about resources that have been removed, it is worth remembering that in 1978 there were just 5,654 incidents in West Sussex. In 2013-14 there were 9,337 incidents, which is 40% more. Resources were not improved when calls increased, they have just been progressively cut.

Some coverage with a news item and a letter in the "Chichester Observer". 

The WSFRS response would be laughable if this was not so serious. 

‘The number of fatalities remains low’ – well that’s OK then, we don’t care about a few deaths.

‘Widely consulted on’ – a sham consultation that hid key facts, pretended everything would be rosy, and offered no alternatives.

‘Scrutinised and debated in full’ – the Councillor who “went through the proposals with a fine tooth comb” wrongly thought only 3 extra deaths were predicted, when it was actually 56. No proper debate or vote.

‘Deliberately taking figures out of context and making misleading claims’ – pot calling kettle black, except that, despite trotting this out every time, they have never substantiated their allegations.

‘Continue to show a long-term downward trend’ – 2009/10 UP, 2010/11 UP, 2011/12 UP, 2012/13 UP, 2013/14 UP – who are they trying to kid.

Adapting to meet future need - CUTS