The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has warned MPs that cuts to fire and rescue services could endanger lives.
A London Evening Standard report on Tuesday quoted FBU general secretary Matt Wrack voicing concerns to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee during its investigation of Sir Ken Knight’s Review of the Fire and Rescue Service.
Wrack said the cuts “will mean homes and businesses that could have been saved will be lost.” The Knight Review is the subject of a debate on IFSECGlobal.com.
This draft version of the plan will allow the authority to save GB pound 29 million of the GB pound 45 million it needs to over the next 24 months.
The vote on LSP5 was split. Eight authority members voted for it, and eight voted against (with one abstention). Authority chairman James Cleverly broke the deadlock by casting his vote in favour of the proposal.
The plan includes closing 10 fire stations, reducing firefighter posts, and lowering the number of station and group managers to 200.
Is it really possible to scale down on such a critical service to such an extent without damaging that service in some way?
The FBU could mount a legal challenge to the decision, and it hasn’t ruled out some form of retaliatory industrial action. In a heated debate about the cuts, Boris Johnson had to apologise after telling an opponent of an plan to “get stuffed.”
For the last time, annual statistics have been published on the eight Fire and Rescue Services in Scotland. The data covers the 12 months of transition leading up to the birth of the new, amalgamated Scottish Fire and Rescue Service on 1 April this year.
There were 80 incidents of attacks on staff. That’s 32 fewer than there were in the previous 12 months. Good news, then. Employees visited more than 56,000 homes (one of every 45 homes across the country) and carried out close to 8,000 fire safety audits.
For a wide-ranging analysis of fire safety performance across various sectors in Scotland, make sure you read this excellent article by Claire Rizos on IFSECGlobal.com.
The BBC’s Inside Out programme (in tandem with fire safety specialist Alan Cox) conducted an undercover examination of 14 older-style premises. Worryingly, 11 of them failed to pass muster. Unsealed service pipes, fire doors that didn’t close properly, and flammable material in basements were just some of the issues unearthed. As far as Cox is concerned, the system (ie. inspections by the authorities) isn’t working.
Phil Martin, a spokesman for Devon and Somerset Fire Service, has denied the problem is wide ranging.
You can view the programme on BBC iPlayer until Monday 16 September.
The Journal of Fire Protection Engineering and Fire Technology are recognised as two of the world’s leading peer-reviewed journals concentrating on applied fire safety. A merger of the publications is to be realised on 1 January next year.
The new magazine is to be called Fire Technology, and publication is scheduled on a bimonthly basis.Online access to the journal’s content will be free for all members of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
Download the Fire Safety in 2023 eBook, keeping you up to date with the biggest news and prosecution stories from around the industry. Chapters include important updates such as the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and an overview of the new British Standard for the digital management of fire safety information.
Plus, we explore the growing risks of lithium-ion battery fires and hear from experts in disability evacuation and social housing.
We all know that these cuts are unnecessary and eventually will cause more harm than good. I can not see how you can improve services if you cut cost. All businesses will tell you that they have to invest in order to cut cost in the long term but this is the opposite with current government strategies.
I’m with you. These cuts seem to be too drastic. I don’t approve of how some people reacted to it, but I understand them. These are people’s lives we’re talking about. It’s lives potentially saved or lost, and these cuts just seem wrong.
They are wrong in all aspect of reasoning , however the government won’t listen but to create divided society
@George Brown, that is correct more often than not you have to invest in order to get a greater return on down the road and I think in the long run this will be realized here. To me this equates to cutting corners and expecting nothing to go wrong. If it works out right and you have no incidents you might look like a hero in the short term until worn out equipment and facilites catch up to you but if anything happens that should have been easily prevented then all bets are off.
You have a point, and it’s a huge shame, really. In the end, it’s the people who suffer.
Yes , we all know it is not sensible way to improve safety for citizens and i think we will witness its effect in 10 to 15years to come
Is the argument about whether it will improve services or not or is it about whether they can afford to cut without making things worse? I think that’s the important distinction here. The argument is: ‘half the number of fires, same number of firefighters, surely we can afford to cut then?’
Would the hope be that should fires start to increase again that people will have forgotten about the arguments we had now about fire cuts. Problem is, it’s much harder to reverse cuts than it is to enact them.
As long as that you think?
This is very true and it will endanger community safety and lives