Plans to remove full-time overnight fire crews from West Bridgford and take one fire engine out of London Road are among plans to save money. See public consultation launched today.
County Councillor Jonathan Wheeler for West Bridgford South, who is also leader of the Conservative Group on the Fire Authority told the Wire:
‘Unfortunately local Labour members are trying to distract from the fact that their colleagues are the ones who voted in favour of the proposed cuts being put to consultation.
‘Every Labour County Councillor on the Fire Authority voted in favour of this proposal and every Conservative Councillor voted against.
‘Rather than trying to distract when they know the County Council is separate to the Fire Authority, I would hope that the local Labour Party are speaking to their colleagues to urge them to vote against the closure of West Bridgford fire station at night.
‘It is clear in the documents the Fire Authority that the ‘saving’ of £660k for closing West Bridgford Fire Station at night is going straight to reopening Ashfield Fire Station full time at night.
‘The Ruling Labour and Ashfield Independent administration are trying to push this through and the local labour party should be joining with us in opposing this political move rather than try to cover it up.’
‘Please sign the consultation so we can convince the Labour Party to oppose the cut to our Fire Station:
Below from Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service
Why are we consulting?
At the moment, finances are a challenge for everyone. We are facing pressure on our budget primarily from inflation, pension costs, future uncertainties, and the cost-of-living crisis. Legally, we must set a balanced budget. From 2023, we believe we need to save a predicted £2-3million a year.
What are we doing about it?
A review across the entire organisation has identified three main areas for delivering efficiencies. These are non-operational staff structures, our operational model, this is the number of fire stations and fire engines we have; and our operational officer structure.
75% of our funding is spent on staff, so naturally any reductions will impact personnel. In wages alone, a wholetime fire station with one fire engine and 24-7 cover costs around £1.2million a year. An on-call station, where crews are based within five minutes from their fire station and are called into station when required costs around £225k in wages. Stations that are day-shift crewing, where firefighters are on station during the day, and on-call at night, cost around £800k.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve undertaken a comprehensive risk assessment. The analysis tells us the types of incidents we are likely to face, the locations they are likely to occur, and the times of day we have the highest levels of demand. We commissioned an independent sector leading specialist that has worked with a number of fires services across the country, to advise how we could meet our predicted financial challenges, whilst minimising the impact of an increase in response times to emergencies.
As a result, the Chief Fire Officer is recommending to the Fire Authority that they go to public consultation, to seek views on changes to our operational model:
- Removal of one of the two fire engines at London Road station. This will generate savings of around £1 million a year
- Removal of one of the two fire engines at Stockhill fire station. This will generate savings of around £1 million a year
- Removal of the night shift at West Bridgford fire station. This will save around £660k a year.
- To best balance our resources across the county, and to help maintain an average response time as close as possible to eight minutes, the above changes promote the reinstatement of Ashfield Fire Station to a 24-7 wholetime model. This will require an investment of around £660k
In total, these changes will generate around £2 million of savings a year.
The Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority has approved to go to public consultation on this proposal to seek your views. At this stage, no changes are guaranteed until the public consultation period is over.
What happens next?
We’re asking you to take part in our public consultation which will run for 12 weeks.
More information can be found by visiting frequently asked questions.
Any further questions can be submitted to talk2us@notts-fire.gov.uk.
You can have your say on fire cover in Nottinghamshire by completing the consultation survey below:
