Penny Gowland, Labour councillor on Nottinghamshire County Council for West Bridgford North and borough council representative for Abbey Ward launches petition to save night-time emergency cover at West Bridgford Fire Station.
As part of the 2022/23 budget report considered by Fire Authority in February 2022 the Treasurer, based on some planning assumptions at the time, predicted a 2023/24 deficit of circa £2.1 million pounds.
The report says that the ‘best option, with least impact on the community utilising Service provided data with ORH, to achieve this has been identified as:
• Removal of the second appliance from London Road;
• Removal of the second appliance from Stockhill;
• Conversion of West Bridgford from one wholetime appliance to one day shift crewing appliance;
• Conversion of Ashfield from one day shift crewing and one On-call appliance to one wholetime and one On-call appliance.
Cllr Gowland said:
It means that of the two fire engines based at London Road, one will be removed, and at West Bridgford Fire Station, full time fire crews will only man the station during the daytime, with on-call firefighters being called upon during the night.
This will slow response times, which means that they will be the slowest in the county.
The Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority decided which stations to cut by predicting how the cuts will affect the average time taken to respond to fires across the whole area.
But no fire is an ‘average’ fire.
What will happen to the longest predicted response times?
What happens if there are two fires on the same night?
We now have nearly 10,000 fewer firefighters in England than in 2010: in Nottinghamshire the number of firefighters has fallen by 28% since 2010, and the budget has been cut by £9.6 million in real terms (more if you take account of inflation).
We need the government to provide more money to protect us in this most basic way and to provide a long term funding settlement to allow fire chiefs to plan properly.
What can you do?
- Respond to the Fire Service consultation https://www.notts-fire.gov.uk/…/public-consultation…/
- Sign the petition below, which we will take to the County and also send to the MP.
- Please print it out and send it to Cllr Penny Gowland, County Hall, West Bridgford, or DM Penny Gowland on Twitter.
- There is a public meeting on this 7.30, Thursday Nov. 17th at Methodist Hall, Patrick Rd, West Bridgford.
The petition is here: https://www.change.org/p/save-our-fire-station
• Rushcliffe Leader extremely concerned at proposed fire service reduction
• Councillor slams plans to remove emergency fire cover from West Bridgford and London Road stations
• West Bridgford worst hit by Fire Service planned changes as Union boss comments
• Consultation goes live on plans to remove night shift at West Bridgford Fire Station
