Firefighters 'scared of losing their jobs' under Cambridgeshire fire station plans
Proposals to relocate firefighters are due to be discussed today
Firefighters in Cambridgeshire are wondering whether they will still have a job in the fire service.
It comes as plans to possibly close on-call fire stations in Manea, Sutton and Kimbolton to help improve weekend cover at its daytime stations in Ely and St Neots will be discussed at a Fire Authority meeting later today.
These stations are operated by firefighters who respond to incidents when their pager is alerted and have to live or work within a 5-minute journey of that station.
In total, there are 19 on-call firefighters at these stations but it's unclear how many would be relocated if the plans go ahead.
Mark Harriss is the Cambridgeshire Fire Brigades Union brigade secretary:
"There's a negative feeling (amongst firefighters) and people are scared of losing their jobs," he said.
"People are scared of losing their fire cover if they live in or around those villages affected; it goes wider than that and it's a negative impact on all residents within Cambridgeshire.
"We are hopeful the Fire Authority sees what is the hidden agenda which is the closure of fire stations and we hope they think about their constituents and don't go ahead with the proposal."
Why are the plans being discussed?
The number of on-call firefighters at some of Cambridgeshire Fire Service's stations is below the recommended number.
Jon Anderson, assistant chief fire officer at the service, said some stations have "only 4 or 5 people" compared to the 14 to 15 people needed to commit 80 hours a week.
In a statement, Mr Anderson said the service has struggled to recruit and retain people from villages and towns where on-call stations are located.
"This is because society has changed; lives today are not centred around the village in the way they used to be and it is a big commitment for people to always be within a five-minute travel time of the fire station," he said.
"We can appreciate that any talk of a community potentially ‘losing its fire station’ may concern some people, but a fire station is just a garage for a fire engine.
"The fire engine can only respond if it has a crew available to take it out; more often than not, in many areas, a crew isn’t available and so when an incident occurs, it is a fire engine from outside of the village that attends.
"If we can take the firefighters we have in these low call-rate and low risk areas and use them to crew a fire engine we can then guarantee can respond to an incident immediately, we can provide a quicker response."
How will the plans work?
Currently in Ely and St Neots, one fire engine is crewed by wholetime firefighters between 8am and 6pm, Monday to Friday.
On these days between 6pm and 8am and at weekends, a second fire engine is crewed by on-call firefighters.
In a report to the Fire Authority, Stuart Smith, area commander at Cambridgeshire Fire Service, said redistributing resources from Manea, Sutton and Kimbolton can "guarantee the minimum resource requirement at times of higher risk and demand".
He said that due to an increase in the county's population in the last 10 years, fire crews are attending more incidents.
Mr Smith added that by moving resources from lower to higher risk areas like Ely and St Neots can "provide better strategic fire cover and enable wider opportunities for proactive prevention and protection work in hard-to-reach rural and vulnerable communities, especially in the north-east and south-west of our operational area."
"Any station is a huge loss, let alone three in one go"
But despite claims that response times will improve, Mr Harriss believes any closure will have an impact on local communities.
"When you think about Cambridgeshire as a county, closing three fire stations is losing 12.5% of our on-call fire cover and there aren't many stations to close.
"Any station is a huge loss, let alone three all in one go is massive and a real dent to a community's safety."