Cambridgeshire fire stations at risk of closure under improvement plans
The county's fire service hope the proposals improve its performance
Three of Cambridgeshire's fire stations are at risk of closing under plans to improve the county's fire service.
Firefighters from Manea, Sutton and Kimbolton could be affected as part of proposals to improve weekend cover at its wholetime stations in Ely and St Neots, which operate five days a week.
The move is one area of Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service's operational response and risk review project, which aims to boost its performance when responding to incidents across the county.
Stuart Smith is from the fire service:
"We've looked at a number of data sets, such as looking at their recruitment, retention, the number of calls they attend," he said.
"We believe that we could more effectively use that resource (firefighters) from those three fire stations in our more higher-risk areas, giving a better service to the public.
"It is a proposal and we look to redistribute that resource; what it looks like in the future is uncertain because we haven't done that piece of work yet as to what that might look like in terms of those stations and those that work at those stations."
Petition launched to save fire stations
The news of the plans come as an online petition was set up to keep the stations at Manea, Sutton and Kimbolton open and has attracted more than 300 signatures.
Mr Smith has spoken to each station, which in total have around 20 firefighters working from there, about the proposals.
He said the plans to move firefighters to other stations in the county aim to ensure "operational resources are being used as effectively as possible to provide the best response".
But he's unsure exactly how many of these firefighters will be affected if the plans go ahead.
Recruitment issue in fire service
Recruiting firefighters across Cambridgeshire has been a challenge for the fire service, which led to it cutting on-call firefighter crews to three per crew.
In October, members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) held a demonstration calling for crew numbers to increase to a minimum of five firefighters.
At the time Mark Harriss, secretary of the FBU Cambridgeshire brigade, said the fire service were "putting lives at risk" if they continued with three firefighters in a crew.
Jon Anderson, assistant chief fire officer for the county, said recruitment issues had led to the reduction in crew numbers.
"Our job is to make sure we provide value for money"
"This is one workstream of the project so we've already done a lot of positive work to improve our response to emerging risks in our county," Mr Smith added.
"We work within the current budget restraints we have and our job is to make sure we provide value for money to the taxpayers of Cambridgeshire and at the moment, we think we can provide a better service."
The plans are due to be discussed at a meeting of the Cambridgeshire Fire Authority, which oversees the running of the fire service, on December 20.