South Yorkshire Fire Brigades Union: Fire Service at 'breaking point' due to job cuts since 2010
There are now over 259 fewer firefighters in South Yorkshire compared to 2010.
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) are warning the UK's fire services are at breaking point after a decade of cuts.
New figures from the FBU show firefighter numbers have reached a new low with one in five firefighter roles having been scrapped since 2010.
This amounts to 11,680 firefighters losing their jobs over the past ten years.
Ahead of a speech by Home Secretary, Priti Patel, at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, the union is now calling on the government to increase funding to restore those roles.
"They are making people less safe"
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said:
“After years of huge government cuts and staffing falls there is a real threat that fire and rescue services may not be able to deal with every incident, and fight all fires: for example, we have heard senior service managers state that the public should lower their expectations that large wildfires can be tackled.
"The cuts are weakening the day-to-day work of the fire and rescue service in every single area; they are making people less safe.
"They also pose a threat to the ability to respond to large-scale incidents - particularly if more than one were to occur at the same time.
“Households deserve to feel protected. We all want to be able to walk past fire stations and know that there are enough people in there to protect us.
"Firefighters will always do whatever they can to save lives. It’s time the government does the same.”
Mike Nicholls is the Chair of the Fire Brigades Union in South Yorkshire:
"It concerns me that a decade on in society, we're less able to deal with major incidents due to a lack of personnel.
"We are at breaking point. We don't have the right personnel available to us at the right times because of these job cuts, and the people of South Yorkshire deserve more than this."
Over 259 firefighters fewer in South Yorkshire
Since 2010, the work force at the South Yorkshire's Fire and Rescue service has been cut by 28%, which means there are 259 fewer firefighters now compared to 11 years ago.
Elsewhere, London alone now has 1,112 less firefighters than 2010, with falls of 615 in West Yorkshire, 631 in Greater Manchester, 551 in Devon and Somerset and 470 in the West Midlands. Other standout figures include a cut of 70 firefighters between 2020 and 2021 alone in Hampshire, and 49 in Devon and Somerset.
As well as the cuts, climate change has also increased the stress on services.
In some parts of the country, there are concerns that increased flooding, as well as moorland fires becoming more common, is stretching them close to their limit.
SYFRS planning to hire 'significantly' in the coming months
We approached South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service for a comment on this issue, which led to them providing us with the statement below:
“We’ve suffered big cuts to our Government funding over the last 10 years. Given most of our money is spent on staff, this has inevitably affected firefighter numbers.
However, we are continuing to provide a fast and professional 999 response service to local people and have plans to recruit significant numbers of new firefighters in South Yorkshire in the coming months.”
"2,800 extra firefighters recruited"
In response, a Home Office spokesperson said:
“Firefighters work tirelessly every day to protect our communities and the government has consistently given them the resources they need to keep people safe.
“In the last year, nearly 3,000 new firefighters have been recruited across the country and the Government has invested £2.3bn to support their lifesaving work.”
They also added that 2,845 new firefighters were recruited during 2019-20.