Fire services in the East 'stripped bare' by cuts, union warns
There are now around 1,000 fewer firefighters in the East than there were in 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, 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.
**"Has knock on impact on community safety"**
We also spoke to Jamie Newell, regional secretary of the Fire Brigades Union for the East of England.
He says, " When you reduce those firefighter numbers and you have to mobilise more fire engines to make up for the same number of people you would have gotten previously, that takes longer for us to get to an incident and close it down."
"This has a knock on impact on safety for the community because fires could be more developed by then, people would be stuck in cars longer et cetera."
"Ultimately, firefighter safety is public safety. You cannot have one without the other. To address these shortages and increased risk we need funding. "
"So the Government need to acknowledge this and change the course of the cuts they've been pursuing these last twelve years"
London alone now has 1,112 fewer firefighters than 2010, with falls of 336 in Essex, 268 in Buckinghamshire, and 178 in Suffolk.
Other figures include a cut of 110 firefighter numbers in Hertfordshire, 67 in Norfolk and 41 in Bedfordshire for the same ten year period.
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.
"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.