FIREFIGHTERS in Essex face testing times.

There are fears job will go, as Essex Fire and Rescue Service looks at radical changes which could change the way fires and other emergencies are dealt with across the county.

The service is consulting on its 2020 Programme, which recommends changes to be made over the next five years.

The programme has largely been prompted by a huge reduction in the number of calls the service gets – is half what it was ten years ago.

Firefighters’ unions have condemned plans to reduce the number of full-time staff by 179, staging a series of strikes in protest.

Acting Chief Fire Officer Adam Eckley said: “It is clear the best way to keep people safe from fires and other emergencies is to stop them occurring in the first place.

“We’ve enjoyed great success in doing so, and we are proud of our record.

“The number of emergencies we attend in a year has reduced by half in the past ten years, to about 13,500.

“All this is against a backdrop of spending reductions and a growing, ageing, diversifying population.”

Taking false alarms out of the equation, the service claims its 50 fire stations and 733 full-time firefighters now respond to an average of 23 calls on an average day.

With the fire services under severe financial pressure, as the Government continues to make savage cuts to public spending due to national cutbacks, something has to give, Mr Eckley says.

He is expecting his budget to be cut by a fifth over the next five years. He said: “We face a future which will be characterised by changes to the nature of the operational demands on our service, alongside decreased funding. We need to ensure as a service we remain sustainable into the future.

“We will become protection and prevention-focussed, but we will always have a strong response element to fires and emergencies.”

The decreased in old-fashioned 999 calls to deal with fires is partly down to changes in technology and partly to changes in public attitudes.

Fire-retardant materials curtains and furnishings are now much more common, and the decrease in the number of people who smoke has also makeadifference.

Some of the reduction is also down to the success of Essex County Fire and Rescue and other groups in raising public awareness and encouraging the fitting of smoke alarms and sprinklers.

The fire service admits it probably should have responded sooner and more gradually to the downward trend, rather than waiting so long and then proposing drastic cuts, which could reduce frontline firefighter numbers by a quarter.

The consultation document for its 2020 Programme states: “The service has 74 frontline fire appliances for its response service across the county, with between 55 and 70 of these available at any time.

“Even at our busiest times of day, we are only required to deploy an average of five to seven incidents at the same time.

“Even at times of significant demand, such as a major fire at a power station, we would only draw on about 30 to 40 of our appliances at any one time.”

Service managers are also reviewing at the location of the county’s 50 fire stations, as they say this is also based on previous levels of demand.

Maintaining the ability to respond at the current level is expensive – far more so than the prevention work it believes is ultimately more effective.

As a result, both firefighters and the stations where they are based are under threat of being cut.

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Essex FBU secretary Alan Chinn-Shaw

Union says cuts put public at risk

FIREFIGHTERS’ representatives claim the proposed cuts will be put the public at risk.

The Fire Brigades Union in Essex walked out on strike again last month – the latest of a series of industrial actions in protest at the proposals.

The union claims frontline firefighters already play a dual role, contributing to both fire prevention and responding to emergencies.

It believes the proposed cuts will lead to longer waits for fire crews to arrive, and to the service not having enough firefighters to send out properly-crewed appliances.

Alan Chinn-Shaw, secretary of the FBU in Essex, said: “These are unprecedented cuts which would see more than a quarter of all Essex frontline firefighters axed.

“None of us wants to take further strike action, but the managers and politicians simply aren’t listening and remain wholly intransigent.

“Service managers have shown no sign whatsoever of compromise and are still intent on imposing deeply unworkable conditions that will put firefighters and the public we serve at great risk.”

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