First intimidation, now inducements, plus MP misled

30 less fire crews is not an improved service

Intimidation hasn’t stopped firefighters campaigning to stop cuts and fighting to protect their communities, so now Devious & Secretive Fire & Rescue Service is resorting to staff inducements.

Deputy Chief Fire Officer Glenn Askew has recently written to staff to "clarify why these options have been put out for consultation". He starts with the meaningless slogan about putting "preventative activity at the heart of everything we do". He then says they "recognise that the emergency response capability ensures that when things inevitably do go wrong, we are there to help."

It is very disturbing that he is unable to see that having up to 30 less fire crews to help when things go wrong does not provide an improved level of service. The Chief Fire Officer has made it clear that with 20% of on call fire engines not available it is not a model he wants moving forward. Ignoring his failure to ensure crews are available, he simply says the model is “quite dated”. Yet Glenn Askew now says they remain “fully committed to the on call model”. 

Apparently, removing dozens of on call firefighter jobs
is being "fully committed to the on call model"

He then gets on to the inducements. He says the station closures and fire engine cuts will “provide the investment necessary to ensure that the terms and conditions offered to on call staff are significantly improved.” In other words, if you help us get rid of some of your colleagues and cut the protection afforded to some residents, you might be better off. 

It is quite shameful that they expect firefighters to stab their colleagues in the back and put the public in other areas in greater danger. Wholetime staff are not left out, they are told there will be “alternative work patterns that will provide greater flexibility and choice for staff.”

Experience elsewhere shows that such promises are never 

as good as they sound, and often make things much worse

Are Fire Chiefs misleading Members of Parliament?

In a recent press report Anne Marie Morris, MP for Newton Abbot, is reported to have said she was told "that the proposed changes will result in no job losses". Now was that misreported, did she misunderstand, or was she deliberately misled?

It is abundantly clear that if option four is chosen, which involves removing immediate response night cover at Barnstaple, Exmouth and Paignton, there will be significant wholetime firefighters job losses. That is why they say that option four will save substantially more than option three.

It is also clear that dozens of on call firefighters will lose their jobs if the cuts go ahead. They may be part time jobs, but they are still jobs that will be lost and will see people worse off. The idea that they can all be redeployed is nonsense. In the report to the Fire & Rescue Authority the Chief Fire Officer admits that "compulsory redundancies cannot be ruled out".  

Which Chief Fire Officer should we believe?

In the same press report, Chief Fire Officer Lee Howell again talks about closing "low risk" stations. There is no such thing, the risk to people's lives is not lower for people living in those areas than it is for people living in any other area. What he is saying is that, because they get less fires and other emergencies, he is happy to increase the risk to people living in those areas. 

It will just be bad luck for those who do have

fires and other emergencies in those areas

Despite being incomplete, their modelling of the effect of these cuts reveal that more than 600,000 residents will face an increased risk to their lives. Full modelling would increase that figure. It is also concerning that, unlike other fire & rescue services contemplating such cuts, Devious & Secretive Fire & Rescue Service have not produced the full modelling results for the affected stations. I don't know if that means they didn't bother to model the effect on each station area, or if they just decided to keep the results secret. Hopefully, a Freedom of Information request will provide the answers. 

The claim of low activity is also misleading, as they do not include calls attended in other areas. For example, in recent years Appledore’s fire engine has attended as many as 80 incidents in a year, Ashburton’s 130 and Topsham’s 184. It is not about how busy any station is, it is about ensuring help can arrive quickly.

Lower activity does not justify making people wait longer for help to arrive