East Sussex Fire And Rescue Service Alterations Approved After Successful Campaign To Limit Extent

Changes to fire and rescue services in East Sussex have been given the go ahead by councillors.

Today (September 3), members of the East Sussex Fire Authority agreed to adopt a new Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP) – a document laying out how fire and rescue services operate within the county.

The final version of the IRMP – which included job cuts and staffing changes – followed a public consultation earlier this year, which led to several of the more controversial aspects of the original proposals  being significantly altered. 

Addressing members before the vote, Chief Fire Officer Dawn Whittaker said:

“What we have endeavoured to do for you as a fire authority is take all of [the consultation comments] on board and present a set of proposals which addresses the issues that were put to you by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate to focus your resource on risk.

“That is what we have endeavoured to do, to get from where we were in April to where we are now.”

The original version of the proposals, which were put out for public consultation in April, had proven to be highly controversial, with the Fire Brigades Union and others describing them as “a major threat to public safety”.

But following a consultation with more than 2,000 responses, these initial proposals were scaled back.

Despite the alterations, several fire authority members still had reservations about the final version of the IRMP proposals.

Particular concerns were raised over proposals for fire crews to no longer attend calls to release people stuck in lifts or to free birds trapped in netting.

In light of these concerns, Brighton Green Party councillors Steph Powell and Pete West put forward an amendment calling on the fire authority to abandon those parts of the proposals. 

Cllr Powell said:

“I have to say that 10, 15 or 20 years ago nobody on this authority would be coming up with a suggestion that firefighters should not be attempting to do an animal rescue of any kind.

“They would not be suggesting that firefighters were not the best people to attend those trapped in lifts. It is absolutely ridiculous.

“I really hope that all of you will think about that today I think for both of those pieces of work – attending trapped birds [and] assisting those trapped in lifts – it is absolutely vital that the fire service continue that.”

The amendment made particular reference to vulnerable people – such as the elderly, young families and people with disabilities – being trapped in lifts.

During the meeting, Ms Whittaker attempted to address some of the concerns raised by members to these proposals.

She said:

“Our fire rescue service has the highest number of lift releases and rescues in our family group [of similar sized fire services] by some significant margin. 

“I agree entirely with Cllr Powell’s statement about the trauma of being trapped in a lift if you are elderly, infirm or vulnerable. I would just like to make the point that it was never our professional view that we would stop attending incidents of that nature.

“We do however have a very high number of [trapped lift calls] and some of those issues are about poor maintenance of lifts, particularly blocks in [Brighton]  where we have on a number of occasions had multiple turnouts to the same buildings and been failing to get support to get some of those maintenance issues rectified.

“I would welcome councillor support from the city to try and address some of those issues because it is a waste of resource candidly. 

“It is not about life risk and people, it is about businesses actually maintaining their buildings properly so that we are not wasting an emergency service resource.”

She added that most bird rescues are attempted by wildlife charities and it was not the intention to put people’s lives at risk by them attempting their own rescue attempts.

She said:

“Every time we deploy to one of those incidents we are utilising the resources which are provided and paid for by the public to protect them. [Those resources] are deployed to that incident and tied up.

“It is not quite so easy when you’ve got an aerial ladder platform deployed and firefighters perhaps on a roof to quickly get them down to go and attend a life risk emergency.”

Following further discussion, however, the Green Party amendment was agreed and incorporated into the wider IRMP proposals.

A second amendment – from Liberal Democrats Carolyn Lambert and Sarah Osborne – saw the authority agree to review the IRMP should more funding be provided by government in future.

Twenty jobs are expected to go as result of the approved proposals, but ten of these are expected to be transferred to a new flexible resourcing pool or be assigned additional fire safety work. 

As a result, only ten jobs are set to be completely cut, but the fire service says it does not expect to have to make any compulsory redundancies to achieve this.

The initial proposals would have seen between 27 and 33 firefighter posts lost, although it was unclear how many would have been kept on through transfer to other parts of the fire service.

Under the approved plans staffing changes will not go ahead at five out of six seven-day, day-crewed fire stations in the county: Bexhill; Newhaven; Crowborough; Lewes; and Uckfield.  

Under the previous proposals these stations would only have had full-time firefighters on-site during the daytime Monday to Friday, with on-call firefighters providing cover in the evening and at weekends. 

These changes will still go ahead at Battle fire station, however.

Plans to downgrade The Ridge fire station in Hastings – which currently has firefighters on station 24/7 – to a seven-day day-crewed station were also approved as part of the IRMP. On-call firefighters will provide cover at evenings and weekends.

At the same time Bohemia Road fire station – a full-time station – will gain a second fire engine on site to enhance its cover.

Meanwhile, plans to introduce a “group crewing” system will only move ahead at Preston Circus, Hove and Roedean fire stations, rather than at all five of the service’s full-time stations.

Eastbourne and Bohemia Road will retain its current staffing system as a result. 

Plans to cut secondary fire engines from some other stations were also scaled back, with Bexhill, Crowborough, Uckfield and Newhaven all retaining their second vehicle.

Other stations will have access to specialist operational vehicles so that Lewes, Battle, Rye, Heathfield, Seaford and Wadhurst maintain at least two operational vehicles, the fire service says.