‘Firefighters wages make up over three-quarters of fire and rescue service budgets, so cuts to fire service funding invariably mean cuts to firefighters jobs’, said the Fire Brigades Union introducing a briefing issued for a lobby of MPs last Wednesday.
In London alone 17 fire stations have been earmarked for closure to save £60m.
The FBU continued: ‘But it is only professional firefighters who can put out fires, deal with other emergencies and rescue people safely. Fewer firefighters puts the public at greater risk of injury and death.
‘That’s why the Fire Brigades Union says “cuts cost lives”.
‘This briefing, Don’t squeeze our fire service dry, explains why the FBU opposes cuts to the fire and rescue service.
‘This FBU briefing shows that over one thousand firefighter jobs have been cut in the first year of the Tory-led coalition government.
‘On 31 January 2011, the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) confirmed its Local Government Settlement, providing figures for the central grant allocated metropolitan and combined fire authorities in England.
‘This FBU briefing explains why the cuts are very bad news for firefighters and the public.
‘This FBU rescues briefing explains the continued importance of emergency intervention by fire and rescue services.’
Its summary says:
• The Fire Brigades Union believes we have now reached a significant turning point in the history of the UK fire and rescue service.
Savage cuts to the service now will put members of the public at great risk.
People will die unnecessarily and suffer injuries which could have been avoided. Homes and businesses will be destroyed.
We are raising the alarm – to protect the fire and rescue service.
• Firefighters do an irreplaceable job tackling every kind of emergency – fires, road traffic accidents, civil disturbances, terrorist incidents, floods and many more.
The fire and rescue service is a service to be proud of – and a service worth defending.
• Around 1,500 frontline firefighter jobs were lost between 2011 and 2012.
Further cuts on this scale will put lives at risk, ruin more homes and businesses, and increase insurance costs.
Politicians need to think again before the next round of central government grants are determined.
• Professional bodies throughout the fire and rescue service, including the Fire Brigades Union and the Chief Fire Officers Association, are warning of the dire consequences of further cuts.
These could cut 1 in 5 firefighters compared with 2010 levels.
Fewer firefighters, fire station closures and fewer appliances will devastate local communities.
• More cuts will mean slower response times to emergencies, putting life and property at greater risk.
Response times are almost two minutes slower on average than a decade ago – and this masks even slower responses in some areas and to some incidents.
Many fire and rescue services are missing their own targets for the arrival of the first and second appliance.
• The recent reduction in fires and fire deaths are welcome, because it shows how effective the fire prevention work done by firefighters can be.
But the risks are still there and without firefighters to carry on doing this work, further improvements cannot be guaranteed.
And firefighters tackle a range of growing risks, such as floods.
It’s about risk and resilience
• The fire and rescue service costs around £50 per person per year – exceptional value for money for a world class emergency service.
• Cutting some fire and rescue services more harshly than others, is not the answer.
The whole service needs funding commensurate with the huge range of risks we face.
Investment, not cuts is the answer.
The fire and rescue service has much to be proud of. The service is a real success story when it has the personnel and the resources to do the job.
Firefighters have been lavishly praised by politicians after major incidents, such as the civil disturbances in 2011, recent floods, the 7/7 terrorist attacks and countless other incidents.
The fire and rescue service is an irreplaceable service
It is ready and willing to tackle every kind of emergency, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The UK fire and rescue service has around ten thousand professional firefighters on duty at any one time and prepared for any emergency.
We have over 50,000 specially trained firefighters capable of deployment in the event of major incidents, from fires to floods, terrorist attacks or industrial explosions.
Firefighters protect the public and businesses from a wide range of risks, including: Fires; Road traffic accidents; Floods and storms; Terrorism; Riots; Chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear (CBRN) incidents; Industrial incidents.
Rescues and emergency intervention at fires
Firefighters continue to carry out very high levels of rescue from fires.
The FBU gathered data from individual fire and rescues, which indicated that over seven thousand people were rescued from fires in the UK in 2009-10.
In England alone over five thousand people were rescued from fires.
Fire prevention work
There has been a remarkable fall in the number of fires and fire deaths over the last decade.
The number of fires in Great Britain fell by a third, from 445,000 in 2000-01 to 287,000 in 2010-11.
Casualties at all fires fell from 554 in 2000-01 to 388 in 2010-113. These improvements are not simply the result of social, economic and technical changes.
They are the result of conscious fire safety and prevention work carried out by firefighters.
Wide range of rescues
Firefighters don’t just rescue people from fires in homes and businesses.
Firefighters rescued over 3,000 people during the 2007 floods – and responded to around 20,000 people in flood incidents last year.
Firefighters helped rescue 700 injured people and led hundreds of victims to safety during the terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005, when 52 people were killed by bus and tube bombers.
Firefighters helped rescue people during the M5 crash in 2011, when seven people were killed and over 50 injured.
The Buncefield explosion was the largest European peace time fire. It caused widespread damage and left 43 people injured. It took more than one thousand firefighters from 33 fire and rescue services several weeks to extinguish the blaze.
The Stockline factory collapse was one of the largest industrial incidents in the last decade.
Nine people were killed and 60 injured. Some 14 appliances including a heavy rescue vehicle attended the scene to bring the incident under control.
Firefighters tackled the Selby train incident, when 10 people died and 40 were injured.
There are also countless other examples of road vehicle rescues, river rescues, mudslides and all manner of other emergency where firefighters have responded magnificently to save life and limit damage.
New risks
The fire and rescue service is tackling known risks and preparing for new risks. Government warnings about climate change will have a big impact on the UK.
The fire and rescue service will have to deal with more grassland and wildfires, more floods and storms, and more droughts affecting water availability.
Firefighters can adapt to these challenges – but only if we have the personnel and equipment to do it.
Frontline firefighter job cuts
The fire and rescue service is recognised as an efficient service. It did not experience a ‘golden age’ under the last government.
Spending on the fire and rescue service in the last decade barely kept up with inflation.
However cuts of 25% over four years were announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review 2010.
The results of the first round of cuts have been a devastating cut in the number of frontline firefighters.
Headcount figures obtained by the Fire Brigades Union indicate the scale of job cuts between April 2011 and March 2012 in all 57 fire and rescue services in the UK.
This is the first year (of four) of cuts imposed by the coalition government.
Firefighter job cuts (2011-12)
Some stand out findings:
• Some 1,457 frontline firefighter jobs have been lost in the last year (2011-12) in the UK
• Some 2,172 jobs were lost from the fire service as a whole – so two-thirds (67%) were frontline jobs
• Some 926 wholetime firefighter jobs have gone
• Almost 400 retained firefighter jobs have gone
• Over 130 control jobs have been lost – 7% of all control jobs in 2011.
The threat from cuts
The Comprehensive Spending Review 2010 said cuts would be ‘backloaded’. This means the worst planned cuts would come from 2013.
If the government implements these cuts, there will be a terrible loss of fire cover.
The FBU believes that cuts on this scale over the next two years will amount to a reduction of at least 6,000 firefighter jobs over the four years (2011-15), and perhaps as many as 10,000 firefighters overall.
This would be 1 in 5 of all firefighters.
The FBU is not the only fire service stakeholder warning of disaster.
Chief officers are also arguing that cuts will severely reduce the number of firefighters, fire stations and appliances.
