Warwickshire fire chief: "Plans that will worsen some response times “will save more lives” across the board"

Warwickshire’s chief fire officer Ben Brook insists controversial plans that will worsen response times for some areas “will save more lives” across the board.

The county’s fire and rescue service is currently consulting on its resource to risk proposals, which proposes to get rid of the current on-call system in favour of more fixed shifts to meet demand.

On-call firefighters typically have other jobs and availability has plummeted in recent years with Mr Brook telling the Local Democracy Reporting Service that this has led to unpredictable and inconsistent levels of service and response times.

The new system will direct those resources to more wholetime firefighters in the day where the demand for services is much higher with part-time evening shifts and places on surge teams – on-call personnel brought in for anticipated or emergency peaks in demand – supplementing a better level of overall service.

There are regional disparities, though. The current 10-minute target for responding to all life and property incidents will be scrapped in favour of achieving the best possible times based on logistics and risk.

Average response times for the first fire engine to arrive at those top-category incidents across the borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth will improve from the current eight minutes and 34 seconds to just under eight minutes. Across the more rural and spread out district of Stratford-on-Avon, where the time is current 11 minutes 45 seconds, it is anticipated the average wait will be 13 minutes and 49 seconds.

“It is about putting the right resources in the right places at the right times,” said Mr Brook.

“We cannot provide the same level of cover across the whole of Warwickshire with the resources we have so we are looking to put them where they are going to make the biggest difference.

“That means there isn't the same level of fire cover across the county. Where we have the most incidents involving life and property is where we will put the heaviest density of resources, where there is the least there will be less resources but still an appropriate response.

“We are being very open and transparent with our communities, right now we know they don’t get a 10-minute response time, we don’t achieve it.

“We are not looking to provide equity of fire cover, it is risk-based fire cover. In Nuneaton and that area, we will attend 85 life and property incidents per year, when you look at somewhere like Bidford it will be eight per year, so there is a massive difference.

“The severity of a house fire is the same everywhere across Warwickshire but the likelihood of one occurring is much, much higher in certain areas than in others.

“There are areas of Warwickshire where we have had no life or property incidents over the past three years so we are putting our resources into areas where they will make the biggest difference.”

He said the availability of on-call firefighters is, on average, 17 per cent in the day with some large differences between areas.

“We are going to plan guaranteed resource availability – right now we don’t know what we have each day,” said Mr Brook.

“Sometimes we have no on-call availability, the next day we might have a lot, it varies to such a degree.”

Councillor Andrew Crump (Con, Southam, Stockton & Napton), the portfolio holder for fire and rescue and community safety who oversees the service, addressed perceptions that the south of the county would be missing out.

He noted that stations in Southam and Wellesbourne will see an uplift in cover between 8am and 10pm from the current situation where on-call availability ranges between nine and 33 per cent.

“There is an improvement in the response time in areas that have the highest number of callouts, in Wellesbourne and Southam,” he said.

“It is all about aligning resources to actual demand.”

Mr Brook went on to highlight the importance of prevention and protection work, elements he says will be boosted by greater availability in the day.

“Stopping the fire in the first place is the best possible way to be safe,” he said.

“Having a working smoke alarm, closing doors at night, making sure you unplug things that shouldn’t be plugged in overnight – we want to increase prevention and that message that goes out to all of our communities.

“If you do those things you are a lot less likely to have a fire and very, very unlikely to die in a house fire. That is a reality.

“If we are responding, it is already too late by that point, they are at risk. Yes, we will get there as quickly as we can but the best thing is prevention.

“Through this activity, it gives us more people in the day. Our on-call firefighters are brilliant but due to the amount of hours they do, we can only train them to respond to incidents, we don’t train them to look at prevention and protection.

“This will enable us to have 13 per cent more people hours during the day to deliver more prevention and that is a critical benefit of this."

The council’s consultation on the plans runs until March and Mr Brook and Cllr Crump were keen to stress the importance of everyone getting involved.

There are public meetings planned with internal workshops for fire service staff, including a 'Dragons Den' style opportunity for them to put forward amendments that they think would make the proposed system work better.

“We are truly listening through this consultation, it is meaningful,” said Mr Brook.

“I would be surprised if the proposal coming out at the end of this is identical to the one that went in because we want to listen.

“I think we are being more transparent than we have ever been before, we have said we have been working towards 10-minute response times with 23 fire engines (available in the day, including on-call) but the reality has been the averages are nowhere near that, we average about 11 in the day.

“I think there is generally an acceptance of the problem now. Everyone might not agree with all the solutions but they understand that resources are not aligned to risk.

“Now we need to make sure we move through and listen to find the best solution.”

Details of the public meetings, plans and the consultation can be accessed via Warwickshire County Council's website: ask.warwickshire.gov.uk/insights-service/wfrs-r2r/

Alternative methods of participating can be accessed by calling 01926 410410, by emailing [email protected] or by writing to Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service, Service Headquarters, Warwick Street, Leamington Spa, CV32 5LH.

The consultation closes on Sunday March 10.