Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Fire Officer

Prior to consideration of the item, Stephen Tucker, representing the Fire Brigades Union, posed the following question with regard to paragraph 1.5 of the report:

a)  The Service is currently proposing to remove 1 appliance from London Road, 1 appliance from Stockhill and to the night-time cover from West Bridgford, all to meet budgetary requirements. The posts that this Service wish to remove are already vacant due to a lack of recruitment by management, because of this, there are minimal financial savings to be made by removing these posts before the end of the financial year.

b)  Given that we have already faced a 10% reduction in posts which is well above the 1.6% average and that we have one of the lowest financial costs per head across the country, we have already felt the devastating effects of the cuts that have already been imposed on this service, which is why the FBU applaud and support the proposal to revert Ashfield Fire Station to wholetime with adequate fire cover.

c)  However, we do not, cannot, and will not accept that the same flawed and failed model should be implemented at another station, one which does not even have the resilience of an on-call appliance to even attempt to maintain a level of fire cover between 19:00-08:00.

d)  Will the Authority agree to postpone all recommendations currently proposed until after the financial budgets have been officially announced by the government?

The Chair responded:

e)  The difficult choices that the Authority is considering from this report and the backdrop of many years of resource reductions is unwelcomed by all those involved. The proposals recommended are for implementation from April 2023 onwards and have been preceded by in year temporary savings in 2022/23 including the management of staff numbers.

f)  The move of resources to Ashfield takes a Service wide view of risk and a least worst option approach, meaning these resources are required to be taken from other, existing locations and still balance the budget.

g)  Government grant only equates to approx. £7.5million and to delay decisions will build up a larger financial issue to address within a shorter time period. It should be reiterated that this decision seeks to go out to public consultation, pending any financial settlements being announced.

h)  To delay would mean the consultation work would not be completed prior to the requirement to put forward a balanced budget proposal at the February 2023 Fire Authority meeting.

Mark Stilwell, representing the Fire Brigades Union, posed the following question with regard to paragraph 2.28 and table 1 of the report:

i)  The FBU believe that this report is incomplete, misleading and does not show the full impact on the proposed cuts.

j)  In recent times this service has faced spate conditions, it has relied on our members being recalled to duty, sacrificing their rest days to crew appliances and keep fire cover a safe level. How is it that this Authority can agree to further endanger the lives  ...  view the full minutes text for item 28

Report of the Chief Fire Officer