The debate on the proposed changes to Derbyshires Fire & Rescue services reached the House of Commons last night. With Toby Perkins MP for Chesterfield questioning the changes. This ws supported in the House by the MP for North East Derbyshire Natascha Engel, both Labour MP's. The government response was by Brandon Lewis MP who is the Minister for local government and Fire & Rescue. Also MP for that well known Derbyshire town of .......Great Yarmouth! (Unless my geography is really off that's not in Derbyshire.)
One of the main subjects of debate is the issue of new fire stations between 4-2 years old (like the one at Staden Lane in Buxton) now being in the wrong place.
You can access what Toby Perkins MP said by looking at his
website. However, I have copied and pasted what the transcript is without interventions here.
"Derbyshire fire and rescue service provide the people of Derbyshire
with stellar service and protection. We depend on them in fire, accident
and flood.
They work in a County that has huge variances; from the busy City of
Derby and largest town of Chesterfield, other smaller urban bases and
large swathes of rural, hilly and remote parts of the Peak District.
Firefighters enjoy the respect and admiration of us all, not just for
their untold bravery that sees them run towards burning buildings
whilst the rest of us urgently back away but also because of their
amazing life saving work and the horrors we know they witness during
Road Traffic Accidents.
Firefighters everywhere are admired but in Derbyshire alongside the
geographical challenges that face our force, there are many causes for
pride.
They have won awards for the standard of care they provide to
citizens and have worked to identify individuals at greatest risk and
provided additional measures to protect them. The numbers of fires have
reduced in recent years due to their tremendously proactive approach to
fire prevention made possible by their outreach work fitting smoke
detectors and educating citizens.
But Derbyshire faces an unusually high level of fire deaths in
comparison to other counties. In 2012-13; 10 people were killed in fires
in Derbyshire (one of the highest in the country) In Derbyshire there
have been five fires in the past 3 and a half years in which children
have died.
Now Mr Speaker, we know that Derbyshire Fire Authority and indeed all
services in Derbyshire are operating in the most extreme and difficult
financial circumstances imaginable.
The Minister represents a department that I think has been the most
cowardly in all of government, because of all the big spending
departments it has been the one that devolves the most of its funding
and meanwhile it has taken the largest share of the cuts.
So at a time when other departmental budgets have been squeezed, the
DCLG budgets have been crushed. Passing on all of the tough choices of
austerity to Council leaders and Fire authorities around the country.
Leaving it to Council leaders to decide whether to cut libraries or
social care, whether to leave potholes in the road or cut community
safety budgets, to decide whether to cut back on firefighters or reduce
the fire prevention work.
I find it nauseating to hear the Sec of state praised by the
Chancellor for agreeing to take on the largest cuts when he faces so few
of the tough decisions and leaves others to face the petitions and
campaigns against them.
And lets look at what that means to Derbyshire Fire Authority, an
authority that has already delivered £3m in efficiency measures from an
efficiency programme started in 2010.
But the Authority face a 40% reduction in funding between 2011/12 and
2015/16, to a 24/7 service that will have around 60 full time
firefighters on duty at any one time.
So when we scrutinise the changes proposed to the Fire Service by
Derbyshire’s ‘Fit to Respond’ document it must be viewed in this
appalling context. And the true architect of these cuts’ is the
Minister, the sec of state and the PM who has chosen that the cuts to
the fire authority should outstrip the cuts faced by almost any public
service budget.
They could have made different choices, they chose to reduce the tax
bill of million pound earners and wasted billions with their botched
Royal Mail privatisation, their £3Bn NHS re-organisation has seen
service levels fall while the budgets remain constant, I could go on,
but politics is all about choices and they will answer for theirs when
the day comes.
The impact on Derbyshire is stark- In the report’s own words it will
see the service deliver ‘less for less’ and in the words of the
Derbyshire FBU ‘we think that these proposals can in no way, give the
service to the same level of resilience.”
At the moment a fire engine will be at a life risk incident within 10
minutes 3 quarters of the time and at those deemed as most vulnerable in
over 80% of cases. These plans would see this drop to 66%.
Last year they responded to 565 life risk incidents now a third
(about 190 times) you would not see a fire engine within 10 minutes. Can
you imagine Mr Speaker lives in danger and a 1 in 3 chance of the
engine failing to turn up within 10 minutes.
The campaigns are starting up across Derbyshire to send the strongest
message imaginable to the Fire Authority about the views of people in
Derbyshire. In Staveley, in my and my Hon Friend for Derbyshire NE
constituencies, people are campaigning to save the station that was
built just three years ago.
I received an email today from Catherine Atkinson about the campaign
that she and people across Long Eaton are waging to halt the closure of
their station.
And of course in Chesterfield people are mystified and concerned about the plans for our town.
I was there as a Councillor for the Rother ward in Chesterfield in
2009 when the old Whittington Moor fire station was closed, and the new
one was built at the Donkins roundabout, at a cost of £4.5 million.
We were told that it was a better venue for the service, closer to
the motorway and to the area that had the most fires and when the
Chesterfield retained unit was disbanded, the public were assured they
would still be provided for by the two fire engines at Staveley and back
up from Dronfield and Clay Cross. Under the new plans Dronfield and
Staveley will disappear; and to allow the service to respond to these
closures the brand new fire station will be moved a mile back up the
road (I’m not making this up) to Whittington Moor, precisely where the
original station was.
The Fire Authority tell us they want to spend £4.3 M replacing the
£4.5 M station that still has its first coat of paint and unsurprisingly
they will take a hit on the resale value. They estimate that a used
fire station might get them a £1M but frankly I believe even that might
be optimistic.
So where do these plans come from? Well Council papers show a variety
of tough decisions ducked by Derbyshire County Council in the dying
embers of its first Tory administration for 28 years. They left the
Council sitting on a financial timebomb and left the tough choices until
after the election. Was the consultation always designed to lead to
this report? Certainly it was ready at the first meeting of the new
Derbyshire Fire Authority and presented as the solution to the funding
crisis that faced the authority,
The Fire Authority quote as their justification the response to the
2012/13 consultation launched by the Conservative Fire Authority shortly
before the historic and huge Labour victory in Derbyshire in 2013.
This masterpiece of push polling included, as justification by the
authority, that when the public was asked ‘if the service continues to
face restrictions on its budget would you support the principle of
matching the service’s resources to the level of risk in each area?”
Unsurprisingly 80% of the public responded to that extremely leading
question by saying ‘yes’ but to use that as a justification for what we
are discussing today is ludicrous.
Maybe if they had asked: “do you support us digging into the reserves
to spend £4.3M on a new station to replace the £4.5M station that we
build four years ago and moving back to precisely where we were before
we started this nonsense” they might have got a different response.
But frankly Mr Speaker, I dont care where it came from, I only care where it goes now.
Its not just Chesterfield and North Derbyshire that has a major problem.
The Ascot Drive fire station had a £3 million refurbishment in March
2012, that will be closed. Buxton was opened in 2011, at a cost of £3.5
million, that will go. Illkeston was also only opened in 2009,its going
to go.
The merger of the 3 stations in Derby would cost £1 million and it is
stated that the overall outcome of building a new station and closing
three would be cost neutral but at what cost to service?
The publication of the desired locations for the new stations enables
the current owners of the land to significantly increase their sale
price, costing the tax payer yet more cash.
Financially it is illogical, in service terms inadequate, it means
108 FEWER full-time firefighters overall more reliance on retained
firefighters and 30 Operational Community Safety Officers.
Where will these retained firefighters come from? On average it takes
6 months from the day of recruitment until a retained firefighter is
fully trained and ready to fulfil their role. Working as a retained
firefighter requires that individual to be within 5 minutes of the fire
station location for 120 hours a week and the allowance they receive for
this equates to around 50p an hour. There are already difficulties in
recruiting and these changes are going to require a significant increase
in recruitment. This proposal does not seem to have taken into account
the impact on retention or the cost of recruiting all the replacements.
I have worked with the FBU to assess the impact on existing retained firefighters and it makes sobering reading
- For the current 13 staff that work at Duffield fire station ONLY 2 can
make the 5 minute ‘turn in time’ for the new proposed station at
Milford; the other 11 staff would need to relocate to keep their jobs.
- None of the Dronfield current retained firefighters are
able or willing to be within the 5 minute parameter of Eckington fire
station.
- Chapel en le Frith has 11 staff, NONE of whom can make the ‘turn in’ time or are willing to relocate nearer to Furness Vale.
- There is a similar story in New Mills, Alfreton & Ripley
Derbyshire Fire Service is offering a ‘relocation’ package, the FBU
expect that many firefighters will not take it due to family or personal
commitments.
In just 2011 the Emergency Cover Review done by Derbyshire Fire and
rescue service stated that the current fire stations are in the right
locations. Why would you move your family away from schools and work,
when it isn’t your main job and decisions about the future locations of
fire stations seem to change so arbitrarily and so quickly?
If these changes are implemented it will effectively mean a
recruitment freeze for 10 years into the fire service as a fulltime
firefighter. A huge deskilling of firefighters as a whole generation is
told ‘no vacancies here’.
The location of stations, appliances and firefighters are crucial in
response times. It is both the weight and speed of response that is most
crucial in saving lives and preventing serious injury for both the
public and firefighters. The fewer fire stations there are, the longer
it will take firefighters to attend the incidents and the worse the
condition of the fire.
There is also the risk of flooding as we know from the great floods
of Chesterfield in 2007 when over 500 homes were flooded but mercifully
no lives were lost, precisely the extreme weather which means help is
needed in numerous places at once covering a wide geographical area
across the county but centred on one service.
On the Sunday Politics Show the Prime Minister responded to a copy of
the Derbyshire Times showing the scale of cuts facing us in Derbyshire
by saying that: “I praise local councils for what they have done so far
to make efficiencies without hitting front line services.”
That was (to put it kindly) a factual inexactitude of breathtaking audacity.
The front line is being hit, in the Police, in social services, in
libraries, in Sure starts, in A&E and most certainly in the fire
service.
No wonder the Conservatives have chosen to delete their no frontline
cuts pledge from their website, they wont remove it from our memories as
easily.
Could anyone claim the closure of 11 fire stations, loss of 16 fire
engines and 108 full time firefighters is protecting frontline services!
This plan doesn’t just mean millions spent up front on the basis of
savings in future, it doesn’t just mean millions spent just a few years
ago will now go up in smoke; doesn’t just mean dedicated fire-fighters
thrown out of work; doesn’t just mean years of experience lost and
thousands to spend in recruitment costs, it means people in Derbyshire
being less safe than they were.
In his response to a letter from my Hon Friend from NE Derbyshire,
the Chief Fire officer admitted that the huge capital outlays were early
action and would be funded by raiding the reserves to spend money today
to save tomorrow. With the Labour party committed to a fairer funding
formula for the fire service Derbyshire should rethink their plans, and
members across the house should send the Minister the strongest possible
message, these plans will reduce the service, will increase the
likelihood of loss of life, will make Derbyshire people less safe and
are illogical in financial and service terms. The people of Derbyshire
and our heroes in the fire service deserve better than the cuts imposed
upon them by this government, better than the vision for our service
envisioned by this document, its time to start again."
There was also a public meeting in Buxton the other day which I did not attend, unlike the ambulance one, I do not know the result or outcome of that meeting. I'm sure it will be in next weeks Buxton Advertiser.
You can still have your say online on the Fire & Rescue debate, it started on the 1st of October 2013 and will run for 12 weeks. You can use the
link here to access it.
The debate continues, our own MP Andrew Bingham was not present I understand. I looked for the debate on the BBC iPlayer, on BBC Parliament but did not find it.
Buxton Social Services
I am still reading, listening and speaking to people with regard to my previous post. Please bare with me while I try to get as much information as I can before I blog. I will get there, just quite a bit of information to go through.
