South Yorkshire Fire Brigades Union has hit back over accusations it is ‘scaremongering’ about life threatening fire cuts. The FBU has today released the full document South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and four other Metropolitan authorities have submitted to Government.
This document concludes at p 17
“The cuts planned for years 3 and 4 are unsustainable and would lead to life threatening reductions in fire cover and national resilience capacity, particularly to deal with terrorism threat, flooding and a high incidence of other events arising from climatic change.”
South Yorkshire FBU Brigade Secretary John Gilliver said: “To accuse us of scaremongering is a massive own goal. The authority has warned of what it calls ‘life threatening’ cuts.
“We are not scaremongering, simply agreeing with the assessment and stark conclusions of the fire authority itself. We are making public the private warnings of the fire authority to Government ministers.”
In a jointly agreed submission to Government as part of the lobbying operation the six metropolitan fire authorities, of which South Yorkshire is one, set out the massive cuts already inflicted on these six fire authorities. It also included the following warnings:
Page 2: “Further cuts of the size indicated by Government will in future significantly impact not only on local community safety in the country’s major conurbations but also nationally in our ability to deal with major or catastrophic incidents.”
The impact would be: Weakening or undermining national and local resilience….A further reduction in the number of rescuers….The number of readily available appliances falling significantly….Fire Station closures….A likely reversal in the trend of falling numbers of fires, deaths and injuries which we have achieved over the last decade….A likely increase in the cost of fire, falling on business and commerce at a time when the country needs to achieve sustained growth.
Page 5: “Such reductions would leave the main regional cities of this country with radically low levels of fire and rescue cover and significantly less ability to manage or assist at a major incident involving terrorism or flooding.”
Page 13: “Further reductions in management levels will compromise public and firefighter safety in management at incidents and in having the capacity to deal with Gold scale incidents and accidents.”
