FIRE SERVICE CUTS LEAVE SCARS and CUTS COSTS LIVES!

New Proposals will Devastate Fire Cover and Risk Lives!

Less Fire Appliances & Less Firefighters Costs Lives!

Article by Ken Ross – Retired Firefighter & Former FBU Scottish Secretary

I retired from the Fire Service over five years ago, after thirty years service. I spent most of my career serving the communities in the Southside of Glasgow. During my service, I attended thousands of incidents, including fires, road traffic collisions, chemical incidents and water rescues.

I was also a Fire Brigades Union (FBU) Official, holding numerous positions over the years, up to and including Scottish Secretary. I was involved in many campaigns, locally and nationally, fighting against attacks on members pay & conditions and cuts in the Service.

The generations before me, since the formation of the UK Fire Service in 1947, did the same, and in the process of doing so, won many significant victories that protected pay, conditions, pensions, jobs and the Service itself.

In my time, we continued that legacy, in order to ensure that the communities we served received the best, high quality, professional service possible.

The Fight Continues

Today, the current generation of firefighters are having to fight those same fights.

Over the years, successive Governments, in their desire to make financial savings, have failed to provide adequate funding for all Public Services, and senior managers have looked to balance the books by making cuts to mainly front line services. The Fire Service is no different.

In the aftermath of the Fire Service National Pay Dispute in 2002/3, new legislation governing the UK Fire Service was enacted. Coupled with the removal of key UK wide standards and regulations, this opened the door to the reduction in Service establishment’s (jobs), and the removal of appliances and stations, which were previously protected, due to being linked to risks within communities across the UK.

We were told that this was all part of a programme of “modernisation“, but of course, it was nothing more than an exercise to reduce budgets and save money.

Since then, across the UK, many fire stations have been closed, appliances removed and front line firefighter jobs lost.

Scottish Fire & Rescue Service

In Scotland in 2013, the eight Fire & Rescue Services were merged into a single Scottish Fire & Rescue Service (SFRS). This was supposedly to harmonise standards and working practices, protect front line jobs, appliances and stations, and make communities safer.

However, in the ten years since the SFRS came into being, £57m has been stripped from the Service budget resulting in station closures, five of the eight fire control rooms closed, average response times increases by up to 14% and over 1100 front line jobs lost.

None of these losses has made communities safer… NONE!

More Cuts!

In May this year, Shona Robison MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, announced a five year Public Sector budget freeze.

The consequence of this for the SFRS is that savings of £11m will need to be made in 2023/24, with further savings of £25m made over the following three years.

Subsequently, SFRS management has proposed to remove 10 fire appliances*, 14 high reach appliances and downgrade the crewing on the River Clyde Rescue Boat in Glasgow (see below)

*Fire Appliances will be lost from Maryhill, Govan, Cowcaddens, Hamilton, Greenock, Perth, Kingsway, Dunfermline, Glenrothes and Methill stations.

Whilst they have said that the removal of these appliances will initially be on a temporary basis, it is clear that once they are removed, they won’t be re-established in the future and will be gone for good.

The consequence of these proposals, will mean the loss of life saving firefighter posts and appliances to local communities and further increases to response times to incidents.

Crucially, there is already an under establishment of jobs in SFRS due to a current recruitment freeze. This, coupled with the proposed further losses, would bring the overall number of front line firefighters posts lost to over 600!!

Less appliances, less firefighters, increased response times! This is devastating to the communities affected!

River Clyde Rescue Boat

The St Mungo Rescue Boat on the River Clyde

As stated above, as well as the proposed removal of Fire and High Reach Appliances, SFRS management are also looking to downgrade the crewing on the River Clyde Rescue Boat in Glasgow.

Currently, the rescue boat has a dedicated crew, who are based at Polmadie Fire Station. This has been in place since 2007.

It has proven to be an invaluable resource, as it has ensured the best possible response times to incidents on the river, and the best possible survival rates of casualties rescued from the water. Many lives have been saved over the past 16 years.

The proposed changes would mean that a “dual crewing” arrangement would be put in place, meaning that personnel who crew a fire appliance at Polmadie, would also be the crew for the rescue boat.

This means that when an incident occurs in the river, the crew would come off the fire appliance to crew the rescue boat.

This would render the fire appliance no longer available for incidents as it would no longer have a crew, hence reducing fire cover in the area.

However, if the rescue boat crew are at an incident on the fire appliance and an incident takes place in the river at the same time, they would be required to be relieved from the incident by another fire appliance from another station, in order to attend an incident on the River Clyde – ie, mobilise a relief crew from another station to the incident; the Polmadie crew then leave the incident and return to home station, transfer onto the rescue boat support vehicle and transport to the rescue boat berth on the river, then mobilise to the scene of operations on the river.

This cannot be achieved in the required 30 minutes!**

**Rescue 3 Europe / International, worldwide specialists in water rescue, indicate that the survival time of an individual submerged in water with a temperature that is 10 degrees centigrade or under, can be as little as 30 minutes, if not less.

The temperature of the river Clyde is less than 10⁰C for at least seven months of the year, with the remaining months only a few degrees higher.

Consequently, in these circumstances, many people who up to now would be rescued from the river in time and survive, would perish.

Campaign

The FBU is campaigning to fight the proposed cuts. Two demonstrations are taking place in Glasgow in the coming weeks.

• Saturday 29th July 2023 at 11am, at the Clyde Arc (Squinty) Bridge (specifically in relation to the rescue boat).

• Thursday 24th August 2023 at 1pm, in George Square.

Currently, FBU members in the stations affected, as well as elsewhere, have been actively lobbying Councillors, MSPs and MPs, seeking their support.

The support of the public is also important, and the campaign is seeking to publicise the issue more over the coming weeks.

I would hope that discussions are ongoing between the FBU and SFRS management, to explore alternative options for making the savings, whilst maintaining the current front line cover.

Indeed, when a proposal is made that constitutes the loss of jobs, management are required to negotiate with the FBU (not merely consult). This means that both parties must strive to reach an agreement.

If no agreement is reached and management decide to go ahead with their cuts anyway, then you have a dispute.

It is unclear at this stage what the status of the negotiations are, or if a dispute has been registered.

What is clear, is that if these cuts are implemented, lives will undoubtedly be lost, where they currently would be saved.

Irrespective of how much money the Scottish Government want to save, this is a price that is not worth paying and is contrary to the whole ethos of the service.

Support

The mantra that Cuts Costs Lives has never been more appropriate.

Please support your firefighters. Attend the demonstrations, sign the online petitions and raise the issue with your local Councillors, MPs and/or MSPs, as well as the Chief Fire Officer of SFRS and the Chair of the SFRS Board.

Help our firefighters to keep us and our communities as safe as possible.

Their fight is our fight!

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Ken Ross, Retired Firefighter and Former FBU Scottish Secretary

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FBU LINKS

Websites:

www.fbu.org

www.fbuscotland.org

www.fbu.org.uk/regions-nations/scotland

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/firebrigadesunionscotland