Frizington Fire Station: Labour back plan to replace tender with smaller vehicle

At the county council yesterday (11th April 2019) there was a vote on whether or not to approve the Integrated Risk management Plan (IRMO) for Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service.

The IRMP says that following a pilot in the south of the county, fire service chiefs will consider replacing the full-size fire tender at Arnside, Staveley and Frizington fire stations, and the second tender at Maryport, with smaller "Rapid Response Vehicles" (RRV) which carries fewer firefighters and less equipment.

This has not been presented as a saving but as an improvement to the service, on the basis that the RRV's can go out with three firefighters rather than four and may be able to get to some locations faster.

There may well be places where these RRVs can provide that improvement, as part of a balanced fleet of vehicles, but I don't believe, on the basis of what serving and recently retired firefighters from Copeland have told me, that Frizington is a sensible place to remove the full-size tender. 

The proposal that that Maryport Fire Station, which currently has two full size tenders of which there are usually often not enough firefighters to crew both, should keep one of the existing large tenders but have the other replaced by an RRV, is supported by the Allerdale local committee, and does appears to make sense. There would still be a large tender available at Maryport when it is needed and a second vehicle which is often unavailable would be replaced with one which could be used a significantly higher proportion of the time.

However, Frizington is one of the two or three worst possible places to replace the full-size tender with an RRV. It has among the best figures in West Cumbria for firefighter availability. A full-size tender serving ten thousand people which is available 90% of the time would be replaced by a significantly less capable vehicle.

I therefore proposed an amendment, which was seconded by the councillors whose division includes the Frizington fire station, Arthur Lamb, which would have had the effect of taking the Frizington proposal out of the IRMP and requiring that the Fire Service report back to the county council on the result of the pilot before any decisions which might be difficult to reverse are taken.

Sadly this amendment was defeated by 33 votes to 26 in a vote which went entirely on party lines with Conservative councillors voting to keep a full size fire engine at Frizington while Labour and Lib/Dem councillors voted against.

There was a recorded vote on the amendment, which will be published in due course, but I was keeping track of what happened. One councillor from Copeland had a cast iron excuse for having to leave the meeting early. Of the others, all seven Conservatives voted for the amendment and all four Labour councillors voted against. 

Had the Labour county councillors representing Copeland borough divisions all voted to keep the Frizington full size tender, the amendment to do so would have been carried by 30 votes to 29.

This issue is far from over. I had a long chat with the chief fire officer after the meeting, and both he and the portfolio holder promised me this is "not a done deal" and the points raised will be taken into account.

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