Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service: We will not cut firefighter crews
Firefighters will not be axed as part of multi-million pound cuts to Staffordshire Fire and Rescue service while bosses have also vowed compulsory redundancies to other workers will be avoided.
The organisation needs to save £2.8m in the next three years but chiefs have confirmed to the Express & Star its response capability will not be reduced.
It comes after the fire service (SFRS) announced its Corporate Safety Plan for 2017 – 2020.
Glynn Luznyj, director of prevent and protect, said: "The headline for me is that to date savings have been made with no compulsory redundancies and we will be doing all we can to see that this continues.
"And we will not be reducing the number of firefighters responding to incidents, nor reducing appliances between now and 2020.
"We have a robust efficiency plan in place and as a Service, we have delivered our best year of performance, meaning that our communities are safer than ever.
"We needed to save £4m over four years and now there is £2.8m left to save by 2020.
"That is as much as we can say at this point due to the reduction in Government revenue support grant.
"There are a number of things coming into play. We will be restructuring our staff models and we are naturally negotiating with trade unions and the work force.
"Any redundancies are likely to be voluntary. We have already gone through our community safety options and did make some changes to the existing fire cover.
"A lot of savings will come from the ongoing collaboration with other agencies, in particular the police.
"For instance we currently share our joint engineering and transport depot in Stoke, which maintains a joint fleet of vehicles for both Police and Fire.
"That has yielded significant efficiencies and there will be other opportunities to collaborate with partners in the future."
