Chief officer questioned new fire trial
Councillors have been given the opportunity to grill fire chiefs over the current service and the three riders trial that is currently underway.
The three rider trial started at the start of June and will run for six months.
Half way through the trial the fire service have attended 172 emergency incidents and fire chiefs reported that there have been no safety concerns.
Overall availability in the service has also seen an increase with some stations reporting a 30 per cent increase in availability however, on average stations across Staffordshire have seen a 12.5 per cent increase in availability.
Recently on-call firefighters have been asked whether they want to continue with the trial.
Across the service 67 percent voted to continue, 23 per cent against and 10 per cent were split. In Newcastle all on-call firefighters voted to continue with the three riders trial.
Rob Barber, Chief Fire Officer at Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service told councillors: “As Chief Fire Officer with the responsibility of delivering a flexible service to the public I cannot rely on traditional approaches in order to deliver the most efficient service to our community.
“Our position in Staffordshire is that we are still committed to having four firefighters riding on on-call appliances and five firefighters on whole-time appliances.
"However, when these numbers cannot be achieved we will mobilise appliances with three riders rather than having no attendance or a delayed allendance.”
The deputy Chief Fire Officer told councillors that the service has invested money into on-call staff and that the choice to use three riders is a binary one.
Glynn Luznyj Deputy Chief Fire Officer at Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service said: “There are huge challenges in maintaining [four riders] and we’ve recognised that, both nationally.
“We’ve been working with Keele University local to look at the best practises that going on across the sector and we invested hundreds of thousands of pounds on an annual basis to try and improve our on-call recruitment, retention, training, skills and our reward for that system and we are going to continue to do that.
“As the chief outlined, really it’s a binary choice for Staffordshire Fire and Rescue, we either use the limited crews of three that we have or we don’t and we wait until the next fully crewed resource is able to attend the scene.”
However, Councillor Jacqueline Brown asked whether the lack of funding for the service prompted the trial.
She added that less officers going out does cause the public to be concerned.
However, the Chief Fire Officer responded by saying that the money might help a little, however the problem with on-call availability would be solved overnight.
Both the Chief and Deputy Chief Fire Officer also agreed to come back to the Health, Wellbeing and Environment Scrutiny Committee at Newcastle Borough Council once the trial has ended in December to report back.
